Chapter 45: First Stop, Akihabara!

Twenty million is just a part?

Are all the landmarks filled with Genshin Impact ads?!

After Qin Xiaoyu spoke these two sentences, they exploded like two heavy bombs beside Cai Qiu and Chen Wei, leaving their minds instantly blank.

Shen Guo’s games had advertised overseas before, but at most they simply bought traffic, flooding game platforms with paid promotions.

Physical ads? They’d never heard of such a thing.

And would this even work?

This doubt didn’t stem from Cai Qiu and Chen Wei’s lack of confidence in the game—it was simply that this method seemed outdated.

“Old Cai, let’s make Sakura Country our first stop—get us an ad spot in Akihabara!” Seeing the two remain silent, Qin Xiaoyu broke the silence directly.

That was Gaohe’s suggestion from Hongshan Investment.

Since we’ve decided to pour money into overseas promotion and launch the game, let’s go all-in from the start.

That place is the holy land of anime culture, especially Akihabara.

Anime fans worldwide pay attention to it—any small movement draws their gaze.

Sega Building One, Akihabara Electric City, subway stations, AKB48 ad spaces—all these physical locations.

If Genshin Impact’s posters appear on them, it will cause a massive sensation.

We won’t even need to spend extra money on media—they’ll report on it themselves out of curiosity.

Then,

spend another sum buying traffic and ads on the upcoming launch platforms.

The two reinforce each other, achieving results far beyond merely buying traffic.

To be honest,

when Qin Xiaoyu first heard Gaohe’s suggestion, as a transmigrator, he couldn’t help but secretly admire Gaohe’s vision.

Gaohe’s advice was exactly the path Qin Xiaoyu had planned to take.

But,

the details he’d thought of were far more specific than Gaohe’s—he’d already experienced this once on Earth.

“Fish Brother, are you crazy?”

One simple sentence made Cai Qiu jump to his feet: "That place is hell mode! Monster Strike, Fate/Grand Order, Uma Musume, Pokémon, One Million Arthur—they're the regulars there!"

“So what? We just want ad space—we’re not going to war!”

Qin Xiaoyu smirked in reply.

He could guess a little of what Cai Qiu and Chen Wei were thinking.

Those few anime games dominated almost the entire Sakura Country market and had become the standard for anime culture locally and worldwide.

But how does that relate to our advertising?

Would those game companies actually come out and stop us from advertising?

In the end, Akihabara’s ad space goes to whoever pays the most.

In Qin Xiaoyu’s view, their fear was simple—they simply lacked confidence in their own game.

They feared their ad would be hung up, then mocked mercilessly by busybodies comparing it to others.

Actually,

there’s no need to worry about this at all.

Our game hasn’t launched yet—what are they going to compare it to?

The character illustrations on the promotional posters?

If we’re talking about that alone, Qin Xiaoyu believed Genshin Impact’s art wasn’t vastly superior—but at least equal, perhaps even slightly better.

This wasn’t just his own bragging; the mature 3D-to-2D rendering tech was rare even among overseas anime mobile games.

Genshin Impact not only maintains character illustrations but offers full 3D models for player control, all within a vast open world.

The games Cai Qiu mentioned do have strong IPs and years of player bases—no denying that.

But ultimately, their character art remains flat—put plainly, the characters are still just pixelated sprites.

So, in the realm of anime mobile games, Genshin Impact’s experience—exaggerated as it may sound—is truly a dimensional strike.

After Qin Xiaoyu’s hour-long explanation, Cai Qiu and Chen Wei’s anxiety vanished completely, replaced by pure anticipation and determination.

Indeed,

we’re not declaring war—we’re just placing an ad. So what’s there to fear?

“Fish Brother, don’t worry! Wherever cherry blossoms bloom, I’ll make sure our Genshin Impact ads appear everywhere!”

Cai Qiu slapped his chest, his voice brimming with boldness, “Enough talk—I’m going to pick a few interns who studied Sakura Country’s language and leave right away!”

“No need to rush so much…”

Qin Xiaoyu shook his head, then explained the general strategy and key details to Cai Qiu.

That night, Cai Qiu quietly boarded a flight to the anime holy land with four new interns and a massive sum of money.

“Fish Brother, Cai Qiu’s gone—what’s your plan for me?”

After Cai Qiu left the office, Chen Wei looked at Qin Xiaoyu with excited eyes and asked.

“Handle the overseas voice actor recording and matching for now.”

Qin Xiaoyu paused, then added, “Also, think about the company’s functional structure—we’re official now. We can’t keep acting on raw passion and brute force like before.”

Through this period of working together, Qin Xiaoyu had come to understand these two better.

Cai Qiu was impulsive and might make mistakes, but he had relentless drive—he was perfect for pioneering tasks.

Chen Wei was calmer, considered details even more than Qin Xiaoyu sometimes—he’d be ideal for managing internal studio affairs.

As for himself, he’d only need to handle the big direction and decisions.

Of course,

things wouldn’t be easy now—three critical tasks still awaited him.

One of them, naturally, was the Liyue map issue.

To pull off this deception, he’d need to hire a large number of third-party outsourcing studios—and not all from within Shen Guo.

This would inevitably waste a huge sum of money.

Now that he thought about it, Qin Xiaoyu felt a pang of pain—this money could’ve been spared.

Second, he needed to take those sheet music scores and spend heavily to hire an orchestra for recording.

Finally,

he had to prepare for Klee’s gacha pool launch in a few days…