The sales volume exceeded 2 million copies within 24 hours of release, and the cost was less than 50 million yuan, and the current sales volume has exceeded 1 billion yuan...... The first hit game in 2024 has appeared.
Palworld, an open-world survival game made by a small Japanese studio, has been embroiled in plagiarism and "stitching" controversy since its release on January 19, but it has not stopped the enthusiasm of players. At present, the number of online users of this game has exceeded 2 million, ranking second on the list of historical peak online users of Steam games, second only to "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds".
The game has become popular in China, and its popularity has also attracted the "war" of Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, and they have issued articles to promote servers to grab users. On the other hand, after the explosion, "Phantom Beast Palu" is facing copyright challenges, and how long this game can be popular is still a question mark. However, at a cost of less than 50 million, the developer has already made a lot of money.
The revenue exceeded 1 billion in 5 days
On January 25, the official tweet of "Phantom Beast Palu" announced that the sales of the work have exceeded 8 million in 5 and a half days after its release. At present, the domestic price of "Phantom Beast Palu" on Steam is 108 yuan, and the relatively high price in the United States is 29.99 US dollars (about 215 yuan). According to the prediction of TGA founder Geoff Keighley, in just 5 days, the game's revenue reached 189 million US dollars (about 1.35 billion yuan).
"Phantom Beast Palu" is an open-world survival crafting game, also known as "Stitching Monster" by many players, because its gameplay is similar to some of the gameplay of many games such as Pokemon, Zelda, Genshin Impact, and Ark Survival Evolved.
The first financial reporter's experience found that except for a small number of tutorial tasks for beginners, the game does not restrict players' freedom to explore the world too much. In terms of characters, in addition to the player himself and a few NPCs, animal figures occupy the majority, and these animals with different forms and attributes are called "Palu". The core gameplay of the game is similar to Pokémon's pet grabbing gameplay, Palu is like a Pokémon, and Palu Balls are similar to Poké Balls, and players can use Palu Balls to catch Palu. In addition, the game's map exploration mechanics are similar to Zelda and Genshin Impact.
However, what is more important for "Phantom Beast Palu" to be popular is to innovate on the basis of the "stitching" game, especially the "interactive gameplay" with Palu, after the player grabs Palu, he can let him do all the labor work such as mining and logging, and can set up a variety of working modes.
The reporter found that the "interactive" game mechanism with Palu has aroused the resonance of many players and a large number of second-creation spreads. As of press time, the hashtag #PhantomBeastPalu# has been read 320 million times on Weibo and has 27,000 discussions. There are also many second-creation videos born on station B, with the highest video views exceeding 4 million and nearly 20 pieces of content playing more than 1 million.
Gamer @Half-Jin first came into contact with the game and saw the second creation video on social media, and he has now spent 16 hours on the game. "Normally, all the accumulation of emotions in real life can be fully released in this virtual world. The game gives us a very appropriate context. He said.
Zhang Shule, an analyst of the game industry, told Yicai that gamers have been following the trend for a long time and are eager to experience some different gameplay, whether it is "Finished! I am surrounded by beautiful women", "Egg Boy Party" or "Phantom Beast Palu", which precisely meets this demand, "Gameplay innovation is always the biggest proposition for game companies to want to be popular and long-lasting." ”
How long can it be on fire
Since the gameplay of the Phantom Beast Palu game is similar to that of Pokémon, it has already attracted the attention of the authorities with its current influence.
Pokémon officials issued a statement on January 25 saying that it has recently received a number of licensing inquiries about the game released by another company in January 2024, and that the official has not granted any license to use any Pokémon intellectual property or assets in the game, and intends to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any infringement related to Pokémon.
In addition, according to the analysis of many players, "Phantom Beast Palu" may have used some AI generation technology, based on the Pokémon IP's character generation game image, one basis is that the "Phantom Beast Palu" game character image and Pokémon IP are similar, which is the permutation and combination of various elements.
In addition, founder Takuro Mizobe has publicly expressed his support for AI generation on social media and promoted the AI process in the company. In 2021, Takuro Takoro Toshibe posted a post mentioning that "AI has evolved so fast that I can't tell which one is a real Pokémon", and the image on the left of his tweet is an AI-generated Pokémon-like image, and on the right is a real Pokémon image. However, at present, this suspicion has not been confirmed and responded.
