Chapter 496: The Product Is King

Liu Tianxian had a very satisfying and happy birthday.

It was because this man was romantic—he gave her a real pink diamond, entirely hers to design as she wished.

Once fashioned into a ring, and placed by this man himself on her ring finger, her heart would truly be complete! After Fang Hong bought this diamond, he still had about 17.5 million U. S. dollars left, roughly 120 million RMB.

Of this sum, besides paying the mortgage, one hundred million RMB was transferred to the wedding fund account for wedding expenses.

Liu Tianxian's phoenix crown and xiapi have already begun production, crafted by hand by a national-level intangible cultural heritage inheritor.

Of course, not alone—he works with his apprentices as a team, reportedly able to draw gold into threads finer than hair, then weave them.

That means the phoenix crown and xiapi can be sewn with gold thread.

But the price is too high: ten million RMB for labor alone, materials not included.

There's no way around it—the item is too large, too intricate.

"Intangible cultural heritage inheritor" is the full title: Representative Inheritor of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

This isn't a title anyone can claim or pass on by word of mouth—it's granted by the state, with official certificates and honors, and recipients receive subsidies.

Ranks include national, provincial, municipal, and county levels; only representative inheritors of specific cultural heritage can earn such titles.

Therefore, these people all possess genuine talent and expertise.

Anyway, for the wedding, Fang Hong has spent nearly all his money: 560 million RMB on the diamond, 200 million RMB on the wedding, plus the mortgage—that's roughly 800 million RMB total.

And he hasn't even finished the job—only completed the preliminary stage.

Damn, who can afford this kind of wedding? No wonder younger people nowadays don't get married—it's bankrupting three generations.

Anyway, Fang Hong must keep working hard; without effort, he can't even afford to get married.

The movie "The Four Great Constables 3" is still in theaters, but its box office has collapsed, down to just over ten million RMB.

It collapsed on Liu Tianxian's birthday, maintaining high box office for only three or four days.

Yet audiences still keep complaining and trashing it as garbage!

In sharp contrast, "Xiu Chun Dao" has received unanimous praise from audiences—most who've seen it say the film is excellent.

They don't care about Manchus or not Manchus; besides, many don't even know about that issue.

But the movie's box office has always been poor—after more than half a month in release, it's only earned 248 million RMB, now collapsed to just three or five million RMB.

Still, the film made money—it didn't lose anything; its box office is ten times its production cost.

In today's movie market, it's hard for any film to lose money, as long as costs are controlled and not excessively high.

This year, nearly seventy films have surpassed one hundred million RMB in box office; with this scale, it's hard for any single film to lose money.

Like later films claiming production budgets of three or five hundred million RMB—that's pure bluffing; three or five hundred million RMB is already high investment, and that amount can make an excellent film.

As long as you don't hire huge stars, don't shoot massive ensemble epics, and don't overdo special effects, the market makes it hard for narrative films to lose money.

Current special effects use more materials than those in films from a few years later; production costs aren't nearly as exaggerated as the promotional claims from a few years later.

That day, Fang Hong came to Swan Castle and met with the entertainment heads from Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Coolpad, Lenovo, Meizu, and other major phone manufacturers.

These top-tier phone manufacturers are all members of the Hardcore Alliance, which was founded on the first of this month—but Xiaomi is not a member; it didn't join.

What is the Hardcore Alliance for? Simply put, it's about unified cooperation, distribution, and channel efficiency.

In plain terms: if you want your game to gain exposure through these phone manufacturers' app stores and use their download channels, you must use their servers—short for "channel servers"—and pay a protection fee: a 50% revenue cut.

There's no choice, because they control the mobile channels and the end devices—their phones come pre-installed with their own app stores.

If you don't cooperate with them, your mobile game won't even get exposure or have a download channel.

Downloading from other channels triggers error messages claiming possible viruses—that's standard practice!

Just like movies: if you don't give theaters a cut, they won't screen your film. It's that simple.

"Honor of Kings" will launch public testing on September 1st, meaning it will go live on all major phone app platforms.

This time, Fang Hong didn't talk to them about revenue-sharing ratios—the ratio remains unchanged, and he can't change it now, nor does he have the ability to.

He discussed co-operation: the game's operation rights and servers belong entirely to Swan Castle; channel vendors cannot modify game data, and can only provide the original official server download channels.

Of course, the 50% revenue cut for phone manufacturers remains unchanged—if it changed, they'd certainly refuse.

In a large office, the heads of major phone manufacturers glanced at the PPT presented by Swan Castle's operations team on the screen ahead, each showing thoughtful expressions.

"So the revenue cut stays the same, but all data, services, and operations are handed over to you—we can't have channel servers, only the official original server," said Huawei's representative.

