"This fellow is quite clever!" Mr. Huang said with a smile as he saw the cooperation agreement completed at the fastest speed. "Then it will be easy to proceed. We'll promote 'Connect Four' directly according to the S-class plan!"
"I can't believe that 'Connect Four', such a small game, is the second to receive S-class promotional resources!" Leng Zhimeng said with a strange expression.
Within the entire oo Game Center system, only one game had previously obtained S-class promotional resources: World of Warcraft. Even Angry Birds, despite receiving A-class resource boosts, had to rely on its own viral appeal to achieve S-class promotional effects, thanks to its addictive nature.
However, World of Warcraft did not disappoint the S-class promotional resources. Within a week of its launch, it became the strongest online game in all of China. At its peak, 70% of computers in every internet cafe were playing World of Warcraft, and all other online games trembled before it.
This phenomenon was not limited to China; World of Warcraft had also essentially dominated the entire online gaming market globally, becoming the undisputed overlord of the online gaming domain.
According to later statistics, at its peak, World of Warcraft accounted for 54% of all online games running worldwide. This single game occupied more than half of the entire market share, an achievement no other online game in later generations could replicate.
Even League of Legends only reached a peak market share of 8%.
After all, in later years, the variety of game genres and gameplay options was so vast that it became incredibly difficult for one online game to dominate the entire market.
It was only in 2004, an era when online gaming was still in its wild west phase, that World of Warcraft, a game that could be considered world-class even twenty years later, managed to achieve such astonishing market penetration.
Such terrifying market share naturally brought in astonishing revenue, starting with subscription fees. Throughout 2004, World of Warcraft's subscription revenue in the Chinese market alone reached 2.4 billion RMB, equivalent to an impressive $300 million USD.
But this was the smaller portion; the bulk of the revenue came from the global market.
In 2004, World of Warcraft launched servers in over sixty countries worldwide, with some operated in partnership with other companies and some by oo Game Center itself.
Naturally, the games operated by oo Game Center were in developed countries with large markets, where even establishing their own local company was a worthwhile endeavor.
For those partnerships, it was in countries with weaker economies where oo Game Center found it unprofitable to operate independently. Thus, they handed over operations to local entities, who were adept at reducing costs.
Of course, regardless of whether it was self-operated or partner-operated, oo Game Center adhered to one non-negotiable requirement: all players must access World of Warcraft through the oo Game Center, and no other game platforms were allowed.
The partner operators did not object to this requirement, as they had no intention of operating a game platform themselves. Even if some recognized the business opportunity, the Jiangnan Group's stance was exceptionally firm. They understood that they couldn't have it both ways, and ultimately, they had to forgo their impractical ambitions and content themselves with making money by following World of Warcraft.
As a result, World of Warcraft ultimately generated $3.272 billion USD in subscription revenue globally. More importantly, it helped oo Game Center establish its online market presence in various countries worldwide, cultivating user habits of using the oo Game Center!
After all, at that time, it was the only comprehensive *** platform globally offering a large selection of legitimate single-player and online games. Moreover, the game purchase prices on oo Game Center were indeed much cheaper than buying physical discs offline, especially with the frequent discounts like 20% off, 30% off, and 40% off sales, which made many users very happy.
Following World of Warcraft, the number of PC users on oo Game Center surpassed 18 million globally, excluding data from China.
If data from China were included, the user base would have exceeded 40 million.
The revenue mentioned above was purely from World of Warcraft's subscription fees, not its total revenue. After all, let's not forget Jiangnan Group's traditional strength: an endless supply of skins!
Mr. Huang knew that selling any pay-to-win items that could alter game data would prematurely shorten World of Warcraft's lifespan. Therefore, Mr. Huang continued with the same strategy as Warcraft III, directly offering various blind boxes containing all sorts of skins.
However, unlike Warcraft III, where the characters that could change skins were limited, World of Warcraft offered a much larger variety of characters whose appearances could be altered.
The simplest examples included special outfits for various characters, such as wedding dresses, knight armor, and dragon robes – all available.
