When Ye Shenxi left Activision headquarters, it was different from yesterday when he left EA.

In addition to Smith and Donald personally dropping him off at the gate of the park, he also took ten development machines with him, including PS3, four each XBOX360, and two ii.

ii platform is also one of the goals of the herring fish network "The Origin of Everything" this time,Although some of the common 3A masterpieces ii can't be played,Because of functional limitations,Ren Jile's home machine is much behind PS3 and XBOX360 performance,This is also Ren Jile's own strategy,They were originally biased towards family entertainment,Various casual types of games,This also happens to be in line with the style of "The Origin of Everything".

Under the preliminary agreement with Activision, Activision will be the sole distributor of the physical disc distribution and sales of The Origin of Everything in three regions, including North America, Europe, and Japan.

These are the three regions with the largest share of the global gaming market at present, together accounting for more than 80 of the PC and console game markets, of which the United States occupies 235, Europe 343, and Japan 227.

Activision, currently the world's second-largest game publisher, certainly has fairly mature promotion and sales channels in all three locations.

As for China, don't bother them, they can't reach in, and there is no need to bother others at Qingyu Network's own home.

Of course, these are only the three initial regions, and the other regions will depend on the specific situation after the sale, but they can basically be called "global listing".

……

The development machine is definitely not Ye Shenxi's own backpack and carried it away, 10 units, that thing is half the size of the version released to players, almost the size of a computer host. In the next six months, Activision will send these ten development machines to the global R&D headquarters of Qingyu Network in Funan, China.

Then Shan Jie and the others will start porting to the host, which was originally decided when the project was established.

Don't get me wrong, these home console development machines don't mean that these console games are developed on them, in fact, they are still developed on P, but games for consoles can be developed on the computer but cannot be run.

It's like we're making a parachute on the ground, but it can't be used on the ground.

Console games need to call interfaces and libraries that are not available on P, and Soni, Juhard, and Ren Jile will not develop emulators for P.

So the development machine is actually a game console that is more open than the retail version for players, provides more options and switches, and has a higher hardware configuration, mainly memory and hard disk capacity, and it is also used to run games.

In the development process, the development team needs to constantly debug, see the effect through the development machine, change the code, then see the effect, and then change it.

Therefore, the configuration of many game consoles is obviously not as good as high-end P, but the final effect may be higher than P, because the project team is completely optimized for the characteristics of the host during the development process, and the call of various resources is very carefully allocated, and how to allocate resources for PU, GPU, memory, and video memory is optimized in a targeted manner.

And P is completely impossible, the players have different configurations, there are too many possible combinations, he has 2G memory, he has 4G, and 8G, PU has various main frequencies and various architectures, graphics cards from 7300GT to 9800GT, from Inwei to ATI, which one to do.

……

The console platform is a closed ecosystem, so you need to apply to become a developer of console games.

Many individual developers or small teams need to contact Soni, Juhard and Ren Jile by email, and after passing their review, they can become certified developers and be allowed to develop PS3/XBOX360/ii games.

Certification isn't that simple, it's about reviewing the size of your team, the quality and size of your game, and so on.

Compared with P, it is not easy for shoddy products to appear on the host, and the host manufacturers also have to maintain their own reputation.

After the approval is passed, the development team can get the development machine, Soni will rent the development machine to you, yes, it is rented, there is a time limit for certification, and it needs to be reactivated every once in a while (the development machine needs to be connected to the whole network), if you later quit the PS development team, the development machine is reasonable to return to them.

Relatively speaking, the giant hard is much more atmospheric, and it is sent directly, and it is two units that are sent at a time.

As a large partner of the host platform Yusan, Activision can naturally help the herring network to do these things, of course, they will also provide the relevant information of the herring network team to the three manufacturers to explain, but it is just a formality, which still has a little face.

According to the current development progress of "The Origin of Everything", there are actually not many additions to the subsequent version, and there are more things, Ye Shenxi is very shameless and plans to throw them to the players themselves.

So the initial launch time set by Activision

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It is a global simultaneous listing, and Activision is given another month of pressure and distribution time, which is scheduled for December 25th, Christmas. The Bluefish Network itself is responsible for the global digital version, while Activision is responsible for the physical distribution.

