Reborn: Billionaire in College

Chapter 408: Honor of Kings, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Collapse 1
This year's Orange new product launch is scheduled for April, two weeks later than last year.

The Qingshan Lake Super Factory and BYD are working overtime to prepare stocks.

Not only will they produce the Orange S4, but they will also produce the Orange smart speaker and even the DJI Phantom 1 drone.

“The combat feels good, the graphics are pretty good, and the main quest is pretty interesting. I think it’s ready for the market.”

At the miHoYo headquarters, Chen Pingjiang was trying out "Honkai Impact 3rd" with great interest.

Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and others stood behind Chen Pingjiang, nervously waiting for comments, looking like primary school students waiting for random inspection.

Only after Chen Pingjiang spoke words of praise did Cai Haoyu and the others heaved a sigh of relief and looked at each other with smiles.

After working so hard for so long, it is finally online.

If it doesn't go online, miHoYo will have no money.

After all, Chen Pingjiang only invested five million at the beginning.

"Honkai Gakuen" has been in development for more than a year, and it has undergone a major remake in the middle. It has been dragged on for too long.

In mid-2011, Chen Pingjiang invested in miHoYo, and the miHoYo team moved from Shanghai to Dongjiang, and the "Honkai Impact rd" project was approved.

It's already the beginning of March 2013.

All in all, it took about a year and a half.

No matter how thick-skinned Cai Haoyu and others were, they were too embarrassed to continue the difficult delivery.

Fortunately, Chen Pingjiang is a good investor. He did not put any pressure on them. Instead, he asked everyone at MiHoYo to be patient and not to be anxious.

Of course, Cai Haoyu and others did not slack off during this year and a half.

I had to set up a company, recruit people, move, and find time to defend my thesis.

These are all energy-consuming things.

Besides, Chen Pingjiang also knew that it would take this long to make a well-made game.

The mythical Black Wukong has been around for six or seven years.

What’s the point of making “Honkai Gakuen” for a year and a half?
"As we discussed before, I will mobilize all resources to give Honkai Academy the best recommendation position. The rest depends on your own efforts."

The best recommendation position that Chen Pingjiang mentioned refers to the popular game recommendations in the Orange Mobile App Store, the recommendations on WeChat and Weibo, and the built-in game recommendations on Renren's game platform.

"That's enough, that's enough. If "Honkai Gakuen" still doesn't sell well even with such good recommendation resources, we might as well just kill ourselves." Cai Haoyu said with a smile.

Chen Pingjiang smiled and asked, "What is your expected sales volume?"

Liu Wei hesitated for a while and then stretched out a finger.

"One hundred million? Then just be bolder."

From Chen Pingjiang's perspective, although "Honkai Gakuen" is miHoYo's first real game, it is much better than the original "Honkai Gakuen".

The stand-alone game has become an online game, and selling CDK has become in-app purchases. The sales channels cover a wider range and the production is more sophisticated. I can’t say how much more it will sell, but it shouldn’t be a problem to sell 3-5 million.

After all, there are nearly hundreds of millions of users of Orange phones around the world.

The promotion of mobile games is much simpler than the promotion of PC games in earlier years.

There is almost no need for offline promotion, it is purely online.

To be honest, as the senior vice president of Renren.com, who is fully responsible for the game business, Tian Hongrui had some complaints about Chen Pingjiang's judgment after he got "Honkai Gakuen".

Tian Hongrui thought it was not worth it to invest so much money and spend so much time to make a seemingly ordinary game.

Chen Pingjiang saw through Tian Hongrui's idea at a glance, and said with a smile: "Don't force your ideas into the second dimension. How is the progress of the King of Glory mobile game project?"

"The progress is good and it is expected to be online early next year."

After the two PC games LOL and DNF, Renren has not produced any new games for a long time, mainly because two large-scale productions are currently being developed within the business group.

The mobile game is "Honor of Kings", and the PC game is "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", which is being developed according to Chen Pingjiang's proposal.

Chen Pingjiang had played both of these games himself, so when he proposed them to Tian Hongrui, Tian Hongrui applauded.

From his professional perspective, both games have the potential to become big hits.

First of all, there are shooting games. Apart from 3A masterpieces, there is only CS left on the market, and players are in urgent need of fresh ideas.

This is also the most outstanding part of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds!
Battle Royale!

The popularity of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is not only reflected in its sales figures and online user numbers, but also in the cultural phenomenon it has created. This game has become part of popular culture, and topics and players related to "Battle Royale" can be seen on the subway or in Internet cafes.

It has a unique gameplay, where 100 players are thrown onto a closed island, where they shoot, attack, blast and fight each other. In the end, only one or a group of players can survive. This fierce competition and uncertainty attracts a large number of players.

The constant tension and thrilling feedback are something that other games cannot provide.

Unfortunately, Bluehole's operations are terrible. Not only can it not control plug-ins, it can't promote e-sports leagues, and its operational capabilities are also patchy. It was only after Tencent acquired a stake in the company that it got a boost, otherwise it would have been gone long ago.

But even so, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is still a very profitable and influential game.

Now Renren is personally developing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. With its strong anti-cheating experience and operational capabilities, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will definitely be more popular than its predecessor.

More importantly, the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Peace Elite, is also a cash cow.

As for how popular "Honor of Kings" is, there is no need to say it, right?