Zhang Shule believes that for games, the borrowing of gameplay is not infringement, but the high imitation of the game image and background is suspected of infringement.
"The collection gameplay of "Phantom Beast Palu" does borrow from Pokémon, but the overall gameplay is still biased towards survival games, but the character design takes the cute route, which is indeed similar to Pokémon, whether it is AI drawing that leads to the integration of Pokémon elements in the process of artificial intelligence deep learning, it cannot be confirmed. Zhang Shule believes that the problem of similarity is an inevitable situation in all cute image design, especially in Japanese animation games, the resemblance of the characters themselves also occurs, perhaps a reference in the designer's subconscious, "It's just that a large area looks like the same IP, which is debatable." ”
How long the game "Phantom Beast Palu" can be popular is a question, and its future is even more uncertain due to the infringement turmoil. Zhang Shule believes that cute games have always had a strong market, and the pleasure of collecting pets is also easy to gather the enthusiasm of many people. After many years of dissipation of the AR pet grabbing popularity brought by "Pokémon Go", the restart of the pet grabbing popularity may indeed attract a wave of followers, but without innovative gameplay, it is difficult to maintain the popularity.
However, "Phantom Beast Palu" has rough graphics, and it is not a big production, the developer Pocketpair has announced that in addition to the boss, the project team was originally established with only 4 people, although there are more than 40 outsourced staff in the follow-up, but the development cost of the work is about 1 billion yen (about 48.55 million yuan), which is not a big investment in the game industry that is now prone to big productions. Judging from the current sales revenue, the team has already paid for itself and made a lot of money.
The end of cloud vendors
If "stitching" is a gimmick to attract players to the game, then it is Palu's multiplayer online gameplay that cultivates players to build long-term gaming loyalty. "It (Palu) is a quick way to assemble a community where players can make friends with each other, and the social nature of the game is one of the reasons why players stay alive. Half a pound told reporters.
With the soaring number of online users, a large number of players have encountered problems such as game lag, flashback, and high latency, and some players have chosen to deploy the dedicated server mode of "Phantom Beast Palu" and build their own servers. This also allows cloud computing manufacturers like Ali and Tencent to see business opportunities. In response to this game, the cloud battlefield has made a comeback.
Tencent Cloud officially issued a one-click installation tutorial. The reporter noticed that on January 25th, Tencent Cloud released a private server tutorial on how to build "Phantom Beast Palu" through the official website and WeChat public account, pasted the price of its cloud server in a conspicuous position, and recommended the standard 4 cores 16G scheme, the usual budget is about 300 yuan / month, and now the discount is 93 yuan / month, and the purchase link is also pasted in the tutorial to facilitate readers to place an order with one click.
At present, Alibaba Cloud has also launched a special page for game online servers on its official website, and provides a one-click deployment function in the computing nest, the page information shows that players can quickly complete the server construction according to the guidelines, and the whole process only takes about 2-3 minutes, without manual configuration of parameters. In terms of ECS cloud server sales, Alibaba Cloud recommends two ECS instances for this game, 4C16G and 4C32G, which are suitable for players with 4-8 people and more than 10 people respectively, and new users can enjoy low price discounts, with a minimum cost of 32 yuan per month.
The reporter learned that at present, tens of thousands of "Phantom Beast Palu" players have purchased cloud servers on the official website of Alibaba Cloud. For Alibaba Cloud, which has been facing B-end customers before, the provision of this service also means that technical, customer service and other personnel will face a large number of relatively amateur and scattered C-end pre-sales and after-sales problems, but the hot demand of a large number of "Phantom Beast Palu" players still leveraged Alibaba Cloud's "entry into the game".
Although the popular "Phantom Beast Palu" still faces many challenges, whether it is a developer who makes a lot of money, a cloud manufacturer who is waiting for an opportunity to dig gold, and players who are fascinated by it, they have all gained a lot from this game, and for the sluggish game industry, such a popular game, no matter how long it can survive, has its meaning.