Xishanju "Sword Net 3 Origins" is in rapid public beta next week! Support cloud gaming, reject underage players

If you want to rank the most precious resources in the game industry in 2022, the version number will definitely be on the list. Xishanju, a veteran manufacturer known for MMO, also gave us a demonstration recently.

On May 6, Xishanju announced that the public beta of its "Sword Net 3 Origins" "Five Poisons in the Present World" was officially fixed on May 13. In a number of promotional maps released with the public beta news, GameLook found that Xishanju specially marked the words "the first batch of 2022 editions of the terminal game" under the game logo.

In the previous April 12, 2022, when the first batch of version numbers was issued, Xishanju was also the most responsive batch of game manufacturers who got the version number. On the same day, "Sword Net 3 Origins" announced that it would end the unlimited number undeleted file test on the 18th of the same month, and open the paid undeleted file test. Nowadays, the public test file is exactly one month away from the game to obtain the version number, and from today's announcement of the final file to next week's public beta, it can be described as quite efficient.

Sword Net 3 nostalgic suit, but not completely nostalgic

"Sword Net 3 Origins" is a nostalgic costume for sword net 3 terminal game, in addition to the official website and WeGame download, a major highlight is to support cloud game play.

According to the "2021 China Game Industry Report" of the Music and Data Association, the market size of China's game industry last year was nearly 300 billion yuan, of which the actual revenue of the terminal game market was 58.8 billion yuan, accounting for less than 20%. GameLook has also counted the review of the 2021 version number, and found that of the 755 version numbers in a year, there are only 33 PC client games, accounting for less than 5%, which is half of the 77 models in 2020.

From the version number to the market scale, in 2022, under such a difficult circumstances, it is still insisting on doing end tours, and Xishanju can call "true love" to martial arts and end games.

At the Sword Net 3 end game series face-to-face meeting held in July 2021, Guo Weiwei, CEO of Xishanju and producer of the Sword Net 3 series, told GameLook that the reason for making nostalgic clothes is actually very simple: because players want it.

"Sword Net 3 Origins" undertakes the heavy responsibility of "opening a parallel universe" in the Sword Net 3 series, the game adopts the hand-drawn style that many old players of Sword Net 3 miss, but has been upgraded in texture, redone the art resource package, and realized a comprehensive upgrade from the character to the scene, from the model to the sticker, taking Guo Weiwei's joke description is "the character finally has fingers and toes".

On the other hand, "Sword Net 3 Origins" also "operated" on the plot, opening up many if lines, allowing players to choose completely different routes in the familiar classic plot, making the story go to another possibility.

Another possibility to explore is Sword Net 3's attempt at cloud gaming. Public information shows that as early as 2019, Xishanju has the intention of getting involved in cloud games, and the sword net 3 nostalgic suit, that is, "Sword Net 3 Origins", has served as a test field well.

GameLook once disassembled the positioning of the game "All-Platform Play hand-drawn martial arts big world", in which "All Platform" and "Play" are related to cloud games.

In the past test, the "Sword Net 3 Origins", which invested a huge amount and was no less than redone a game, attracted players to the cloud game with the sword net 3 re-stream user as the main user and the low threshold, which is actually another possible performance of Xishanju's exploration in the game market.

Cloud gaming explores one more possibility, starting with reducing costs

In order to reduce the threshold as much as possible, the Sword Net 3 Origins Cloud Game also offers a lot of discounts. For example, from April 29 to May 13, Sword Net 3 Origins will give 7200 cloud points (1 cloud point = 1 second cloud game time) to all players participating in the test, as well as a 50% recharge discount.

"Sword Net 3 Origins" cloud point recharge has a total of 4 gears, namely 6 yuan 3 hours, 30 yuan 15 hours, 60 yuan 30 hours, 120 yuan 60 hours, that is, 2 yuan 1 hour. The monthly subscription price is 50 yuan.

In fact, this price is not expensive, nor is it particularly cheap. Compared with the original god cloud game "Cloud And Original God", which started commercialization in August 2021, the price of both is 2 yuan and 1 hour, but the monthly price of "Sword Net 3 Origin" is 10 yuan discount.

The advantage of cloud gaming is that it liberates the performance limitations of the client hardware, and the server also has to bear more pressure, so it also requires game manufacturers to increase investment.

Two years ago, the relevant members of Kingsoft Cloud Game Cloud Division said in an interview with the media that the cost of cloud games is much higher than that of mobile games: "Mobile games generally account for 1% to 3% of the investment in game flow research and development, but the overall investment in cloud games is more than 10 times higher." ”

Also according to the official public account of Kingsoft Cloud, there are three major variables in the real outbreak of cloud games, namely technology, cost, and content, of which cost is "the main bottleneck restricting the development of cloud games at present".

In addition to reducing deployment costs through technical means, as we all know, the key to effectively reducing costs in the long run must be scale. In July last year, the number of reservations for "Sword Net 3 Origins" reached 4 million, and the corresponding cloud game audience size will not be small.

The same is the example of "Cloud Andrashin". In January this year, "Cloud • Original God" iOS terminal public beta, 2 months later among the best-selling list TOP22, 30 days of income of nearly 8 million yuan, comprehensive tens of millions of downloads, GameLook estimates that "Cloud • Original God" paid users or up to tens of thousands of levels, the monthly income of the whole platform or around 20 million yuan.

Last year, the number of reservations for "Sword Net 3 Origins" was 4 million, although not all reservations can be converted into paying users in a short period of time, but considering the attractiveness of innovative nostalgic clothes for old users, as well as the enthusiasm and willingness of Sword Net 3 players to pay, it is not too difficult for Sword Net 3 Cloud Games to achieve certain results.

Minors are forbidden to play, and the whole platform is the future of the game

It is worth mentioning that although as a "parallel universe", the burden of "Sword Net 3 Origins" to open up new user groups and new markets is very heavy, "Sword Net 3 Origins" still clearly points out that the game does not support real-name authentication of users under 18 years old login experience, and the official reason is to "maintain a healthy Internet environment for minors".

Preventing minors from becoming addicted to the Internet is one of the key tasks of current supervision. It is not a limited play, but a forbidden practice, it is not difficult to see the cautious attitude of "Sword Net 3 Origins", and further illustrates the degree of value that Xishanju cherishes the version number.

To some extent, GameLook can also understand the "Sword Net 3 Origins" considerations. In Guo Weiwei's analysis, "Sword Net III" is a "super free" game, and "Sword Net 3 Origins" is also trying to give players more freedom.

This freedom will be reflected in all aspects of the game, such as cutting the daily routine, providing side quests, and creating a "big immersive world" with no core gameplay as much as possible. And an immersive world will inevitably be accompanied by the addiction of users, which is the reason why "Sword Network 3 Origins" dares to choose the business model of billing and payment, and it is also its pain of not opening up to minor users.

Being too engaging to the player is sometimes not entirely a good thing.

As for the problem of true love doing end games today, in fact, Guo Weiwei also talked to GameLook about his views last year. In his view, the market plate of 60 billion is enough to feed the team, and the future game industry is actually "not regardless of platform, but full-end".

Interestingly, GameLook remembers that Liu Wei, president of Mihayou, also said something similar, saying that "everyone doesn't care so much about the difference between platforms", but developers take it more seriously. Which developers look at the more heavy GameLook do not know, but Xishanju, Mihayou and other manufacturers who actively exert their efforts to cloud games, at least will not think so.

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