On April 10th, the game circle celebrated the New Year.
At 9 o'clock this morning, NetEase Games and Blizzard Games respectively announced on Weibo that Blizzard's games will return to the Chinese mainland market in the summer of 2024. As soon as the official announcement was released, related topics quickly rushed to the top of the hot search list.
After breaking up for more than a year, Blizzard and NetEase finally remarried, and netizens sighed "It's still good to go around and around", and began to carefully analyze the official announcements of Blizzard and NetEase, so as to explore whether this return can make people feel more at ease.
It doesn't matter if you don't analyze it, as soon as you analyze it, players will find a lot of unexpected information.
First of all, the return of Blizzard games is an agreement reached by Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft Games and NetEase, not only will Blizzard's games return to the Chinese market one after another, but Microsoft Games has also reached an additional agreement with NetEase to try to bring NetEase's games to Xbox and other platforms.
As an "exchange", the agency rights obtained by NetEase this time not only re-signed the licensing agreement, but also the official "never wear" version of the agreement. In other words, the incident of being forced to surrender due to the breakdown of the negotiation of the renewal of the agency will never happen again.
What's more, the operators of Blizzard's games have changed. Before the shutdown, Blizzard games were operated by NetEase, a joint venture subsidiary of Blizzard China and NetEase, and after the return, the operation of Blizzard games was handed over to NetEase's Thunderfire Studio, which is the strongest MMO R&D and operation manufacturer at the moment.
Every indication shows that Microsoft helped Blizzard remarry NetEase because Microsoft took a fancy to the commercial value of Thunderfire's ace "Against the Cold".
As we all know, after "World of Warcraft" was forced to close, the domestic MMO market left a huge hole, and many game manufacturers were eyeing this market at that time, but no one was confident that they could replace Warcraft. What people didn't expect was that it took less than two months for Lei Huo to bring out the pure point card "Against the Cold" season uniform, which perfectly filled this gap and directly shattered Blizzard's wishful thinking of "strange goods".
What's even more amazing is that on June 30, 2023, the mobile game "Against the Cold" will be officially launched. This game not only inherits the core of the season server "no liver, no krypton, no volume", but also has subversive development in terms of game playability, innovation and technical strength, easily breaking the best record in the history of MMO games, and in a very short time, it has become a national game that has exploded out of the circle and made MMO great again.
The most powerful thing about the mobile game is that it completely jumps out of the traditional MMO barrier, it does not charge the cost of point cards at all, and still adopts the completely non-selling numerical season system gameplay, all equipment is directly produced by the game content, and players can only spend money to buy the appearance of fashion without any attributes, with the lowest threshold, attracting a large number of players to try it.
In order to retain these players, the mobile game "Against the Cold" has actively "stitched" a wealth of playable content, from hardcore high PVE challenges, immersive world exploration to casual simulation development, to ensure that more players have "something to do" in the game. At the same time, the game has also geniusly designed a "different paths to the same destination" system, eliminating the traditional time-limited work activities, allowing players to freely choose their favorite gameplay, and ensuring that players can get full rewards no matter how they play.
At the same time, the game also adds intelligent NPCs, single-player dungeons and other designs to ensure that social phobic players who don't like social interaction can also easily experience it. Through innovation and technological advancements, the gaming experience has reached an unprecedented breadth, attracting more than 50 million players in just 45 days.
After attracting so many players, the mobile game "Against the Cold" also boldly adopted the business strategy of "small profits but quick turnover", reducing the fashion appearance of the game to an ultra-low price of 18, 28 or even only 6 yuan, and then with frequent half-price coupons and high-value vouchers, it successfully attracted a large number of players to make small payments for love with ultra-high cost performance, which won the support of tens of millions of players.
According to NetEase's financial report, the mobile game "Against the Cold" has been online for only half a year, and its profit has exceeded 10 billion, and the game fashion appearance priced at only 6 yuan has sales of 100 million sets per quarter...... Such an astonishing sales performance is unique in the world. What's even more rare is that it has also successfully achieved rich commercial returns, and at the same time, it has also won a super high reputation among players, gaining fame and fortune, which is simply a win.
The value of such a historic game is immeasurable, and it not only proves NetEase's own game production capabilities, but also proves its excellent operational capabilities. Considering that the mobile game "Against the Cold" is currently operating in the national server, and the overseas market is being prepared, it is even more eye-catching.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the huge commercial value of the mobile game "Against the Cold" that Microsoft will advocate the remarriage of Blizzard and NetEase, hand over the Blizzard game to Thunderfire, and sign an agreement with NetEase to list the Xbox platform.
In a sense, this is simply the most perfect "splash of water in front of the horse", isn't it?