"If the animation quality is good this time, the IP of Sword and Fairy will be truly established. If the next few works are also explosive, it's not impossible for it to become a national IP in the future!" Huang He said with some pride. He had put in quite a bit of effort to operate the Sword and Fairy IP.
"It's just a TV series, no matter how well it's made, how far can it go?" Leng Zhimeng said dismissively.
After all, even if a TV series made a lot of money, it would only be tens of millions of RMB, which was less than what Jiangnan Group earned from a casual sale.
"IP, I'm talking about IP!" Huang He tapped the table. "Do you know Pokémon? It's the world's number one IP. Trillions of dollars in value have been generated around this IP!"
"That exaggerated? Can this game earn so much money? Isn't it just a small game?" Leng Zhimeng stuck out her tongue. Huang He was stunned. That's true, that's a matter of the future. In the future, Pokémon can earn trillions of dollars in profit, but it's still an unknown entity now.
"Should I try to buy the Pokémon IP?" Boss Huang pondered, but then felt it wouldn't work. After all, Nintendo had already tightly controlled the Pokémon IP through various means. If he wanted to get Pokémon, he would have to find a way to defeat Nintendo.
But the problem was, the Pokémon IP had been cultivated over the years through Nintendo's game consoles. Even if he could buy the Pokémon IP, it would likely be useless without Nintendo's platform.
Unless he started making game consoles... but game consoles were really difficult. Microsoft used all its strength to attack the game console industry, but the Xbox was still dominated by Sony and Nintendo... Of course, if it wasn't managed by Microsoft, it might be better. Microsoft was essentially the same as Alibaba, meaning they were incompetent in everything except their core business.
"By the way, what did you specifically ask me to come over for?" Huang He asked Leng Zhimeng curiously. He was brought here by her.
"Oh, it's like this. Some third-party developers for the 00 Game Platform have gathered and submitted a petition to me. I don't know how to handle it, so I asked my brother-in-law to decide!" Leng Zhimeng quickly said.
"What petition?" Huang He was stunned, then took a document from Leng Zhimeng. After a quick glance, his expression became somewhat strange.
It was a petition requesting the 00 Game Platform to open online blind boxes!
Following the huge success of Kaixuan on the oo Game Platform last year, in addition to the established giants in the online game industry, Shanda and NetEase, almost all newly emerging online game developers chose to list their games on the oo Game Platform. Most of these online game developers no longer even set up their own game servers, only providing versions for the oo Game Platform.
Because their own versions required them to have a prepaid card top-up system, which was quite difficult for small developers. So they simply relied entirely on the oo Game Platform.
As of now, the oo Game Platform has launched over 1,200 standalone games and more than 60 online games. In terms of the number of online games alone, the oo Game Platform has occupied 95% of the market share of the total number of online games nationwide, which is terrifying.
Of course, the actual revenue is a bit lower because the currently most popular online games, Fantasy Westward Journey and Legend, have not been incorporated into the oo Game Platform. These two games account for over 40% of the total online game revenue nationwide. Therefore, the oo Game Platform only controls a little over 50% of the total online game revenue nationwide, which is around 1 billion yuan a year. Jiangnan Group can take 30% of the turnover from this, which is about 300 million yuan. It's not very profitable, barely enough to cover the operating and maintenance costs of the oo Game Platform.
After all, online games in 2003 were still in the initial stage of development and accumulation.
However, it was about to explode in 2004. Huang He recalled seeing somewhere that the total online game revenue in 2004 was 3.5 billion RMB, in 2005 it became 4.7 billion, in 2007 it was 6.5 billion, and in 2008 it directly broke 10 billion. After that, it grew more terrifying year by year until the rise of mobile games.
However, in this world, the sales growth of online games was even more terrifying because of the addition of the oo Game Platform and the brand new sales channel of game blind boxes. The total online game revenue in 2003 reached 3 billion.
This was double the game revenue of 2003 in history. If this multiplier was used for estimation, the online game revenue in 2004 in this world should reach 7 billion RMB, 9 billion in 2005, and directly break 10 billion in 2007.
