Chapter 616

In July, it was again the annual summer movie season, dubbed the most outrageous summer season in history.

One hundred and one films were released this season, including Hollywood movies.

This was a film market propelled by hot capital, where even cats and dogs rushed to make movies, as if money in the film industry was easy to make—though most were cannon fodder.

For example, the film The Silent Keeper of That Love, backed by multiple companies, earned only 460,000 yuan on its first day and 32,000 yuan on the second, flopping so badly even its own grandmother wouldn't recognize it.

Then came Chen Daren's The Taoist Down the Mountain, produced with investment from Columbia and Xinli.

Chen Daren's films naturally gathered big-name stars.

Even if he flopped again, his reputation and status remained intact.

Yutu Film staggered its release by several days: Journey to the West: The Great Sage Returns premiered on July 10, and The Pancake Hero, backed by Wanda, premiered on July 17.

There was also The Unrepeatable, releasing at the end of July.

This scheduling was deliberate: Huayi's Zhizi Kai Hua also premiered on July 10, and by month's end, Huayi had two films: The Tai Ping Lun and Destiny.

It was specifically aimed at Huayi.

This year Fang Hong remembered a very impressive film: Monster Hunt, from Anle.

It was a comedy centered on "demons," suitable for all age groups and family viewing, and comedies still had a market.

Tencent and Alibaba both participated in this film, with a massive promotional campaign.

BoNuo had already released SPL 2: A Time for Consequences in mid-June, and also had I Am a Nobody, directed by Er Dongsheng, releasing on the same day as The Taoist Down the Mountain.

Box office performance was underwhelming; BoNuo simply couldn't stand up right now, no way around it.

Meanwhile, Fang Hong was competing with Alibaba and Wanda for market share in film, with Alibaba in ticketing, and with Wanda in theater chains.

BoNuo's preferential treatments disappeared.

The ticketing market spoke for itself: the battle between Tu Piao Piao and Tao Piao Piao—Tencent was insignificant; beyond social features, they had no products they could do well.

After their All People Super God launched a new version, their pay-to-win nature became glaringly obvious; online activity plummeted, and revenue dropped like water.

Players raged: "A dog can't change its habit of eating shit—I won't play Tencent games again, I'm switching to Honor of Kings!"

Even many streamers were cursed by players; numerous paid streamers dared not stream anymore and switched to Honor of Kings.

The General Manager of Tencent Entertainment flew into a rage, screaming: "You're all idiots! Spent so much money, poured so many resources and effort into promotion—and this is how you handle it?"

The LightSpeed Studio team lowered their heads, not daring to speak; they really wanted to say, "Didn't you set our KPIs? Otherwise who'd want to harvest so fast?"

You can't have it both ways—there's no such thing as getting everything for free.

"I think LightSpeed has no reason to exist anymore. Reorganize—merge it with Quantum Studio." The General Manager waved his hand.

Thus, the renowned Lightstone Studio was born.

But Tencent didn't abandon mobile MOBA; it placed its hopes on TiMi Studio Group.

They didn't know Fang Hong had been pushing things behind the scenes—whether they knew or not made no difference; the version was going to launch anyway.

His involvement merely accelerated it.

Seeing All People Super God's player base drain away, Swan Castle didn't sit idle—it swiftly adjusted strategy to seize the market.

Honor of Kings launched multiple new heroes and events; skins for heroes Li Bai and Sun Wukong debuted in summer and became hot-selling items.

To increase user retention, it introduced login rewards, task rewards, and gacha events, encouraging daily logins to earn hero fragments, skin fragments, and other items.

Even without spending money, players could earn free heroes and skin fragments just by playing and logging in daily.

Additionally, by expanding tournaments—not only offline but also online, such as city and university leagues—it further enhanced the game's competitiveness and social attributes.

It also set task rewards on Bilibili: streamers who broadcasted Honor of Kings and completed designated tasks received rewards.

It cooperated with other livestreaming platforms too, offering rewards and heavily promoting them to expand influence and visibility.

Not only did it give them free broadcasting rights—it paid them to broadcast; Hero Glory and Honor of Kings became the two most popular livestreamed games.

Many small livestreaming platforms survived solely on these two games; livestreaming games were the风口 of this era.

It turned countless passersby into cloud players while letting them watch matches online.

Competitive gaming surged like wildfire.

It also launched a reward mechanism for inviting friends to register and form teams, using social networks to rapidly acquire new users and trigger viral growth.

Social fission was the fastest method—wasn't that exactly how Pinduoduo did it?

Seeing the opportunity, Xiao Wang registered a company in Shanghai called Panda Entertainment, bringing in investment from Company and several private equity funds, planning to launch Panda Live!

He also leveraged his own influence to invite celebrity streamers including Lin Gengxin, Da Baobei, Lin Junjie, Chen He, Ruofeng, PDD, and Yin Suwan, rapidly attracting massive users.

