Chapter 75: The Future is Incredibly Bright

"Boss, why are we buying the IP rights for Ultraman?" Huang Kai asked in the taxi, frowning in confusion.

He didn't quite understand Xu Heng's actions; he had assumed Xu Heng had traveled all the way to Modu to meet his girlfriend, and incidentally rent some space for the company and recruit some basic staff.

As it turned out, the first thing Xu Heng did was spend a large sum of money to buy the usage rights to an inexplicable IP.

Ultraman?

He had watched it when he was a child, and it still had some popularity in the mainland today, but it was limited to children; it was a well-known hobby for kids.

Xu Heng couldn't possibly be buying these IP rights to develop Ultraman peripheral toys, could he? That stuff barely made any money at all, otherwise Ancient wouldn't have been on the verge of bankruptcy.

Huang Kai didn't know the internal situation at Ancient, so he simply attributed the reason for Ancient's bankruptcy to the fact that Ultraman merchandise wouldn't sell, and further associated it with the mistaken belief that Ultraman was no longer popular.

In fact, this was wrong.

Even in its most declining years, Ultraman still enjoyed a very important status among children, and this group of children was Xu Heng's target.

He smiled and said, "Brother Kai, you should have come into contact with Yu-Gi-Oh!, right?"

"I know a little." Huang Kai frowned, as if he had thought of something.

"What do you think if we turned the Ultraman IP into a trading card game similar to Yu-Gi-Oh!? Would that have potential?"

"This..." Huang Kai hesitated for a moment, and in the end, he didn't voice his inner thoughts, but instead said, "Sorry Boss, I can't make that judgment."

Ancient had tried Ultraman cards two years ago, but it had died halfway through, which served as a warning to those who came after; no one dared to continue trying to make Ultraman IP into card-based board games.

He didn't say it because he couldn't fathom Xu Heng; the man was very shrewd and didn't seem like a sophomore at all, so Xu Heng must have had his own reasons for wanting to make Ultraman cards.

"Then let me change the question." Xu Heng smiled slightly and asked again, "Brother Kai, do you know the price of authentic cards like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Magic: The Gathering?"

"Fifty yen a pack?" Huang Kai said uncertainly.

"About that, the prices of different card boxes vary, but when imported to the mainland, they are basically around three or four yuan, and a whole box of thirty packs costs over a hundred yuan." Xu Heng said, "For many children in our country's second and third-tier cities, this is a very high level of consumption. Compared to authentic Yu-Gi-Oh!, children are more inclined to buy pirated Yu-Gi-Oh! card packs for five mao a pack."

"If we make authentic, licensed Ultraman cards and also sell them for five mao a pack, with a box costing only fifteen yuan, who do you think will capture the domestic children's card market?"

"But the card rules for Yu-Gi-Oh! are not easy to imitate..."

Huang Kai's words were already very clear: it was that they couldn't easily plagiarize someone else's gameplay, or they would be sued in court.

But Xu Heng shrugged indifferently: "We don't need to use Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh! gameplay; we just need to create a very simple card rule set that children can understand. Brother Kai, you've designed Three Kingdoms Kill, so you have experience in this area. I believe in you."

"In that case, the risk we bear also becomes greater."

Although Huang Kai hadn't invested any money, he subconsciously put himself in the shoes of an employee at Xu Heng's company and would also think about the future of their company.

"It doesn't matter, I have a specific plan for this, and it will absolutely not fail."

In his past life, Xu Heng was half a Yu-Gi-Oh! physical card player, so he had some understanding of cards, and he had once read the complete history of Yoka's rise on a certain website, knowing where their success came from.

Fundamentally, it was nothing more than grasping the competitive psychology of children.

For example, if they designed Ultraman cards and divided the rarity into R, SR, and SSR, with only one SSR in a large box, and then wrote powerful card effects on the SSRs, then in order to obtain these powerful cards and gain a superior "status" among classmates, children would definitely keep investing their pocket money to open card packs.

Furthermore, in the early stages, they could spend more on investment, commissioning offline card shops, school convenience stores, and supermarkets to buy back rare cards at a certain price, giving Ultraman cards "value."

When cards had value, their appeal would become even greater.

Whether it was the old veteran Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon cards, they all followed this path.

Promoting with the gimmick of authenticity, breaking into the children's market with low prices, and attracting more students to buy by introducing new rarity tiers.

In his past life, Yoka used these three swords to create the myth of domestic cards.

Xu Heng turned the development strategies he had thought of over the past two nights into a planning document tens of thousands of words long, and then printed it out.

Huang Kai browsed through the tens of thousands of words in the planning document and couldn't help but gasp.

A genius idea!

Perhaps he had still held a skeptical attitude toward Xu Heng's actions just now, but after reading Xu Heng's plan, he no longer doubted whether Ultraman cards could succeed.

The division of rarity alone, and the strategy for developing the children's market, could be called a stroke of genius.

Xu Heng's plan was a combination of successful cases from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, and Ultraman in the later years.

Things like launching new card boxes every four months, launching anniversary commemorative boxes every year, and the series of rarity tiers like CP, GP, LGR, and HR, along with the explanations for those rarity terms.

Especially that tactic of surrounding the city from the schools, starting sales and promotion from the convenience stores at elementary school gates, expanding to surrounding areas once the scale grew, and then establishing official flagship stores in provincial capitals after making money.

Just from these, Huang Kai knew that Xu Heng was definitely prepared.

He respectfully returned the planning document to Xu Heng and said with a straight face, "Boss, I think you are much better than me at making cards. Why don't we cut the Three Kingdoms Kill project and do your Ultraman cards instead?"

Xu Heng: "?"

I had you come over to make Three Kingdoms Kill big and strong, and now you're telling me you don't want to do Three Kingdoms Kill and want to do Ultraman?

"Brother Kai, that's too modest. I won't cut the Three Kingdoms Kill project. You should also know that Ultraman can only help us temporarily occupy the children's market, and how much money it can make is still an unknown, but Three Kingdoms Kill is different. If we do Three Kingdoms Kill well, we can break into the market for teenagers and young adults."

"Think about it, in the future, activities in university dormitories won't be limited to playing Landlord or playing on the computer. Dormitories can gather together to play Three Kingdoms Kill, or middle school students won't have nothing to do on Saturdays and Sundays besides computers and TV. They can call their friends to gather at home and play Three Kingdoms Kill."

"Compared to computer games, card-based board games are considered much less dangerous in the eyes of parents, and some parents might even support them playing this board game to break their children's internet addiction."

Xu Heng explained it to him in detail, and finally patted Huang Kai heavily on the shoulder.

"Brother Kai, we are doing a good deed for the children! The future is incredibly bright!"