The Christmas holiday is a traditional season for game sales, and even the content of the first bonus is available, a set of ...... Christmas skin, that is, for users of the console version, the P version of everyone will have countless mods, who cares about this.

……

Next, Activision is about to start promoting, and Dawson Smith is currently roughly estimated to invest $3 million in the first month of promotion for this game, and around the world, including TV, online media, offline physical magazines and other publicity platforms, the follow-up must be based on sales to decide whether to invest more.

Although Activision is slightly inferior to EA at this time under the comprehensive evaluation of game distribution, it is not ambiguous at all in various advertising placements, especially in TV advertising, which ranks among the best all year round.

For example, in October last month, 38 game manufacturers in the United States placed a total of 140 advertisements on the full screen of various TV stations, with a total of about 25,000 broadcasts and a total marketing cost of 56 million US dollars.

Activision alone accounted for 20, or $11.2 million, of course, 90 of which were promoting their fist product, "Call of the Year 5: World War" across 5 platforms (P/PS3/XBOX360/ii/NDS) on October 10.

Based on the good reputation created by "New Year's Call 4: Modern Warfare", this sequel immediately detonated the global market as soon as it was launched, and so far the sales volume is almost twice that of the same period of the previous generation (of course, the sales life cycle of New Year's Call 4 is longer), and 1.98 million units have been sold in a month, and there is no decline at all, and there is no downward trend.

And in December, when the Christmas holidays come, it is obvious that there will be a new bloody advertising war.

"Grand Theft Auto 4" will be released on consoles in April, and the P version will be available in December;

Yubi's signature series "Prince of Persia: Rebirth" will be launched simultaneously on December 9;

These are the two biggest enemies that "The Origin of Everything" needs to face head-on, but maybe this is just Ye Shenxi and Xia Qingyu's own opinion, and most other people don't think so.

In the eyes of more people, a product like "Rise of the Argonauts" should be more appealing to players than "The Origin of Everything".

Activision's marketing department has already made a detailed December game promotion plan at this time, with a budget of about $15 million, and now with "The Origin of Everything", it should increase to about $15.5 million, which is just an investment in TV advertising.

Because of the advertising fee, Ye Shenxi and Smith had a different exchange of opinions in the office just now.

According to the plan proposed by Smith, the agreement signed with the herring network is that the sales revenue will be divided into Activision 70 and herring network 30.

In the sale of a physical disc game, the costs of pressing, packaging, shipping, and possibly facing warehouse backlogs and player returns will account for about 20 percent.

Well, also pay retailers, including offline brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites, these 25 draws.

On the console platform, it is also necessary to give the platform party, that is, Soni, Juhard and Ren Jile about 10 royalties.

That is, what Activision can get in its hands is about 45% of sales, and then this part, Activision and herring are open again and again.

For them and most developers are such a distribution plan, 73 is not taking advantage for no reason, because Activision is also responsible for publicity and promotion costs, Smith likes this game very much, so the promotion fee given is about 3 million US dollars, which is more than ten times the cost of game development!

But Ye Shenxi knows that the 3 million may be all of Activision's promotional investment, because the sales in the first month are likely to really disappoint them, this is not a game that can attract players so much in itself, after the sales in the first month are released, Activision is likely to immediately stop the follow-up additions, and the game will not be further promoted.

Is it purely based on the word of mouth of players, how many years will it take? The official propaganda cannot be stopped.

So when he said this, Ye Shenxi said loudly: "Mr. Smith, I have another proposal for a cooperation agreement. ”

"What proposal?" Smith was puzzled and asked, should the vast majority of manufacturers accept their solutions, right?

Ye Shenxi said: "We are willing to bear the publicity and promotion costs with your company, but we hope to increase the sales revenue share to 50, and our two companies will split it in half." ”

"You're not kidding, are you? Mr. Ye. Smith was stunned.

"No, I'm serious."

……

Smith and Donald heard Ye Shenxi bring it up

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It's a bit strange to have a promotion fee for a game, and other Ps (developers) are eager for publishers to get it, so why does this company do the opposite?

