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本周焦点:乐华收购了A-SOUL
A few days ago, Lehua Entertainment announced through the announcement of a listed company that it had acquired the IP copyrights and related technologies of A-SOUL and Zhijiang Entertainment from ByteDance for 30 million yuan. On the same day, "Koree Entertainment Official" confirmed the news, and at the same time announced that A-SOUL member Xiang Wan's Nakato decided not to sign a contract, and "Xiang Wan" will stop its activities indefinitely.
Although the external publicity draft is blowing, Lehua's acquisition of A-SOUL is optimistic about the prospects of virtual idols and is ready to increase investment, but everyone knows that this means that an era has really come to an end.
Perhaps even more lamenting is the establishment of a classic joke: A-SOUL was acquired, and the whole world was shocked: Who is A-SOUL?
NOW, NOT ONLY IS A-SOUL AT THE PASSERBY LEVEL UNABLE TO CAUSE THE POPULARITY OF BREAKING THE CIRCLE, BUT EVEN SOME OLD VIEWERS WHO HAVE LONG LOST THEIR FANS HAVE LOST THEIR DESIRE TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES, AND ONLY THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF COMMENTS UNDER THE EVENING NEWS CAN REMIND THE WORLD THAT THEY WERE REALLY THE TOP PERFORMERS.
Since the rise of A-SOUL in the small circle, we have written a lot of observation tweets, at that time, the virtual anchor industry has been exploring for several years, and new hot gameplay is needed, and A-SOUL, which has super 3D motion capture technology, has at least taken the lead in terms of perception.
Image source watermark
With the slicing of yin and yang out of the circle, under the drainage and memes of all parties, it is not enough to call A-SOUL one of the most important subcultures in the two-dimensional, B-station, and live broadcast circle in 2021;
The time point when A-SOUL is out of the circle, the source of the picture is @vtbs.moe
In 2022, the media is already predicting how much money A-SOUL can make, with stable live events, creative audiences, and more and more manufacturers cooperating, even with the problem of high cost investment and unstable local rhythm, A-SOUL looks like a promising business.
But in May 2022, the Jiale dormancy incident completely changed the course of history. We also wrote a review of "A-SOUL Turmoil, No One Survived" at the time.
With the fermentation of the incident, Jiale's withdrawal from the team itself has nothing to do with right and wrong, and has become a pure crisis of trust, a depowdering scene, and an industry disaster. It can even be said that the follow-up rescue measures are not important.
In the period of rapid development, everyone seems to be in a magical field, and will not question the emotions and dreams they project on the virtual group, once this field disappears, many people no longer have the courage to continue to draw energy from it.
As a weather vane, in May 2022, Jia Ran's B station fans were 1.65 million, and now her fans are 1.73 million. It's a shame to say that from 2023 onwards, almost all of my knowledge of A-SOUL comes from rhythm, and occasionally there is news shared by friends, but it is difficult to arouse interest.
But objectively speaking, in the past two years, A-SOUL has also made a lot of attempts to save itself and develop, made new breakthroughs in program types and specifications, carried out more extensive commercial cooperation, established the label of "Zhijiang Entertainment" on top of A-SOUL, and introduced new artists. But these are difficult to change, the domestic virtual anchor market has temporarily peaked, and the audience public opinion environment is getting worse and worse.
A newcomer with 50,000 fans is barely at the bottom
As a corporate and team idol, A-SOUL has been hindered in direct communication with fans, and it is easy to be affected every time there is a negative event such as opening a box. In terms of operations behind the scenes, the limited development of Chaoxi Lightyear does not have much spare energy to support a low-income idol business, and when ByteDance announced its withdrawal from the game business last year, many people were worried that A-SOUL would be abandoned.
The domestic virtual anchor industry has experienced a process of disenchantment in two years, not that virtual anchors can't make money, on the contrary, we can still see that many anchors who have accumulated fans during the development period have lived quite nourishingly by relying on stable live broadcast output and a good sense of network.
