Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Page 822

It would be one thing if there were no sparks.

In a world where sparks fly, Genshin Impact's strengths are greatly diminished, while its weaknesses are magnified, naturally leading to polarized reviews.

Players who think Genshin Impact is pretty good mainly feel that Genshin Impact's gameplay is simple, unlike Galaxy Park which is more complicated. You just need to pull characters and watch the story.

The gameplay is relatively easy, and the storyline is decent.

It's like people are tired of big-budget productions and want to see slice-of-life anime.

Those who disagree felt that Genshin Impact's gameplay was too simple, its open world too vast, and that it imitated Zelda...

This polarized reputation ultimately led to a collapse in Genshin Impact's revenue, with the total revenue across all platforms reaching 40 million on the first day, far below expectations.

Although forty million is not a small amount, if we compare it to the previous life, the first day of Genshin Impact in the previous life was also about forty million.

Based solely on this data, the conclusion that Genshin Impact in this timeline has not collapsed is certain.

But reality can't be compared like that.

In this timeline, Genshin Impact also adopted a partial monthly card system, although it was quite stingy. The small monthly card offered 2 pulls per day, while the large monthly card offered 3 pulls per day, and there were no skins available in the battle pass.

But this does indeed mean that miHoYo is shifting towards a monthly subscription model.

Moreover, by this time, players had already developed their own spending habits: if a game is fun, they'll buy a monthly pass; if it's really fun, they'll buy both the monthly pass and the battle pass together.

Players who are willing to spend money will do so on the first day, and players who are not willing to spend money are unlikely to spend money later.

As expected, Genshin Impact's revenue plummeted to less than 10 million on the second day. If this trend continues, it's highly unlikely that the revenue will exceed 100 million in the first month.

This shattered David's last illusions.

Chapter 462 Crushing Defeat

Before Genshin Impact was released, there was a heated debate within miHoYo that lasted for half a month.

Ultimately, the decision was made to slightly reduce the output of both large and small monthly cards, strengthen constellations, and attract ordinary players while also focusing on the operational logic of high-spending users.

This logic ultimately leads to the final decision.

It was decided by a unanimous vote within miHoYo, meaning that most people believe there is no problem with it.

This conclusion that there is no problem stems from two points. First, Dawei believes that they have already given ordinary players a lot of benefits. With the monthly cards and the daily sign-in bonus, players get 5 draws every day, which is 150 draws a month.

In David's opinion, that was more than enough.

The kind of model that combines the monthly card and the 11-draw system does cater to ordinary players, but in a month, the monthly card alone will give you more than 300 draws. Add to that the various in-game benefits, and that's four or five hundred draws in total.

There are too many pulls. Ordinary players only need to skip one or two versions to get all the characters they want.

In this situation, the rarity of a fully-constellated character is greatly reduced, and heavy spenders are unlikely to spend money to pull for one.

It's not because they can't afford to spend money, but because ordinary players also have maxed-out characters, which means that the "scarcity" of maxed-out characters doesn't exist.

Whether players spend money or not is entirely tied to the game content. This is the result that Spark wants, but not the result that miHoYo wants.

However, because Xinghuo's influence is too great.

In making this decision, David chose a compromise, a path that required both heavy spenders and ordinary players.

After all, even though a large portion of the revenue from the still-operating Honkai Impact 3rd game has been taken away by Kuro's Punishing: Gray Raven, a significant proportion of the remaining players are heavy spenders.

This shows that there is still a market for heavy spenders.

Unfortunately, David overlooked one point: the reason why heavy spenders in Honkai Impact 3 are still playing and spending money is purely due to sunk costs and habits, not market forces.

It's an isolated case.

The rapid collapse of Genshin Impact indirectly proves this point. It was at this time that Dawei realized that in just one or two years, players' spending habits had undergone tremendous changes.

Most new players in this world, especially those whose first game is Starfire, even the big spenders, don't have the habit of spending thousands of dollars on game data.

The reason? The reason is very simple.

