"Sold out?"

"Over ten thousand phones, all sold out?"

"In one day?"

Pei Qian struggled to accept this fact. He'd thought these phones would last at least two or three days. He'd planned to call and reserve one for himself in advance.

But he was too late!

Chang You hurriedly explained, "I'm sorry, President Pei. I didn't anticipate this. It's my oversight!"

"Other phones get over a hundred thousand pre-orders. Even a new brand stocks at least thirty or fifty thousand units. We only prepared fourteen thousand, and they sold out after being snatched up all day. That's actually pretty good!"

Pei Qian was speechless. "'Only' sold out? You weren't saying that a few days ago! You kept telling me these would be gathering dust in the warehouse!"

Chang You quickly apologized, "I'm sorry, President Pei. I was short-sighted. Now I see that having me focus on stocking up was absolutely correct. We should have prepared even more!"

Pei Qian: "..."

Damn it, I wasn't trying to brag!

According to Chang You, GoG officially launched at 8:00 AM today. The official platform and Shenhua App Store, among other channels, provided powerful promotional resources for the game. As a result, the game instantly became popular throughout the morning!

The review media had already completed the main part of their video. But after seeing the GoG mobile game, they rushed to test it and insert it into their editing file. They barely managed to upload it to the Ailidao website by noon.

As the video's popularity continued to rise, the advertisements for GoG and *Blood Battle Song* led to a rapid increase in sales of the Otto E1 phone. Finally, an hour ago, sales peaked and quickly depleted all of the previously prepared stock!

In short, the situation changed in an instant.

Pei Qian had anticipated that the phone's sales would surge again after the launch of the GoG mobile game. But he never expected it to happen so quickly...

Hearing President Pei's silence on the other end of the line, Chang You hurriedly said, "Don't worry, President Pei. I've already instructed the factory to continue stocking up. I'll send you a new phone as soon as they arrive!"

Pei Qian: "...Okay."

After reluctantly hanging up, Pei Qian leaned back in his executive chair, lost in prolonged silence.

However, he quickly perked up.

"How can I be crushed by this little setback!"

"Hang in there. Hope is not completely extinguished!"

At that moment, Pei Qian felt as if he were radiating a light called inspiration.

"Based on my understanding of the system's quirks, whenever it inadvertently closes a door on you, it secretly opens a window somewhere you're not looking."

"The more money you make, the more ways the system allows you to spend it."

"So, there must be new ways to spend money that I can exploit!"

"Something that seems like a crisis can be turned into an opportunity, just like how the ROF assembly craze allowed me to spend money aggressively in the name of the 1024 Digital Festival..."

"While this might create risks for the next settlement cycle, I can always start new money-losing ventures and come up with more ways to spend money after the next cycle begins..."

"That's right, that's it!"

The success of GoG and the phone was about to bring Pei Qian a large sum of money again. If he let that money sit idly, there was no way he'd be able to incur a loss this cycle.

But Pei Qian clearly wasn't going to give up. He firmly believed that man could conquer fate!

"The real challenge is about to begin. To lose money, I need to focus on both increasing spending and reducing income..."

"Reducing income means suppressing the profits from GoG and the phone in the short term, at least until after the settlement."

"Implement a 'deferred purchase' feature for GoG, where players can pay one-tenth of the price for any skin they want and try it out for a month."

"That way, I can directly cut nine-tenths of GoG's income this month... Uh, no, I need to consider the potential for retaliatory spending. Cutting four-fifths should be about right."

"And after a month, if players aren't satisfied with the skin, they don't have to buy it. They've essentially rented it for a month at one-tenth the price. If they are satisfied, they can pay the difference and buy it after a month."

"This might actually have a promotional effect in the long run, but at least I can guarantee this month's settlement."

"As for the phone... a large portion of the profit comes from concessions made by other departments. While maintaining sufficient capital flow, I'll return all of these profits to the respective departments and let them figure out how to use them up..."

"Many hands make light work."

"In short, I'll give each department a strict order: they must find a way to spend all the returned profits before the end of the month, leaving not a single cent. Of course, it can only be used for burning money, not for developing new products..."

"Then there's increasing spending."

"There are only a little over two weeks until settlement. That means that in one week, there can't be any unfinished products. Time is a bit tight. It's definitely too late to have Chang You invest a large sum in research and development."

"But some incentive-based methods are still feasible!"

"First, spend a large sum of money on expanding GoG's cloud server bandwidth. The reason is to provide players with a better network experience and prevent potential lag. That should be reasonable, right?"

"Second, find a way to spend some more money on the phone by renting some cloud servers for users to use for free, allowing them to upload space-consuming photos, videos, and other data to the Otto cloud server."

"For phones with severe non-artificial malfunctions, not only should we provide immediate replacements, but also give some cash compensation..."

"Finally, set up a prize pool in GoG, offering 100,000 yuan cash reward to the first place, 50,000 yuan to second through tenth, 30,000 yuan to eleventh through fiftieth, and 10,000 yuan to fiftieth through two-hundredth."