But generally speaking, the domestic virtual anchor industry has not walked out of a unique path after the scale has been formed, but has returned to the traditional live broadcast gameplay, which is more like a branch of personal live broadcast. But when virtual anchors compete with mature reality shows and cutting-edge Douyin talents, how many advantages do they have?
Mature operating companies such as overseas hololive and rainbow club no longer rely on the daily live broadcast revenue of these anchors, and most of them come from derivative sales, IP licensing, advertising, etc. From this point of view, it is almost inevitable that A-SOUL, which does not have radical expansion and cannot fully exert its advantages in corporate power, will return to the small circle.
Photo source @Salmon
Whether Lehua's version of A-SOUL will become more virtual or more idol, maybe not many people care about it. But for fans who have really invested in their feelings, if someone asks "Who is A-SOUL?" in the future, their thoughts will go back to the spring of 2021.
NEWS
Industry Watch
2024/4/15-4/21
Large companies
Perfect World's financial report. This week, Perfect World announced its 2023 annual report, with revenue of 7.791 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.57%, and a net profit of 491 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 64%. Among them, the most important game business, revenue fell by 7.91%, and net profit fell by nearly 70% year-on-year. The main reasons for Perfect World's poor performance were the lack of new tours, the decline in the life cycle of old projects, and the increase in operating costs.
Among the games currently online, Perfect still relies on old IPs such as "Perfect World" mobile game, "Zhu Xian" mobile game, and "Fantasy New Zhu Xian", and "Tower of Fantasy" ranks fifth in the global turnover of Perfect Games. However, since last year, the industry media has repeatedly reported the news of Perfect Cutting projects and layoffs, and according to the annual report, the number of Perfect World R&D personnel will be reduced by 230 in 2023. Therefore, "Persona: Phantom of the Night", which was in open beta in April, has become one of the few "increments" that Perfect can rely on this year.
Koei Tecmo lowered its performance expectations, but "stock trading" made money. Recently, Koei Tecmo announced that it lowered its sales forecast by 11.6% from the beginning of the year, and its operating net profit is also expected to decrease by 28%. The main reason is the poor sales of new titles released in the past year (April 2023 to April 2024). Interestingly, however, the company's net profit forecast was raised by 3.5 billion yen, or 8.6%, due to the earnings of Chairman Keiko Kashikawa in financial investments.
New trends
The prize pool of the Saudi Esports World Cup exceeds $60 million. The official launch of the Saudi Arabian E-sports World Cup announced the total prize pool of the event: more than 60 million US dollars (about 434 million yuan), setting a new record for the prize money of e-sports events. There are 19 entries in this World Cup: League of Legends, Honor of Kings, Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, EA FC24, Fortnite, Freefire, Mobile Legends, Overwatch 2, PUBG, PUBG Mobile, Rainbow Six Siege, RENNSPORT, Rocket League, StarCraft 2, Street Fighter 6, Genting Game, and Tekken 8.
However, it was recently revealed that there is no Chinese mainland club in the 22 direct invitation lists of the Saudi Esports World Cup, only 2 clubs have successfully bid for temporary places, and another has rubbed the light of the European branch. The true or false nature of this message is currently unknown.
Meta releases the large model Llama 3. The battle for AI in Silicon Valley is still escalating, and on the 18th, Meta released the latest version of its large language model, Llama 3. Zuckerberg called Llama 3 the most powerful open-source AI model to date, showing excellent performance in multiple industry benchmarks. Meta plans to deeply integrate Llama 3 into its virtual assistant, Meta AI, which is already widely used in popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
In addition, Meta also announced that Llama 3 will soon be available on platforms such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, IBM's cloud platform WatsonX, Microsoft Cloud Azure, and Nvidia's NIM, and is supported by hardware giants such as AMD, Dell, Intel, Nvidia, and others.
other
"Food Language" is discontinued. Tencent Games announced on the 17th that due to the imminent expiration of the agency agreement for the "Food Language" mobile game, the game will stop operating in Chinese mainland at 11:00 on June 18, 2024. Users who have paid in "Food Language" before April 18 and have paid tokens in their accounts can choose the relevant gift packages of "Glory of Kings", "Love of Light and Night", "Tianya Mingyue Knife Mobile Game", "QQ Xuanwu Mobile Game", "Baijing Corridor", "There is a Home in the Depths of Taoyuan", "Miracle Nuan Nuan" and "Rush Biscuit Man: Kingdom" according to the account balance during the compensation activity.