I don't understand.

According to Activision's proposal, if each copy of "The Origin of Everything" sells for $25, Activision and Herring Network will receive $7,875 and $3,375 respectively, which is before taxes.

Smith's expectation is that the game will eventually sell 1 million units, which would leave Activision with $11.25 million, leaving 7.31 million at the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35.

According to the seven-third division, Activision can share 5.11 million of them, while the herring fish network is 2.2 million. The point is that this is based on the fact that there are not that many games that sell platinum sales if they reach more than 1 million platinum sales.

In addition to the publicity investment of 3 million, Activision can actually get 2.11 million in this transaction, while the R&D cost of Qingyu Network is less than 200,000 US dollars, and the profit can also be 2 million, which is quite good.

Of course, the reality is more complicated.

Now Ye Shenxi proposes to jointly bear the publicity costs, that is, 3 million US dollars, and 1.5 million yuan for each side.

For a game with low R&D costs like "The Origin of Everything", the main risk is the cost of publicity, and now they Activision are willing to fight on their own, but Ye Shenxi is willing to share it?

Smith's estimated sales of 1 million, he himself is already a little bit of a long-term cooperation with the herring fish network and deliberately make profits. According to the ratio he proposed, once the game sold less than 590,000, then Activision would lose money, and the blue fish network would still make a profit of $1 million.

This is his sincerity.

He also couldn't figure out what kind of thoughts Ye Shenxi was thinking, maybe he was a little blindly optimistic about the sales of this game? He is optimistic that the sales of this game will be higher than 1 million copies, because the higher the number, the smaller the proportion of publicity costs, and the more the herring network can profit from it.

Or he is willing to help his company take part of the risk, maybe he himself is not very optimistic about how much he can sell, under this plan, Activision's life and death line will be reduced to about 410,000 copies.

All in all, in his opinion, the plan proposed by Ye Shenxi is beneficial to Activision, and he can't find a reason to refuse at all.

"Are you so optimistic about the sales of "The Origin of Everything"?" Smith asked jokingly, with a hint of tentativeness.

Such a brand new series, without any player base, is a brand new company, and this is the first time they have seen players in the single-player and console game market.

Although he did find it appealing enough after experiencing it himself, it was always only a lightweight game, and players were more enthusiastic about the $60 a blockbuster, like the triple-A product of "New Year's Calling".

Ye Shenxi nodded and said: "I believe that this game does not necessarily need so much publicity expenses, he relies more on the spread of word-of-mouth among players, maybe the initial sales will not be like those 3A masterpieces, but after the follow-up word-of-mouth fermentation and the maturity of the MOD community, more and more players will be attracted to it." ”

"Is that so?"

"Yes, Mr. Smith, the game may not necessarily live up to your expectations in the first month, but it's going to have a long sales cycle, and even after a period of time on the market, there will be a significant increase in sales, and I'm sure of that."

"For a while?" Smith thought about it for a while and felt that this was indeed the case, and he accepted Ye Shenxi's idea of driving the game through various player-made mods, so he should be prepared for long-term sales: "How long is this period of time?" ”

"I'm not sure for sure, it could be a month, or three months, or six months. So promotion should also continue to invest, I don't want to give up this game because the initial sales did not meet expectations, I can be honest, even if Activision gives up the promotion of the game at that time, our Qingyu Network will continue to invest. ”

"Then ......" Smith and Donald exchanged a look with each other, it is the instinct of businessmen to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, they believe in the research and development capabilities of Qingyu Network, and it can be seen from the quality of the two games "Survival" and "The Origin of Everything", this is a Chinese game development company with ideas and strength. Although it may be that their bosses are not very clear about the matter of market releases......

The sales of the game cannot meet expectations, and it is obviously contrary to common sense to continue to increase the budget for promotion, but if it really sells poorly, Activision will definitely stop promoting it immediately, and as for the herring fish to continue to add, they are also happy to see it......

"No problem, Mr. Ye." Smith finally nodded and stretched out his right hand to Ye Shenxi.