Grand Grab game: Stick users with more products

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Yang felt a little remorse for remembering what happened a few months ago. He in Shanghai, a hundreds of-person online gaming company as a senior executive, in its plan to work with a company in Fujian to cooperate, but received a phone call refused, the reason is: "Shanda gave us millions of." ”

His desk so far placed the other side sent the game demo disc, only because the decision to slow one weeks, was grand preemptive step to buy the product.

On the wall of the office of SDG CEO Yu, a schedule of upcoming or running games is hung. The game names on the table are now more than 30 and are changing frequently. Because of the update and testing of the version, her secretary has to put on a new form every week.

April 2008, Yu's boss-Grand Group chairman and CEO Chen split up its gaming and operating platform business, respectively, set up SDG and SDO (Shanda Online) two independent companies, set up their respective CEO and issued instructions: "Lap" into more games.

For most of China's small-scale online gaming companies, it is tempting to sell their products to Shanda. In the current market on the 200 variety of online games products, only a few can leave a impression-according to Eric Consulting analyst Liangdong estimates, there are 70% of the online gaming company is currently in a loss state.

Some medium-sized games companies also want to buy some potential products-when they finally intend to buy or cooperate to complete the product layout, grand but preemptive shot, and more generous.

Over the past 18 months, such stories have been repeated. The "18 fund", merged by the "18 plan" and the "Wind and cloud Plan", now serves as the main force for the Grand Acquisition and investment game project and team.

The 18 plan aims to attract those products that have not yet matured, are still in the creative phase and even demo demo, and make sure that the games are successfully developed by paying millions of RMB in a phased manner. People familiar with the matter said that the 18 plan, after making an investment, would normally require the research and development team to hand over the product within the microbicides, with the ultimate intellectual property rights and the right to operate.

After several times looking for good products, Yang even began to consider whether to hand over their products to the grand "18 plan." Because in the future he will face more and more similar games with his products, which makes him uneasy: they will appear on the grand operating platform. These games are much less difficult to find for users, according to the 70 million active, publicly paid user data.

But not all game companies are willing to take on a grand olive branch. At the end of 2008, Shanda made an investment in a small game company in Shanghai in the form of a 25% to 35% stake in the company--at Shanda, this is known as the "cloud Plan", mainly for more mature, market-potential products. After the investment, Shanda will further seek the final control of the product.

For Liu Lin, a market director, an emerging online gaming company can get a big investment is not a small temptation. But after listening to the company's valuation, she reminded the boss, "The price is too low." "Finally did not agree to grand participation, and to the grand" cooperative operation ", that is, the product access to the Grand Service platform, the royal registered users can directly login, both sides share the operational benefits. This February or March, this mode of cooperation because of the joint public, Jinshan and rainstorm, such as game companies to join, began to be widely known.

and a Chengdu person named Haitao is luckier than the above two. July 2007, he to the grand sale of the chairman of the Chengdu Kam-day technology, priced nearly tens of millions of dollars, this year he was 23 years old. Kam days a section called "The Wind and cloud" of the network game, before the Grand acquisition has been able to bring 8 million yuan per month for the Jin days of revenue. Through the "18 fund" rare to tens of millions of dollars in the size of capital investment, Chen Tianqiao in the intangible elimination of a regional market potential competitors.

4 years ago, Yu from Microsoft's Xbox Live (Microsoft Online Gaming Services) division to join the grand, first-hand set up the evaluation department. She often hides in the window of a one-way view and observes the tester, judging the quality of a game with their expressions and movements. Today, the evaluation department has a scale of hundreds of people, Shanda called "Game Project Management Center", and based on the experience accumulated by the department to develop a grand choice of acquisition objects or games "three funnel" system. Shanda Management highly believes that this by the technical personnel according to the software and hardware compatibility, the player accepts the degree, the game can play, the balance, the development team and so on element composition model, may as its decision-making main basis.

At the beginning of February, Chen a step towards its "online Disney" concept. He hinted at good game teams and products through public information: no more hesitation. In the past 18 months, Shanda has invested projects, teams close to 30, the actual expenditure of 300 million yuan.

In the 2006-2007, Chen asked all the grand mid-level employees to hand over a report "If you have billions of yuan in your hand," to establish an external search for the right product as the most important development tool.

And the amount of investment is generally millions of yuan of "18 fund" compared to the agent operating abroad mature online games is a grand "high risk, high return" investment. Before 2007, it was better known. 1999, "Blood legend" 300,000 U.S. dollars agency authorization fee is all the belongings of Chen Tianqiao.

