Video Game Empire

Of course, it is impossible for a game to become popular out of thin air. In addition to the high-quality support behind this, the targeted advertising and marketing of the sales team also played a big role.

The full season of the NFL runs from September of the first year to early February of the second year.

Among them, September to December is the regular season. Each NFL team will play 8 home games and 8 away games, a total of 16 regular season rounds, to compete for playoff seats. And into January, the NFL entered the exciting playoffs. The NL and AL each play a round of wild-card rounds, followed by the conference semifinals and conference finals, to determine the final NL and AL champion teams that qualify for the Super Bowl.

Football is the most popular sport in the United States, and the NFL already has a very high degree of attention, and its playoff ratings are even more terrifying. "NFL Manager" was chosen to be listed at this time, originally to support the popularity of the NFL.

The Oriental Game Company even used the slogan "Play games to get Super Bowl tickets" in its advertising, which attracted the attention of countless fans. To know that the Super Bowl is known as the "American Spring Festival Gala", the price of its live tickets can be imagined. And for most ordinary fans, even if you are willing to spend a lot of money, you may not be able to buy a good seat ticket.

In addition to using the gimmick of Super Bowl tickets to attract more fans' attention, the game marketing team is also actively promoting it with emerging Internet methods. For example, in the NFL fan discussion community on the AOL (America Online) website, a screenshot of the game about the Indianapolis Colts' record was widely circulated.

The 1991/1992 Colts were not the Colts that won the Super Bowl with Peyton Manning in the future. In the season just ended, it had a 1-15 record. This result not only refreshed the worst record in the history of his team, but also became a joke used by supporters of more than 30 other teams.

In the screenshot of the game record posted by this netizen, he used the Colts' lineup for this season. In the online battle with other players, the entire virtual season turned 15 wins and 1 loss. One record reached the playoffs, and all the way to win the final Super Bowl!

This has caused many fans to question the balance of the newly launched "NFL Manager" game. With the Colts' lineup this season, although 1 win and 15 losses may not be their true level, the current strength of the Colts is out of season. There is indeed a big gap between the strong teams in the playoffs, let alone winning the Super Bowl.

So everyone's ridicule to the Colts quickly shifted to the ridicule of Dongfang Game Company's new game. As the event fermented, even many traditional media began to pay attention to it.

You must know that according to the lottery rules announced by Dongfang Game Company, only a week before the start of the Super Bowl, players who purchase the game and then activate the Internet connection function, complete a virtual season of battle, and finally win the Super Bowl, are eligible to participate in this year's real Super Bowl. Sweepstakes for bowl game tickets.

Seeing that things were getting worse, Dongfang Games finally stood up to clarify. They announced that the game has been in operation for 20 days, and a total of 3484 players have qualified for the lottery. Among them, only 2 players have won the Super Bowl with the Colts as the home team, and the probability is far less than 1 in 1,000.

The Colts run by these two players have a record of 9 wins and 7 losses in the regular season, and 8 wins and 8 losses, respectively, all of which are worthy of qualifying for the playoffs. And the reason why the Colts of these two players can finally win the cup has a common feature, that is, super luck. From the beginning of the regular season, their opponents either made low-level mistakes, or had important players injured or out of shape, which finally made the two Colts stumble, and it was very miraculous that they ascended to the highest throne step by step.

In stark contrast to the Colts' less than 1 in 1,000 chance of winning the title, there are two teams with a title rate of more than 25 percent. The two teams chosen by many players, the Buffalo Bills and the Washington Redskins, are exactly the two teams competing in the Super Bowl this year.

Therefore, at the press conference of Dongfang Games, the person in charge of the "NFL Manager" project team proudly boasted that the data algorithm of his game is very intelligent and can accurately determine the actual combat power of each NFL team.

As for the previous rumor among fans that a certain player used the Colts this season to have a super high winning rate of 15 wins and 1 loss in the regular season, it was just a prank by some people, and Dongfang Game Company generously did not pursue it!

Such a shocking turn in the plot, which is closely related to the last topic of "Super Bowl", naturally aroused great curiosity and heated discussion of the new game "NFL Manager" among the people of the United States.

And many people who have been voluntary publicists for Dongfang Game Company for no reason at all know that, including the game screenshots of the so-called Colts' record against the sky, they are all fake screenshots from the planner P of the "NFL Manager" game team. Then they acted as the rhythm on both sides of the navy, step by step to stir up the topic, arouse national attention through controversy, and finally let Dongfang Game Company officially stand up for a wave of whitewashing.

In 1992, American netizens and other melon-eating people had never seen the Internet marketing methods twenty years later, and they were played with applause before they knew it. Even many traditional media such as newspapers and TV stations have not seen this new marketing method, and they have reported it as a hot event and carried out a lot of publicity for "NFL Manager" for free.

As a result, more than 1 million copies of the single-player version of "NFL Manager" were sold in the first three months of its launch, and as high as 65% of users also opened the online mode. You must know that game software in the United States is not cheap. For example, the single-player version of "NFL Manager" is priced at $39.

If you want to open the network mode, players need to pay an additional $4 per month for the connection fee. After all, Dongfang Game Company opened a special real-time online battle platform for "NFL Manager", which required the purchase of a large number of servers and network bandwidth, which required huge costs.