"Exactly. This saves you a lot of operational and service costs, doesn't it? Even if I handed the game to you to run channel servers, you'd still have costs," Fang Hong said smoothly.

Huawei's representative smiled slightly: "You're quite shrewd. All the data is yours—without channel servers, how do we know how much players have paid, or whether they paid through our Huawei channel?"

"Sir, you're speaking like an outsider. Whether a player recharges through which platform or channel—this technical capability and operation—I believe not just Huawei, but any manufacturer can achieve it, and it's not difficult at all," Fang Hong replied.

This made the Huawei representative blush—it was indeed achievable; they could simply redirect the payment collection company.

For example, if a player recharges via the Xiaomi channel, the payment goes to a company created by Xiaomi; if via Huawei, it goes to a company created by Huawei.

This payment recipient doesn't have to be the parent company—it can be any name they choose.

Every phone manufacturer has such a payment company, because they themselves operate many channel servers.

After collecting payments, they simply split the revenue by ratio.

The advantage of channel servers is that every player's payment flows through their channel, and all player data is controlled by them.

So when he said that earlier, he thought the Principal was taking away both the data and the payment data.

"I'm not blocking players from recharging through any channel—I only demand unified server regions and unified operational services for players, not each one serving their own, and him serving his—that's unacceptable to me," Fang Hong said again.

In his view, he only wanted two major server regions: one for Android, and one for Apple iOS, eliminating all channel servers.

Unified operations, unified service for players.

This idea set off a buzz of murmuring among those present, their opinions divided—some thought it feasible, others did not.

This idea sparked murmurs among those present; opinions varied—some thought it feasible, others not.

Some believed the Principal taking player data meant he was seizing their user data through their channels, which was a bit too rigid.

"Principal, you've called us all here just to discuss one game—you must have great confidence in this game!" said vivo's representative.

"I wouldn't call it confidence—I just want to do my best to make the game well, run it well, and give players a good service environment." Fang Hong's words sounded very nice.

"The Principal still has quite some sentiment."

That remark made the heads of the major phone manufacturers all smile at each other.

It's rare these days to find someone still making games so seriously—everyone else is just harvesting leeks.

But looking at his track record in game-making, he really does seem like a man with sentiment—in five years he only made one Hero Glory, and he treats players like people, running it extremely well.

"I don't know whether this game will succeed or fail after launch either, and I can't predict it. Even if it fails, I still want to do it well, give it my all. I won't covet your interests—what's owed to you will still be given to you." Fang Hong spoke sincerely.

Li Min was also on site. Watching the Principal speak with such eloquence, he was almost moved himself.

Looking at that group of phone manufacturer bosses, they all wore a silent, hesitant look—some were weighing it in their hearts, some had already agreed.

After all, some of them were only here to make money; everything else didn't matter, and the Principal hadn't damaged their interests.

"This is the Principal's first time making a mobile game, and he's shown this much sincerity toward us and toward the users. If we don't agree, it would make us look like the bad guys."

Xiaomi's person-in-charge laughed it off with a quip, then said: "But if you want the channel, that's fine—any promotion, ad placement, or chart manipulation you'll have to handle yourself; we won't be involved."

"That's natural. You only need to provide me with the phone app store channel; everything else we'll handle ourselves," Fang Hong said.

"Then I have no objections." Xiaomi's person-in-charge spread his hands.

As long as their interests weren't hurt, this kind of cooperation was naturally fine—they weren't losing anything.

They were just opening up their own channel to him.

The others all nodded one after another, no objections—as long as they could make money, that was enough.

This matter actually wasn't hard. What was hard was an uneven split of the spoils. The later conflicts between Tencent, Pig Factory, and other major game makers with these Android phone manufacturers were all because of an uneven split.

Apple only takes 30%, so on what grounds do you take 50%? That's how the fight started, that's how the boycott started.

But those companies had massive power. Although these phone manufacturers fought each other tooth and nail, on the matter of game revenue-share ratios their interests were surprisingly aligned.

Not one percent less. If you don't agree, your game gets taken down from the app store—that's how tough they are.

Of course, later some phone manufacturers didn't go along. Xiaomi changed its revenue-share ratio to 30%, refusing to join the Hardcore Alliance and setting its own pricing.

Actually, channels aren't limited to the app stores of the major phone manufacturers—major software apps also count as channels, and these can bypass the phone app stores.

For example, Tencent's App Store, WeChat, and so on.

Also Bilibili, Douyin, and so on—these are all channels that can bypass those phone manufacturers.

miHoYo's Honkai went through the Bilibili channel, and later Genshin Impact also didn't go through those Android phone manufacturers—it took other channels too.

They succeeded just the same, and lived quite comfortably. Looks like product and service are the real way.

Tencent just has no product, no service, and is always at others' mercy—unable to be like miHoYo and ignore the phone channel providers.

(End of this chapter)