Now, similar to a section named "The Eternal Tower" (Aion) of the agent game is also a grand high hopes. But could it be a grand new "legend"?

10 years later, large role-playing games (MMORPG) accounted for 84% of Shanda's current revenue, and the main source of profit is still the legendary series. Despite the group's best talent, the player's passion for Legend continues, but no one knows how long it will last.

Grand has been trying to seize a new core game to replace the legendary series status. At the beginning of 2005, Shanda signed a famous fantasy style MMORPG "Dungeons and Dragons" in Europe and America with a 5 million-dollar agency license fee. 3 years later, the server, which has the highest number of people online but more than 10,000, has been shut down and is not in line with Chinese gaming >>.

Shanda has never published data on the success or failure of a game, and they will only show up in the top ten rankings per month for the company's internal revenue. The team that completes the revenue metrics can get a 20% split on the game's revenue, which is called the 20 plan. Yu revealed that as of October 2008, the total internal award for the scheme reached 8 million yuan.

But it also brings some side effects, a grand former employee said, the legendary series of consistently high revenue, to those who often failed to complete the project team brought greater pressure. Sometimes in these games, some for the completion of marketing targets, a short period of time to stimulate a large number of users to consume the desire of the version will be launched, undermining the balance of the game, there have been products at the same time the number of online people in the not too long a noticeable decline.

At present obtains the grand "18 fund" The Investment game project, many games are still in the development stage. Shanda has announced a high-profile 8 million investment in the "Ghost Blows" and "Seal God Kingdoms." The former has been put into operation, but the percentage of the grand revenue is not very prominent.

This creates a situation within the grand interior: In the vast number of users, although all the operating games-whether through proxy authorization, "18 funds", or cooperative operation into the grand platform of the game, can continue to profit in one or several quarters, but still cannot produce a like "legend" That will bring stability and high revenue to the product.

In the grand diversification of the product strategy, but also include the "Cooperative development" form, but the current progress is relatively slow. July 2007, the Grand announced with the United States interactive Entertainment software developers and distributors THQ cooperation, jointly develop "hero Lian Online", and in the mainland exclusive operation. On the SDO home page, this game is labeled "upcoming."

Yu to "First financial weekly" stressed that the grand product revenue curve is a normal distribution of the "Bell-shaped curve", the revenue of hundreds of millions of yuan, tens of millions of yuan, millions of yuan products are distributed, "legendary series of the proportion is declining."

But for the time being, she could not explain what products could be the next "legend" in the legendary series, which could continue to win investors ' long-term confidence with a quarter of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Analysts have expressed concern about the slide in their performance in the area of casual gaming. February 27, the Nasdaq-listed company announced its fourth-quarter 2008 earnings, 1.015 billion yuan (about 149 million U.S. dollars) of the highest revenue to record, but the profitability of the operating profit rate has not fluctuated. Casual gaming revenues (accounting for 10% of total net revenue) fell 19% from the previous quarter. The grand explanation was "seasonal factors", but in a study published by Morgan Stanley on the same day, analysts said there was also a growing competition, fearing that Tencent might grab a bigger share of the casual gaming market.

But many of the uncertainties about the product, and did not eliminate the grand MMORPG field to implement a rapid "enclosure" plan. The only "fight back" seems to play "Journey" Shi Yuzhu. The giant network has recently announced its own investment plans for game projects and teams.

In the online gaming industry, Shi Yuzhu used "journey" to create another "legend", but he still difficult in a short period of time to build a similar to the grand SDO operating platform.

SDO is now openly recruiting 1000 "grand training waiters." The first thing the undergraduates did when they got into the grand event was to put on headphones and microphones as customer service and were told to take 3-6 months to consider other positions in the company.

SDO CEO Wang Jingying hopes to have more customer service in the future with 5 of the product services capabilities. At present Shanda has nearly 1000 customer service personnel, generally can meet two to three products. Wang Jingying is willing to pay higher wages for customer service that can provide more services.

She told Caijing Weekly that the group's plan was to "step up" for the proportion of SDO products outside of Shanda's operations.

In the 2008-year analyst conference call, Chen confirmed to the outside world that it would work with more "rivals" to continue this diversified development model.

This may be due to a fear of the future of the Chen seeking steady development-as the grand statement to its shareholders: "If we do not continue to introduce successful online games through research and development, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and licensing, our business, revenue and operations will be seriously affected and at risk. ”