Chapter 234 Brother-in-law, did I hear you right? Have brain-computer devices been developed?
Meng Liangyu actually wanted to set the price at 88 yuan, because the price of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" next door is 96 yuan.
But I really can’t afford the price.
Originally, domestic production + buyout system, these two factors can be called Debuff. If it sells for as low as 88 yuan, it will definitely lose money, let alone make money.
Even if it sells 10 million copies in the domestic market, it will still lose blood. Without Metaverse Intelligent Control’s blood transfusion, Fog Mirror Studio will definitely go bankrupt.
What’s more, Meng Liangyu is actually not confident about selling 10 million copies in the country. Last year, “Overwatch” was so popular, but it only sold more than 5 million copies in the country.
Meng Liangyu doesn’t expect to make much money, as long as he can get his money back without losing money.
If you want to recover costs, you must rely on the global market, and you can only rely on platforms.
Games sold on this platform will receive a share.
According to the stepped commission ratio adopted, the platform takes 30% of the first US$10 million, 25% of the portion from US$10 million to US$50 million, and 20% of the portion exceeding US$50 million.
The development cost of "Machine War" is more than three times that of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", which is US$300 million, or 2.046 billion yuan.
Publicity and distribution is another huge expenditure, and the publicity and distribution of such a top-notch masterpiece cannot be saved.
Because of the size, according to the usual situation in the industry, the ratio of publicity expenses to development costs is 1:1, which should account for at least about 50% of the development costs.
The plan of Fog Mirror Studio is to use a budget of about US$200 million for global promotion, which is equivalent to RMB 1.37 billion, accounting for two-thirds of the development cost.
It can be calculated that in order to recover the cost of "Machine War", if it is sold at a price of 88 yuan, it means that 40 million to 47.5 million copies will be sold,
This is on the same level as the sales volume of "Overwatch".
No matter how confident Meng Liangyu was, he would not dare to think that he could sell more than 40 million copies, let alone sell this volume to be able to recover his money.
It can be seen that I really can’t muster the courage to price it at 88 yuan.
After a moment, Lu An pondered for a while, and then said: "Let's wait for the PVE story mode before adopting the buyout system. As for the current PVP battle mode, it is safer to use the free mode, maybe you can make more money."
"In the free mode, you can make profits in several ways."
Skins, weapon appearances, vehicle skins and other personalized props can meet the aesthetic needs of players. "
"Sell season passes. After players pay to unlock the pass, they can obtain limited-time rewards by completing task upgrades, which increases user retention and willingness to pay."
"Create e-sports and event content, sell event tickets, share virtual items, etc. to expand revenue."
"Provide value-added services such as name change cards and high-value account protection."
"The game maintains its popularity by continuously updating the gameplay, such as new modes and new maps, while optimizing the paid experience, such as limited return games, blind box mechanisms, etc." There's nothing better than making money. "
"But not making money or even project losses is not a big problem. What I want is its influential audience. The free model can lower the entry barrier and increase the size of the player audience."
One major feature of online online games that is different from stand-alone games is that the former needs to maintain online rates.
But the player's time is fixed. After playing your game, the online rate of another game will go down.
Hence, the atmosphere among online game developers is also strong.
Single-player games do not have such a problem, because stand-alone game players will not play only one stand-alone game, and stand-alone game developers are actually quite harmonious.
Just stagger the release date. Whether a stand-alone game can be a big seller mainly depends on the quality of the game itself.
From the perspective of competitive strategy, "Machine War" now has a direct competitor, which is "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and it has been launched first.
This competitor adopts a buyout model. If you want to defeat "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and become the number one in this genre, adopting a free model is undoubtedly a huge advantage and will put great pressure on competitors.
Everyone will be more willing to give it a try. It doesn’t cost any money anyway. If it’s not fun, just uninstall it.
As long as "Machine War" itself is fun, it will be able to retain players. It will not only be able to steal the potential incremental users of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" in the future, it may even attract the other party's retained users.
Meng Liangyu thought to himself and said: "If we go for the free model, we can only rely on core players and collectors to contribute the main source of income."
Hearing this, Lu An immediately reminded him: "If you go for the free model, don't learn from other online game manufacturers who only focus on how to get players to spend money to recharge. In short, don't deliberately guide players to consume, or even specialize in psychology to design consumption traps."
"Just put the goods on the market. Let the players decide whether to spend money or not. Build up the reputation and lay an IP foundation for future PVE stand-alone games." Hearing this, Meng Liangyu couldn't help but said: "In this case, it will be extremely difficult to get back the money in the free model..."
The development cost of this game is really too high.
Lu An smiled and said: "To a large extent, Metaverse Intelligent Control is your party. I entrusted you Wujing Studio to help produce this game. If you lose money by then, Metaverse Intelligent Control will give you 20% of the net profit."
From the beginning of this game project, Lu An never thought of relying on it to make money.
In order to agree to the military, we use armed robots to cultivate a talent base, because the operations, perspectives, etc. in this game are very similar to armed robots in reality. This is not a coincidence, but deliberate.
In other words, you can play the game and be able to adapt to the game's perspective, UI interface, etc.
If you become a soldier in the future, you will be able to quickly master the operation of armed robots.
"Uh..."
Meng Liangyu was stunned for a long time before he said: "Okay, brother-in-law, you have already said that, I can't find a reason to refute it."
Just to expand the influence and the size of the player audience, it is indeed more advantageous to go to the free model.
Meng Liangyu was instantly relieved when he thought that Yuanjie Intelligent Control's net profit alone in the first quarter of this year reached an epic astronomical figure of 161.3 billion.
It’s no wonder that my brother-in-law looks down on these three melons and two jujubes. The development cost of this game project plus the planned publicity expenses total about 3.4 billion.
Meanjie Intelligent Control’s net profit in the first quarter was an average of 1.75 billion per day.
It means that Yuanjie Intelligent Control only needs about two days to not only earn back the 3.4 billion RMB of the R&D cost of "Machine War Storm" and the external publicity and distribution budget, but also have a surplus of 70 to 80 million yuan.
If we go by the growth momentum of Yuanjie Intelligent Control, it is estimated that it will not take more than two days.
At the end, Lu An turned to the main point: "I came here specifically for another thing today. Metaverse Intelligent Control will release a new product in October. The game you developed is a part of the new product to create a content ecosystem." Meng Liangyu couldn't help but feel curious, "What new product requires a game content ecosystem, brother-in-law, could it be the release of a game console?"
Lu An shook his head and said, "It's not a game console. What I'm going to say next, you must keep it secret."
Hearing this, Meng Liangyu nodded repeatedly.
Lu An quickly mentioned the brain-computer terminal equipment to him. Meng Liangyu listened, his eyes getting wider and rounder.
As Lu An finished speaking, Meng Liangyu couldn't help but exclaimed on the spot: "Brain-computer equipment? Brother-in-law, did I hear you correctly? Have you really developed such a cutting-edge thing? It will be released in less than 5 months?"
…
(End of this chapter)