With daily revenue of over 5 billion RMB and a total number of 6- million players, it has long been at the top of the mobile game rankings.

The revenue of this game is even close to the total of other MOBA mobile games. It can be called a national mobile game.

At this point, the three future money-making mobile game projects, "Honor of Kings", "Peace Elite" and "Genshin Impact", have all been taken over by Chen Pingjiang.

These three games alone are enough to make him a fortune.

And it can be popular for many years.

Moreover, only Chen Pingjiang can make the game "Honor of Kings" because Riot does not dare to sue its own people directly.

If other companies were to develop MOBA mobile games similar to League of Legends, Wujiang Pizza Hut would definitely be involved.

The above is also what Tian Hongrui doesn't understand about Chen Pingjiang. The games that his company is developing must be big hits, so why bother supporting a little-known small company?

Chen Pingjiang did not intend to explain this, but patted Tian Hongrui on the shoulder and said, "Next year, 2014 will be the time for your department to explode."

As Chen Pingjiang spoke, he thought to himself that he was ultimately sorry for Brother Xiao Ma, and he had to bear it all.

I have almost sucked up all my luck, and I will have to make up for it when I have the chance.

…………

The first round of testing for "Honkai Gakuen" has been scheduled for March 3th.

Although Chen Pingjiang provided the resources, the three miHoYo musketeers still had to connect with the channels themselves, even with Apple.

Chen Pingjiang did not interfere much.

MiHoYo is still a young company at the moment and needs to be tempered and grow slowly.

Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and the other two were also very strong-willed. They did everything themselves and did not dare to be careless at all.

Because they are under a lot of pressure.

Just like what Tian Hongrui said, Renren already has such good games, why should it support a little-known company?

MiHoYo needs to show Chen Pingjiang their value.

If the game has such great resources but still sells so-so, Cai Haoyu himself wouldn't know what to say.

Under such huge pressure, the three dared not relax.

What moved them even more was that the promotional resources that Chen Pingjiang promised for "Honkai Gakuen" were not discounted at all.

According to Cai Haoyu's estimation, these resources alone are worth several million or even tens of millions.

"Fortunately, we have also developed a WeChat mini-program version, which should attract a lot more players."

As the launch time got closer, Liu Wei became extremely panicked.

"We can't just focus on the domestic market. The global two-dimensional market is still huge." This is what they said and what they did.

First, miHoYo released its first promotional PV and actual game demonstration content on overseas streaming platforms such as Youtube.

Secondly, considering that overseas players do not rely on promotional content released on social media platforms to learn about game works, but pay more attention to the actual machine demonstration performance at the exhibition and the reference suggestions given by authoritative evaluation agencies, miHoYo also plans to actively participate in well-known overseas game exhibitions including TGS, G-Star, GC, E3, etc. and open trial play.

Among them, MiHoYo puts the assist market on Xiaori.

Cai Haoyu and others also took a gamble, borrowing tens of millions of yuan to place ground advertisements in Tokyo and other places.

This also made Chen Pingjiang feel very gratified.

At least, miHoYo doesn't expect to do everything for them and is also working hard and actively exploring the market.

Xiaorizi is indeed a good place with a strong ACG cultural atmosphere, which is very suitable for the promotion of "Honkai Gakuen".

Posters of "Honkai Gakuen" have covered the entire building of Sega Akihabara's Building No. 1 and the West Plaza outside the exit of Akihabara Electric Town. There is only one week left before "Honkai Gakuen" is officially launched.

Then, advertisements for "Honkai Gakuen" began to cover 17 stations on the JR Yamanote Line and Chuo Line in the core area of ​​Tokyo. The advertisement at each station corresponded to a character in the game. The traffic advertising channel on the tram simultaneously broadcast the game's promotional PV, and the character CV also made a cameo appearance in the running broadcast.

Such overwhelming publicity naturally triggered a huge public psychological effect, bringing the last wave of traffic to "Honkai Gakuen" before its official launch.

This also brought the global pre-order volume of "Honkai Gakuen" to 500 million, of which the number of pre-orders from overseas players exceeded 100 million.

In 2013, this was a very good result.

After all, 4G is not yet commercially available, and many people are not even using smartphones.

This number is enough to support the sales of a 3A-level game. It is a miracle for a mobile game without any IP support, and it is even more incredible for a little-known company.

Of course, this is also based on the fact that Chen Pingjiang is backing them up, so Cai Haoyu and others dare to play so big right from the start.

If it weren't for the channels provided by Chen Pingjiang, even if they were beaten to death, the most they could do was to cause trouble in the country.

Liu Wei demonstrated his extraordinary operational talent in the promotion of "Honkai Gakuen".

I am keenly aware that the success of "Honkai Gakuen" is due to the two-dimensional world, but it cannot fail because of the two-dimensional world.

Because the two-dimensional world itself is a closed small circle, this circle seems closed and exclusive, and it cannot even be considered mainstream culture.

If we rely solely on two-dimensional players, activity and long-term retention rates will be big problems, which may have an adverse impact on the game's reputation and internal environment in the long run.

Therefore, "Honkai Gakuen" is also actively breaking the circle to achieve a sustainable gaming ecology.

After a series of operations, time quickly came to March 3th.

The first round of testing of "Honkai Gakuen" is open.

(End of this chapter)