Even if someone is a tycoon with thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to spend on their favorite works, why shouldn't I buy skins and merchandise for my waifus like 95, Amiya, Reimu Hakurei, Jeanne d'Arc, Saber, and Su Ying?

Instead, they want to draw one of your maxed-out characters, not even from top-tier games?

I'm mad?

It is no exaggeration to say that at this point, Spark's games had already become the anchor for the entire market.

This is true even for wealthy players.

In Xinghuo's games, if you say it's not pay-to-win, then it truly is. But if you say it's pay-to-win, then even the wealthiest players can spend money on it. In-game skins are secondary.

The key is the merchandise for Spark, which is where the real money is spent.

Leaving aside the bottomless pit of Starfire Collection for now, let's just talk about physical merchandise. From 16 to now, there have been seventeen different figures of the Battlefront Girls alone, including some ordinary ones priced around 95 yuan.

However, there are also rare and limited edition items costing several thousand.

This is just one character from the 95 series. On the Girls' Frontline forum, there's a real tycoon who renovated his villa and turned it into a Girls' Frontline merchandise exhibition hall.

We purchased all the Battlefront Girls figures from the official collaboration with Spark and included them in the exhibition.

The cost of the figurines alone is hundreds of thousands.

Not to mention Xinghuo's merchandise, which goes far beyond just figurines; there's a huge amount of other related merchandise.

Many Spark players say that you should never go into Spark merchandise stores unless you have to, because once you go in, you won't be able to leave. This has even led to the creation of many memes.

Therefore, the main game plus related merchandise has become the pricing system that Spark has anchored.

Even many virtual items in games correspond to real-world items. For example, after Spark's figure production capacity started to increase in 19, it liked to promote a type of product called "skin bundle".

The price is approximately 269, which includes a set of virtual character skins plus a real-life figurine of the same skin.

The promotional slogan they used was...

"Making beauty accessible to all."

While these skin bundles offer the advantage of time to manufacture the figures, meaning the in-game skins arrive immediately after purchase, the figures themselves may take a month or even two.

Yet sales remain very high.

As an industry leader, Spark has always been committed to controlling costs. If a player spends 1000 on something, Spark will try its best to make up for it by giving the player a few hundred more.

It's not just a virtual character.

For Linli, this is sustainable development, attracting more consumers, driving the development of the real economy, and boosting employment.

Of course, the things that come later are secondary.

Regardless of the reason, for other manufacturers at this time, because of Xinghuo's influence, Xinghuo's rules have gradually become the market rules.

Again.

If the same item is sold for only 10 yuan in the largest, ubiquitous chain supermarkets, then unless you bankrupt that supermarket, you can only sell it for a maximum of 10 yuan.

But Dawei was still making decisions based on the ideas he had when the project was first proposed, and he was still referring to the production structure of Honkai Impact 3. He always thought he was extraordinary and that he could sell something that cost 10 yuan for 1000 yuan.

Besides, another reason why whales are unwilling to spend heavily in Genshin Impact is that Genshin Impact is not a top-tier game at this time.

Don't underestimate this.

Many wealthy players consider a game's reputation when deciding whether to spend heavily on it, with Genshin Impact being a prime example of this.

With its exquisite graphics and a relatively advanced pay-to-win model at the time, it garnered a lot of praise.

It looks like the number one mobile game in China.

Many wealthy players spend heavily on Genshin Impact because there are many people playing it, especially female players. When they get a fully-constellated character and show it off at anime conventions or online, everyone is amazed and exclaims how awesome it is.

These emotional values ​​are what make many people spend a lot of money on the game. However, in terms of popularity, Genshin Impact can't compare to the three kings of Starfire: Destiny's Edge, Starry Night, and Touhou Project.

In terms of reputation, there's no comparison.

In such a situation, the desire of wealthy individuals to spend heavily on in-game purchases due to social needs will also decrease.

In this way, the final turnover of 40 million was already a great favor in Lin Li's eyes, or rather, Ke Qing's black stockings were indeed top-notch.

However, the revenue of 40 million on the first day, halved on the second day, and only 10 million was a humiliating defeat in miHoYo's eyes.