"That way, I can spend 3.25 million each time... Seems a bit short."

"Let's give some to the Supreme Masters from two-hundredth to five-hundredth place as well, 1,000 yuan each. That's only 300,000... No, let's make it 5,000 yuan, so that's 1.5 million."

"Adding all that up, I can give out 4.75 million at once."

"Hmm... That's about as much as I spend on a charity event."

"This might exacerbate the problem of 'actors' (players intentionally throwing games to manipulate rankings), but that's okay. There will be actors regardless of whether there are rewards. I can use other methods to punish them."

"Oh right, the PC and mobile versions should be matched separately. That definitely needs to be calculated separately, so that's double the fun! Multiply that amount by two!"

"But there's another problem. This money has to be given out before March 31st, or it'll be too late."

"So, each year will be a season. This year is 2011, so it's Season 1. But in order to spend money aggressively in late March, I'll divide each season into four stages."

"January 1st to March 31st is the Spring Season, April 1st to June 30th is the Summer Season, July 1st to September 30th is the Autumn Season, and October 1st to December 31st is the Winter Season."

"This is the explanation for ordinary players. If it's a professional season, I definitely need a different explanation to leave time for the World Championship... Bah, this game won't have a World Championship!"

"These dates are a bit misaligned with the calendar quarters, but I have no choice if I want to catch this settlement. I'll just make do, and the players will gradually adapt."

"The last three days of each stage will be used to settle, calculate data, and award prizes, ensuring that the money is distributed before the last day."

"That way, I can spend nearly 40 million each year. That should be enough to spend most of the money GoG makes in the early stages..."

"I'm doing this to further increase GoG's popularity and make the competition at higher ranks more intense, thereby gaining a competitive advantage..."

"It's reasonable, right?"

Pei Qian tested it out and found that the system didn't raise any objections, so it was clearly feasible.

Pei Qian decided, that's what he'd do!

He glanced at the calendar. The settlement was on March 31st, and he had to spend the money before then, so the GoG ranked match data would have to be locked down at midnight on March 29th.

The GoG mobile game was fine. There were still two weeks from now until March 29th, enough time for players to fight tooth and nail.

But the GoG PC game would only launch next Monday, leaving players only one week to compete for the top rank.

One week to get to first place and win a 100,000 yuan prize, or get into the top five hundred and win 5,000 yuan.

5,000 yuan a week, 700 yuan a day, damn exciting.

According to the original plan, it would take three months to get this money, but because the situation was special, the time was greatly shortened.

There was nothing he could do. President Pei was in a hurry, so he could only let these people benefit.

However, even so, the ones who eventually won the prizes would definitely be gaming geniuses.

After figuring all of this out, Pei Qian felt much more at ease.

Sure enough, ways to spend money were like water in his brain. As long as he squeezed, they would come out.

Many problems in this world can be solved by throwing money at them. If they can't be solved, throw more money.

As of now, Pei Qian couldn't be sure that he had completely solved all of these money problems, but at least... he had solved a very critical part.

The rest could be dumped mindlessly into Thriller Hostel. While ensuring that Thriller Hostel could be officially completed in the next cycle, spending a few million or even tens of millions wouldn't be a problem.

After checking everything and making sure there were no issues, Pei Qian instructed Assistant Xin to notify the various departments.

Because the game department had the most things to handle, Pei Qian specifically organized the plan and sent it to Hu Xianbin separately.

...

At this time, Hu Xianbin was no longer paying attention to the GoG mobile game, but was continuing to work on finalizing the GoG PC game, striving to officially launch and start operating it a few days earlier.

But during his work, he was still a little conflicted in his heart.

The GoG mobile version was so successful, but President Pei didn't even praise me!

Although it wasn't a big deal, Hu Xianbin still felt a little emotional.

Just as he was feeling conflicted, he suddenly saw that a document had been sent through Tengda's internal chat software.

And it was sent by President Pei himself!

Hu Xianbin was stunned for a moment and quickly checked it.

"This, this is..."

The plan detailed the follow-up promotion plan for GoG, including expanding the server, the skin deferred purchase feature, and the season prizes.

After reading it, Hu Xianbin fell silent.

So that's how it is!

No wonder President Pei didn't praise my work. It's because my work still has many shortcomings!

And this follow-up promotion plan perfectly filled those shortcomings.

In order to prevent server pressure caused by the sudden explosion of the game, spend money to expand server bandwidth;

In order to further promote skins and cultivate the spending habits of players who like to freeload, launch the skin deferred purchase feature;

In order to stimulate high-end players, further increase the game's popularity, and increase the game's competitiveness, launch season prizes, so that GoG has an excellent competitive foundation from the beginning...

Hu Xianbin suddenly felt ashamed.

I misunderstood President Pei!

It turns out that President Pei didn't praise me because my work really wasn't done well and there was still a lot of room for improvement!

President Pei wasn't just making up for all of these problems for me?

Alas, my work wasn't up to par!

I must work harder and definitely not let down President Pei's expectations!