Ruofeng had originally been a Bilibili streamer, poached by Xiao Wang; Fang Hong knew, but didn't care—it was just one streamer.

What he was doing now was expanding Honor of Kings' influence and swiftly seizing the market—strike while the enemy is sick.

Once users formed habits, they'd keep playing this game.

He knew Tencent wouldn't give up; it would surely counterattack—its only problem was having no competitive product yet.

As competitors weakened and its own events rolled out, Honor of Kings' daily revenue exploded, reaching over eighty million yuan per day, peaking at one hundred million.

That meant if it earned 100 million yuan daily, in seven days it earned one hundred million U. S. dollars, and in a month, three billion yuan—utterly terrifying.

Previously, monthly revenue had been only 250 million yuan—but that was last year's early stage, and mobile internet changed forms every year.

Of course, this was only summer revenue; after this phase, it was hard to say—such high revenue could fund many things.

Not only did he repay Guangxian's money—fully settled within half a year—he also repaid Tu Piao Piao's investment capital, helping propel Tu Piao Piao to IPO.

He used the money to promote TikTok and continuously invest in technical development, completing the product's ecosystem.

He also planned to acquire Moonton Technology, the company behind the hit Southeast Asia game Clash of Peaks.

Now was the best time to acquire it—Moonton hadn't yet made Clash of Peaks; it wouldn't launch until next year—but the company already had a product: a card-based tower defense game.

Its market share was small, so now was the ideal time to acquire it—it wouldn't cost much.

Fang Hong assigned Gao Zhun and Zhang Lidong to handle this.

As for Pinduoduo, Fang Hong had abandoned it—the company had deep-pocketed backers and strong local government support and policy backing.

Going in wouldn't mean much — it was just grabbing a slice of the share, waiting for the IPO to boost the value, then selling it off. Just making a bit of money, with zero say in anything.

If he didn't have even a shred of speaking rights, then he wouldn't get on board.

Going in, he only wanted to convert traffic into cash. But a social e-commerce model like Pinduoduo was a bit pushy — it suited a social platform like WeChat, not the板块 under Chang'e.

On July 9th, it was the day before the release of "Journey to the West: Monkey King Returns."

This day was also Fang Hong's first day back at work. He hadn't worked in a long time, and the moment he showed up, all sorts of people came to offer their congratulations.

"Happy wedding, General Manager Fang!"

"Happy wedding, Principal!"

"."

Lu Dabo followed along, handing out wedding candies to each of them — these were wedding candies from his supermarket, which was basically helping his business.

"Thank you! Thank you!"

The place was instantly filled with festive cheer.

In the Oval Office, Fang Hong met with Chen Zhixi. The two were still discussing the matter of competing against the external environment.

"Same as before — Wanda has reduced our screenings for us, and Alibaba has throttled our traffic." Chen Zhixi said.

"Tencent didn't throttle?" Fang Hong said, startled.

"With them, money can smooth the way. WeChat and other social platforms rely on ad revenue to begin with — those divisions won't bother themselves with the fights in your entertainment板块."

Chen Zhixi explained, then continued: "It's Alibaba that struck at their very roots. The media companies under them have plenty of channels — UC, Weibo, Momo, and twenty or thirty other media outlets have all throttled our traffic."

Tencent really was like that — each business group was fairly independent. The matters of your entertainment division couldn't reach the divisions of WeChat, News, and so on.

Unless Tony Ma himself came down from above with an order to block it.

That would be a real clash of interests — like ByteDance in the previous life, or Alibaba now. Yutu still wasn't enough, and neither were the films.

Alibaba was different — Alibaba had movie ticketing, and several film and television companies, treating film as one of the cores of its grand entertainment strategy.

So even though Yutu's promotional and distribution capabilities were strong now, growing day by day, it still couldn't withstand the double pincer attack from Alibaba and Wanda.

Wanda reduced screenings, Alibaba throttled traffic.

But in the film and television field, they weren't all-powerful either. If they really could be all-powerful, no other film would have a way out.

This thing came down to audiences voting with their feet. Wanda reducing screenings wasn't no screenings; throttling traffic wasn't no traffic.

Wangyi could promote it themselves. Many films became hits precisely because Wangyi spread the word everywhere, by word of mouth.

And Chang'e Technology itself had several hundred million in traffic that could open up channels for Rabbit Tickets.

Wanda Cinemas wasn't the only dominant player either. Yutu itself had its own cinemas — using the advantage of Rabbit Tickets, it could just steer users to other cinemas.

It was all a matter of how to promote it — getting people into the theaters.

"Here's the thing — we can promote it through Social Fission. Anyone with kids at home, we reward them with movie tickets. A family of three or four, that's three or four movie tickets right there. Give them to the kids to watch, and the parents are all happy." Fang Hong said.

"Social Fission?"

Chen Zhixi had heard another new term — and a rather fresh one at that.

(End of this chapter)