It was precisely because this growth rate was faster than in history that more companies entered the online game industry than in history. These game companies were all crowding onto the oo Game Platform at this moment, sharing the huge traffic of the entire oo Game Platform.
But the traffic of the oo Game Platform was limited. Even though almost all online game players nationwide had an account on the oo Game Platform, there were only about 5 million active online game players and about 10 million inactive online game players.
With more game companies, there wasn't enough revenue to share.
Especially since all online games still adhered to the prepaid card charging system, their revenue depended entirely on the players' playtime. Player time couldn't be created out of thin air; the total amount was fixed, and it would only be divided into smaller and smaller portions.
Fortunately, the oo Game Platform also had blind boxes as an additional profit-making method. All oo Game Platform game developers could sell physical game blind boxes through the Jiangnan Mall to make a profit.
However, under the orders of the Jiangnan Mall, the items within the game blind boxes must strictly adhere to the rule of not affecting game data, meaning they could only sell skins or the like. This resulted in these blind boxes being mostly for fans who were willing to pay for the content. If they didn't extremely love the game's content, they wouldn't be willing to spend extra money to buy something that didn't affect game combat power.
In conclusion, with more games like the oo Game Platform, and more competitors, with dozens of games opening public beta almost every month, game developers could visibly see their revenue decreasing. By March, five online games on the oo Game Platform had announced server shutdowns, making many game developers anxious and eager to extract more money from players.
Hence, this petition.
From the content of the petition, the game developers seemed quite restrained. They did not ask for sales that would change in-game data.
They simply stated that selling game blind boxes in reality would be more troublesome due to the need for movement, which would greatly limit the consumption desire of some players.
Therefore, if game blind boxes could be sold directly online, they hoped that Jiangnan Group would allow them to develop a blind box lottery machine within the game and introduce the oo Game Mall's payment system. With just a click to draw, they could immediately use Jiangnan Coins to purchase blind boxes, which would undoubtedly greatly increase blind box sales.
After all, the figurines sold in real-life blind boxes were not valuable; the redemption codes were valuable. If online sales were opened, redemption codes would be unnecessary. Clicking would directly allow players to claim corresponding in-game items within the game, which was extremely convenient.
This would significantly increase the revenue of game companies, allowing everyone to survive.
Similarly, the oo Game Platform could also achieve huge profit increases. In their petition, they estimated that revenue could be increased by at least 30% annually.
"What do you think?" After reading the petition, Huang He asked Leng Zhimeng.
"When I first saw this petition, I almost agreed to it directly because we already had plans to build an online blind box machine, as our payment system is very mature."
"But after reading it carefully, I realized that these game companies seemed to want to have control over the design of the blind box lottery machine, and we would only have control over the payment system."
"In this way, game companies could completely bypass our control over blind boxes and directly set the content of the products sold within the blind boxes themselves. Then, they would probably sell not just game items that change appearance, but items that directly change game data!" Leng Zhimeng's words made Huang He look at her with new admiration. This young girl might be a bit dim-witted in other aspects, but she was really sharp when it came to games, immediately seeing through the tactics of these game manufacturers.
Huang He had no doubt that these game manufacturers would do anything for profit.
"Then how should we decide? Agree or disagree?" Huang He retorted.
"I don't know..." Leng Zhimeng shook her head. "If we refuse, then these game manufacturers will develop ill will towards us. And the reality is that there are too many game manufacturers now, with game companies closing down every month. They are on the verge of survival. If we don't give them a chance to survive, they might do many things that we cannot control!"
"But if we agree, then the entire online game industry in China will probably gradually turn into a leech that sucks blood from players. The current gaming environment for players will cease to exist, and the future online game world will probably become a game environment where personal strength is irrelevant, and only wealth matters, and only those who are willing to spend money can have fun!"
"What you're saying is very true, but also not entirely true!" Huang He smiled slightly and said meaningfully, "The fact is, no matter what we do, online games in the future will become a world where only wealthy people can have fun. This is an objective law of the world's development, and it cannot be stopped by human effort!"