Chapter 652: Know the Bottom Line

The meal took a long time, and the two of them chatted while eating and drinking, from what Jin Yue saw and heard when she went to school here, to the special measures during the SARS period in China, to the physical condition of Uncle Jin and Grandma, and chatted for four hours before leaving the restaurant. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. biquge。 info The plate is really clean except for the animal shell, and it is all eaten by Hong Tao.

The two of them did not go directly to the hotel, but walked around the park by the coast, mainly to digest and digest food. I did eat a little too much, not only Hongtao, but also a lot of Jinyue. With the exception of half a snow crab and a few mussels, she stuffed almost all of her own food into her stomach and made a small piece of crab cake when she was done.

Don't look at Jin Yue's more than four years here, she is not very familiar with the city. Ms. Feng's tutor is still very strict, the two girls must go home before ten o'clock in the evening, usually have time and the whole family travels together, without parental consent and boys dating basically never happened, not to go home for the night is even more impossible.

Now Hong Tao knows who the tall male classmate is, his surname is Huang, his name is Huang Yi, he is the child of a friend of Ms. Feng's family, his parents are Asian, but not all Chinese, half Japanese ancestry.

His family also lives in the Back Bay area, and he is also studying at the School of Architecture, where he is a doctoral student. The architectural firm that Cindy said was also opened with him, and the two of them invested half of the capital each, and Jin Yue followed suit.

Hong Tao didn't inquire much about this Huang Yi, the past is over, there is no need to figure everything out, that will inevitably make Jin Yue very embarrassed, and he can't stand it, what do you want.

Hong Tao only lived in Boston and Jin Yue for a day and a half, and accompanied her to the campuses of Harvard and MIT, and had to go home before she had enough.

Jin Yue is now on summer vacation and is taking two summer courses, so it doesn't matter if she stops for a few days. But Hong Tao didn't succeed, because Blizzard's invitation for a second round of negotiations came, and Diane's side was gathering a team of lawyers from Hong Kong, and arrived at Marshall Manor three days later.

So Hong Tao has to go back, he can't let so many people wait for him to accompany his fiancée to go shopping, and now he doesn't have this ability.

As usual, Hong Tao didn't let Jin Yue send it, he took a red-eye flight overnight and rushed back to San Diego, and when he left, he left Jin Yue more than 2,000 US dollars, which was all the cash he had on him.

This time the negotiation looked more formal than the last time, and the negotiation venue was also changed to a larger conference room, full of nearly twenty people, and there were six members of the team convened by Diane alone, both Chinese and foreign, all of them were forty years old, and they were not good at looking at each other.

Again, the meeting was chaired by Pierce and Lambertz, but as soon as they came up, they didn't ramble like they did last time and went straight to the point.

After they finished studying Hong Tao's agency operation plan, they agreed in principle that Mantis Shrimp would act as an agent for the operation rights of World of Warcraft in Chinese mainland, and there was no big objection to the details of operation, promotion and approval.

Now the question is how much is the agency fee, how to divide the operation share, how to sell peripheral products, how to set up servers, and the rights, responsibilities and obligations of both parties.

In the previous life, the contract price of Jiucheng to act as an agent for World of Warcraft was about 10,000,000 US dollars, including a signing fee of 3 million, a copyright fee of 50 million for four years, an investment of nearly 7 million in the early stage of equipment, and an advertising and promotion cost of more than 10 million.

In addition to these, during the operation of World of Warcraft by Nine Cities Company, a quarter of the royalties were given to Blizzard without selling a single click, which is the big deal.

Now that he probably knows Blizzard's bottom line, Hong Tao has to find a way to save some money and get more benefits. The signing fee was promised 1 million first, and the copyright fee rose from 12.5 million yuan a year to 20 million US dollars, but not four years, but five years in one go. In fact, Hong Tao wanted to sign for ten years, but unfortunately Blizzard did not agree.

The reason why the copyright fee is so high is mainly because Hong Tao doesn't want to give Blizzard's later game a share. But Blizzard is not stupid, they are adamant about taking a royalty and will not let Mantis Shrimp buy out the game agency for five years.

Because of this incident, the two sides quarreled for four days, and finally made concessions. Blizzard symbolically retains 10% of the later shares, but the annual royalty has been directly increased by more than half, which is similar to grabbing money.

But even if it was a money-grabbing Hong Tao, Diane would admit it, because it was much cheaper than giving Blizzard 25% profit sharing in the later period. And this result is already good, if it weren't for the mantis shrimp company's sufficient funds, and it didn't have to rely on Blizzard's contract to go public to raise enough funds, Blizzard would definitely not budge.

At the beginning, Jiucheng was pinched by Blizzard to this sore spot, even if he knew that he had suffered a big loss, he had to sign the contract, otherwise he wouldn't even be able to drink the soup. is still the same sentence, if the technology is not as good as people, you will always be controlled by others, and if you want to speak hard, you must have goods in your pocket, otherwise you will only be slaughtered.

Blizzard requires that HP's servers must be used, otherwise it is difficult to ensure the game experience and technical support. Hong Tao has no objection to this, HP servers are indeed expensive, but if you go back to China to find a replacement, the performance may be a little higher than HP, but the compatibility and maneuverability are uncertain.

After all, Blizzard's technicians will need to help with debugging when the time comes, and there is no harm in using their most comfortable equipment. The extra money is tuition, who made us unable to make such a good game, we deserve to be slaughtered.

In terms of advertising and promotion expenses, Hong Tao is still relatively willing to spend money, and directly promised to invest 15 million US dollars. There's no way, the Chinese people just eat this set, whether it's good or not, let you see it as soon as you open your eyes all day long, and then change the way to flicker, to ensure that there are many people who play.

Hong Tao's generosity at this point also made Blizzard and Vivendi see sincerity, saying that they would make some concessions on technical support and game peripheral products. After all, this game is their child, and when they grow up, they will earn money, and everyone wants the result to be wonderful.

But all this has a premise, that is, World of Warcraft in Chinese mainland will be launched at the same time as North America. Prior to this, Blizzard had completed two closed betas and announced that the game would begin open beta at the end of the year.

The mantis shrimp company is in a hurry to start preparing now, but Hong Tao feels that even if it can't be officially operated together, it can't be too bad. It's not a question of money, it's a matter of attitude. Why can South Korea be launched together with North America, and the huge Chinese market will have to be delayed for several months or even half a year.

Blizzard doesn't have any discriminatory clauses on this issue, they are mainly afraid of lack of time. Even if it starts working now, it will only be half a year until the end of the year. The mantis shrimp company has to prepare everything from scratch, which is a test of management level and operational skills.