"Food Language" is a Chinese food anthropomorphic national style female-oriented RPG development mobile game, which was publicly tested on September 3, 2019. Officially, game developer Guangzhou Tiantai Network Technology Co., Ltd. is expected to launch the "Food Language Companion Edition" in the third quarter of this year. The companion version is a completely free version of the original version without any profitable content, and it is currently planned to complete the writing of the second main story content of "Food Language", and promises that the companion version will never be closed.
"Dusty White Forbidden Zone" closes the registration of minors. On the 16th, the official mobile game of "Dusty Forbidden Zone" officially announced on Weibo that in order to further strengthen the protection of minors and create and maintain a healthy and green online game environment, "Dusty Forbidden Zone" will upgrade the health system in the existing system. Starting from the maintenance at 17:00 on April 18, 2024, unregistered users under the age of 18 will be recognized during the real-name authentication stage and will not be able to register game characters.
Former Warcraft producer boycotts politically correct games. Recently, former World of Warcraft producer Mark Kern has been tweeting to resist the proliferation of politically correct elements in triple-A games. Mark Kern said that the main culprits for this situation are some socially responsible groups and overly aggressive developers, and he called on players not to buy these games to stop the spread of the game for two years. But Kern also said that he would be attacked next by people who wanted to make an example of him and scare others who tried to speak out.
Musk plans to charge X new users. Musk confirmed that the X platform will start charging "small fees" to new users, saying it is the "only way" to stop the escalating bot attacks. On October 18 of last year, X announced that it was testing a program called "Not A Bot," which charges new unverified users $1 per year to post on X. This plan is only for new users, existing users are not affected.
Fallout live-action drama renewed for a second season. After the success of the American drama "Fallout" directed by Jonathan Nolan in terms of word-of-mouth and ratings, Amazon officially announced that it has officially renewed the show for a second season. The second season will reportedly be filmed in California after receiving a $25 million tax credit.
Finally, there are some new games to keep an eye on this week
《恶意不息》,Moon Studios开发,Private Division发行,4月18日发售EA版。
"Bad Faith" is the second installment from Moon Studios, the developer of the "Ori and the Dark Forest" series. This is an isometric ARPG, and Moon has great expectations for this game, claiming that if ori is their "Mario", then "Malicious Will" is their "Zelda", trying to bring subversion to the existing game genre.
In fact, the combat system of "Malicious Spirit" is indeed distinctive, paying attention to careful planning of each swing of the sword, with a sense of rhythm and excitement similar to that of a soul game, but at the same time, the operation feel is very top-notch, and it is impactful to play. In addition, the game world is extremely detailed, inheriting the top-notch art and criss-crossing level structure design that Moon Studios has come to tradition. In addition to combat, players can also collect resources to cook food, buy and build houses, communicate with a variety of NPCs, and slowly reshape the world.
At present, there are still many deficiencies in "Malicious Spirit", such as optimization, game difficulty, and bugs. However, the attitude of the production team is undoubtedly positive, and since the game's release, two hotfix patches have been released in less than 40 hours, and the improvement has solved a large number of problems. After all, it's a newly released EA game, and the good news is that the future is promising, and it really has potential, and the bad news is that you need to think twice about getting into the pit now.
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*PS: As you can see, we have launched a new column, which is committed to selecting the most interesting pan-game information of the past week for readers in a way that is not lengthy and deep.
At present, the column has been updated to the eighty-second issue, and you can quickly jump back to watch the content of the previous issue through the "Weekly Selection" in the menu bar of the official account!