Chapter 463 How can we defeat Xinghuo?

"Both are open-world games, but what happened when Galaxy Paradise launched, and what happened when we launched?"

"Isn't this situation enough to illustrate the problem?"

"If you ask me, if you're going to learn it, learn it to the end. I already felt that this final solution was unreliable."

"It's not too late to change it now."

David's villa, backyard.

With the campfire flickering, the three founders of miHoYo were having a barbecue. They had originally agreed not to talk about the company today, but only to catch up.

But as they talked, they ended up heading in the direction of the company.

At this moment, Dawei was expressionless, and he unconsciously tightened his grip on the skewers in his hand.

Although Spark hasn't released any new games or participated in any manufacturer sales events in the past two days, the name Spark still appears frequently in the media.

After the failure of Tencent's "Monkey King: Hero Is Back", the media compared Tencent's games over the past two or three years with those of Spark, and compared Tencent's investments with Spark's investments.

NetEase's "Return to the Bright Moon" has seen a surge in popularity. In an interview, Ding Lei discussed the transformation of NetEase through the Spark Model and announced the launch of the NetEase peripheral store on the Spark peripheral website.

This is the fourth company to join the Spark Merchandise Mall since it opened its doors to new customers. The previous three companies were Kuro, Manju, and Capcom.

The merchandise from Xinghuo is quite special; once you enter Xinghuo...

This implies that Spark has the distribution rights to all of the other party's IPs. Spark's merchandise department can use their IPs to create merchandise, with Spark setting the prices and content. Then, both parties share the profits.

Of course, manufacturers can also create their own merchandise and put it on the market.

Spark has been offering this product for a while now, and in the past few days, various branches have been discussing cooperation with many manufacturers.

However, most manufacturers still view this with skepticism, since it involves packaging the IP and giving it to Spark. Although it's a profit-sharing model, it will inevitably reduce their original licensing fees for related merchandise.

Therefore, not many manufacturers have joined, and not many players have paid attention to it. However, Ding Lei's words have piqued everyone's interest again.

Needless to say, after Naraka: Bladepoint became a huge hit.

As the team behind Naraka: Bladepoint, who showcased the three key strengths of Chinese gaming at the Summer Game Show, always mentions the Starfire Engine, the Starfire Platform, and the help they received from Lin Li whenever they are interviewed.

When interviewed, the author of "War of the Blades" delivered almost the same lines and also expressed special thanks to Lin Li for helping them connect with some overseas bloggers who like cold weapons.

It's fair to say that although Xinghuo didn't have any games featured in the special sale, almost every news article Dawei has seen in the past two days has mentioned Xinghuo.

If Genshin Impact becomes a huge hit right now, Dawei might feel a little better.

If Bao Si were in Genshin Impact, Dawei would be upset, but not this much.

But it was precisely this limbo that made him feel as if a million ants were gnawing at his heart.

He really couldn't understand it. From the Genshin Impact backend recharge system, he could see that the heavy spending model he was thinking of wasn't without people spending money, with tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

A significant portion of the revenue still comes from players recharging to unlock constellations.

In other words, his model is perfectly feasible, and the reason it's not working now is...

It's simply because Spark is engaging in a price war.

So David was even more confused: why would Spark do this? Besides making manufacturers' profit margins even lower, who benefited from Spark's actions?

player?

Perhaps, but the cost to manufacturers would be too high.

The development costs of Genshin Impact are so high, but now that it has been launched, its revenue in the first month may not even break 100 million, and the specific situation of its regular revenue in the future is even more unknown.

This was a huge blow to him.

He didn't understand why the market changed so much during the development of Genshin Impact. Just like after ZZZ was released, he didn't understand why players were tired of a monetization model that had already been accepted by the market.

What bothered him even more was the dissatisfaction from the other two founders.

Yes, although they didn't say it directly, David still sensed it.

miHoYo no longer trusts his operational approach.

But what can he change?

"How about this, I suggest we hand over the operation of Genshin Impact to Xiao Qin for a while, and I'll take some time off to focus on developing the new project..."