In addition to these character-specific outfits, the game also introduced mount skins, special spell effects, pet skins, and even skins for NPC monsters.
The event that caused a frenzy across the internet was the Stormwind City outfit launched on Christmas 2004. After purchasing this outfit, the entire city of Stormwind would transform into a city floating in the sky, exuding an unparalleled sense of prestige.
The price was also quite striking; with blind box draws, it would cost an average of nearly $60,000 USD to obtain the Stormwind City outfit. Nevertheless, it was still sought after by players, with over ten thousand sets of the Stormwind City outfit being drawn.
This single item alone generated a massive revenue of $600 million USD for Blizzard.
Of course, considering that Jiangnan Group did not have the extensive physical store layout that domestic companies did, oo Game Center fully embraced online blind box draws this time. Players didn't need to buy blind boxes in physical stores; they could draw directly online.
For items drawn, skins could be activated online directly, while physical rewards could be delivered via mail. Additionally, a one-click selling feature was provided. Recognizing that many players would undoubtedly draw duplicate items, oo Game Center thoughtfully included a one-click selling function.
Players could sell their drawn items directly to the system at a 30% discount of the item's reference price. The system would then recycle the item and refund 30% of its reference price in oo coins, which could be used to continue drawing blind boxes. How thoughtful is that!
Of course, if players were unwilling to accept the 30% recycling price, they could list their items on the oo Mall for sale themselves. After all, the oo Mall was now open globally, and as long as they were willing, they could sell globally through the logistics system. However, oo Mall would no longer offer free shipping; postage would have to be paid by the buyer or seller.
With such a strategy, the revenue generated by World of Warcraft was naturally astonishing. In 2004, it reached $5.678 billion USD in top-up revenue, double the subscription fees.
Therefore, the game generated over $8 billion USD in massive profits in just one year. It is said that upon hearing this news, Vidivon became so enraged that he sent the executives who had negotiated the deal to a mental hospital.
This scoundrel had sold a company with an annual revenue exceeding $8 billion USD and pure profit for a mere $300 million USD, making him the primary war criminal.
However, despite the substantial pure profit of $8 billion USD, according to the agreement reached between Mr. Huang and Blizzard's management, only $4 billion USD belonged to the parent company. The remaining $4 billion USD was to be used by Blizzard itself.
Of course, this money was not for the management to spend but to fund Blizzard's new game projects.
Upon receiving the massive profit of $4 billion USD, Blizzard arrogantly increased its programmer staff by over 500 people and simultaneously launched StarCraft II, Warcraft IV, Diablo III, and a new online game project codenamed Titan.
At the same time, at Mr. Huang's request, Blizzard also established a mobile game division to develop companion mobile adaptations for its famous IPs.
Of course, this time the adaptations were not the perfunctory efforts of some major game studios. Instead, they invested heavily, developing next-generation mobile games, which were said to take two to three years to complete. Furthermore, the mobile games would not lose too much content compared to their PC counterparts, aiming to preserve the original flavor of the games.
Upon hearing this news, many eagerly awaited Blizzard's new mobile games. Some even tried to inquire about the location of the mobile game development center but found themselves unable to locate it within the Blizzard Group's structure.
It wasn't until many years later that players learned the truth: Blizzard's mobile game center was built directly in China, and all employees from start to finish were Chinese, programmers cultivated by Jiangnan Group itself.
The reason for building the mobile game center in China was not to save costs. Rather, Mr. Huang was well aware that all currently launched mobile phones were transitional products. Therefore, Blizzard's adapted mobile games would not appear on these soon-to-be-obsolete phones. Instead, they would be launched as games for Jiangnan Group's personal terminals.
The personal terminals were currently using a highly classified quinary programming language to write their main operating systems. Consequently, the corresponding games naturally needed to be programmed using the quinary Chinese language. This was something that absolutely could not be leaked, and thus could only be entrusted to trustworthy individuals.
It is believed that when Blizzard's mobile games are released to the world, they will undoubtedly create a significant stir.