Fortunately, the core of "NFL Manager" is actually a word game, and the data that players need to transmit for online battles is not large. Otherwise, the network speed of this era alone will not be able to support it at all.

And despite the fact that the $4 per month connection fee is not expensive, if a player plays online for a year, the fee they pay to Dongfang Game Company is even higher than the cost of buying a copy of the game.

However, according to the back-end statistics of Dongfang Game Company, there are still quite a few local tyrants who are willing to spend money. In the first three months, there were more than 5,000 players who directly purchased the annual network function service.

In addition to the Internet connection fee, there are many charging props in the Internet mode of "NFL Manager". For example, players may be injured in the game. Players can purchase the "Gold Medal Team Doctor" item, which reduces the team's injury probability by 20%. The price is 1.99 US dollars and is valid for 8 games.

Other items such as "Super Returner" - increase the ability to catch the ball and return by 10%, "King of Sacks" - increase the probability of sacking quarterbacks by 10%, "King of Super Sack" - increase More than a dozen small props, such as the 10% chance of stealing the ball, can slightly increase the team's ability in certain aspects, but will not overly destroy the balance of the game.

Three months after the launch of “NFL Manager”, Dongfang Game Company’s revenue from monthly internet fees and value-added props alone exceeded 20 million US dollars, which is slightly more than the revenue from simply selling copies of the game.

After all, don't look at the retail price of a copy of the game as high as $39, but the actual factory price of Eastern Games is only $19, and the remaining $20 needs to be given to distributors and retailers. On the contrary, the monthly fee for game networking and the cost of value-added items are paid directly online by players by binding a credit card. The channel cost that Oriental Game Company needs to pay is much lower than the physical distribution model!

Of course, it is impossible for Dongfang Game Company to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to build an online payment system for a game. It adopts the PayPal online payment system officially launched by AOL (AOL) two years ago.

AOL is now the largest Internet company in the United States. It not only owns the largest portal website in the United States, America Online, but also owns a browser with a global market share of more than 90%, the Navigator Browser. In addition, the company has also actively expanded into search engines, online payment and other fields in recent years.

But don't look at AOL's booming expansion in the United States and even the world, but it has not actually made a penny so far, and has always relied on Li Xuan's continuous investment to make up for losses. At the same time that Oriental Games went to the NYSE, AOL was also preparing to go public on Nasdaq.

Internet topics have always been the subject of the most attention in the U.S. capital market in the past two years, and the hot sale of "NFL Manager" has not only made Dongfang Game Company itself a hot spot on the Internet, but also made countless Internet practitioners and investors highly concerned. inspired.

After all, professionals can roughly estimate the actual revenue and profit brought by this game to Eastern Games based on the sales of "NFL Manager". "NFL Manager" just added an online battle mode, which more than doubled the overall profit. Doesn't it mean that the Internet has great potential?

Dongfang Games, which was valued at $27.5 billion before going public, offered 320 million shares at a price of $27.5 per share. Among them, the major shareholder Li Xuan reduced his holdings by 240 million shares, and Dongfang Game Company issued an additional 80 million new shares.

After deducting the listing expenses, Li Xuan can almost get back 6 billion US dollars in funds, and Dongfang Games can raise almost 2 billion in cash. After this round of large-scale reduction and cashing, Li Xuan's shareholding ratio in listed companies has also dropped to only about 65%.

However, although Li Xuan's shareholding ratio has dropped significantly, the scale of his nominal assets has been rising rapidly. Because Dongfang Games has been listed for less than two months, thanks to the new round of consumption bull market in the US stock market and its own excellent performance, the company's share price has soared from $27.5 per share at the time of issuance to $55, almost doubling.

AOL, which was listed more than a month later than Dongfang Game Company, was very lucky to catch the high-tech stock market driven by the listing of Dongfang Game Company while riding the express train of the US stock market. It specially announced its PayPal online payment system, and through the cooperation with Dongfang Game Company, it obtained more than 1 million US dollars in revenue within three months.

Don't look at the $1 million revenue figure, but this is already the third largest AOL company in addition to the navigator browser installation fee charged to computer manufacturers and the advertising fee for AOL's website. profit channel.

For the capital market, it is not unacceptable for them to accept huge initial investment in emerging industries such as the Internet. After all, it takes time to cultivate the market, and the most important thing is to see whether they can receive a large enough return in the later stage.

Although AOL has been losing money, its means of making profits are becoming more and more abundant~www.readwn.com~ This is enough for investors! Therefore, AOL's landing on the Dasdaq market has even ushered in a crazier pursuit than the Oriental game company. No one wants to lose the first opportunity in the future Internet tide.

Originally, AOL planned to raise $800 million from the capital market at an issue price of $10 per share. As a result, due to the overwhelming response of investors, AOL's management decisively raised the issue price to $16 per share, and the total amount of funds raised suddenly increased to $1.28 billion.

But the stock price of $16 has not yet reached the bottom line of investors' psychology. On the 82nd day after AOL's listing, the company's stock price has risen wildly to $40, and the company's total market value has also exceeded $10 billion. close.

In Li Xuan's view, US stock investors seem to be completely irrational, but all investment managers and market analysts feel that there is still room for AOL's share price to rise, because the Internet era has arrived!

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