App Store score 3.6. Why did Yuanshen, which has collapsed in word of mouth, topped the mobile game revenue ranking?

"Original God" can be said to be one of the most discussed games in the game circle recently, not only because of its various controversies, but also because of its ability to attract gold.

Forecast data from the Sensor Tower store shows that the total revenue of "Original God" will reach a staggering US$245 million within 30 days of its launch, surpassing well-known games such as "Honor of Kings", "PUBG" and "Pokemon Go".

However, the word-of-mouth of "Original God" has been declining after the public beta, with a TapTap score of only 4.8 points, and controversy similar to "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" has not stopped.

Why can it attract a large number of players and still make a lot of special profits when it "crumbles"?

Controversy, but also concern

Since the public beta, the discussion about "Original God" has not stopped, and its controversy has mainly focused on two aspects. One is that the style of the screen is similar to the game "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" developed by Nintendo. Fewer "Zelda" fans resisted.

Regarding this point, we also asked several Zelda players around us, and they said:

They are a bit similar, but the differences are quite big. Although they are all open-world games, whether it is the vastness of the world or the interactive design of a single scene, "The Original God" and "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" still have A certain gap.

If it is similar to "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", but only affects a small number of Zelda players' evaluation of "Original God", then "Original God" will be launched on PC, PS4 and mobile phone at the same time , It has triggered a greater evaluation controversy.

Should "Original God" be regarded as a mobile game or a console game? Different players may have different ideas.

If it is regarded as a stand-alone game, then it is easy to evaluate its quality. Compared with the mainstream 3A games, there is still a certain gap between the "Original God", which is also an open world game, for many reasons, but the most important one is krypton. Gold draw card design.

No matter what game it is, adding the design of the Krypton Gold card draw will definitely have an impact on the game experience. The purpose of Krypton Gold’s design is commercial revenue. To put it bluntly, it is to make money. If players can’t continue to recharge their money, they have to spend time and energy on quest materials, character levels, etc. Compared with the host’s 3A game which can freely explore the open world, Natural experience is bad.

The game design consideration of the 3A masterpiece is whether the game is fun enough and whether the creativity is unique. Krypton games must add revenue considerations to these premises.

And if "Yuan Shen" is only regarded as a mobile game, compared with many typified and fixed mobile games, the performance of "Yuan Shen" in terms of picture quality and interaction is indeed relatively better. In the mobile game market of China, "Yuan Shen" brings the common open-world design on the console to the mobile game, which is relatively new to many mobile game players.

Previously, open world designs mostly appeared on stand-alone platforms or PC platforms because the display of vast world maps and scene interactions required extremely high performance support. The performance of mobile phones could not support such high-quality and experienced games.

Nowadays, the performance of mobile phones has increased and can support complex games. In addition to "Yuan Shen", Tencent also has an open world game "Code: Breath of Earth", and NetEase has "Code: Ragnarok".

It can be said that open world games are one of the common development directions of major domestic game manufacturers, but "Original God" has the first-mover advantage.

The new genre can give mobile game players a sense of freshness, but it is not good on the host platform or PC platform. The controversy in "Original God" is actually that the judgment standards are different under different evaluation systems. It is foreseeable that this controversy will continue. Go down.

Whether it is similar to "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" or this controversy under different evaluation systems, although these have made "Original God" a decline in word-of-mouth, it has also gained a lot of attention.

Of course, just the attention brought by the dispute is not enough for "Yuan Shen" to obtain such high commercial results. What is more important is the business model and operational capabilities of the "Yuan Shen" developer.

Some are good at making games, some are good at business operations

"Original God" is not the first game to introduce common designs on console games into mobile games. The Pascal Contract released earlier this year is called "Moving the console 3A game to the mobile phone" with high image quality and high performance. Requirements, the 20-hour mainline game design that is common in console games, etc., all indicate its uniqueness on mobile phones.

"Pascal Contract" was even recommended by Apple. It was shown at Apple's autumn conference in 2019. After its official release, it did gain an excellent reputation. The App Store score reached 4.3 points and the TapTap score Up to 9.0 points.

Players’ evaluations of it are mostly praise, but there is still a certain gap between the performance of "Pascal Contract" and "Original God" in terms of commercial revenue. The former has only 11,000+ reviews on the App Store, while the latter has reached 170,000+. Not to mention the revenue of mobile games, the revenue of "Original God" reached 245 million US dollars within 30 days of its release.

Both games are relatively novel types in the mobile game industry. "Original God" brings an open world design, and "Pascal Contract" provides a high-quality and strong interactive exploration experience common to console games. It is for ordinary mobile game players. Both have good appeal, and the reason for the gap between the two is the business model and business operation capabilities.

The sales model of "Pascal Contract" on the App Store is a 45 yuan buyout system, while "Yuan Shen" is free to download and offers a variety of in-game purchases. According to the information published on the "Yuan Shen" App Store page, in-app purchases The price ranges from 6-648 yuan.

The more common creation crystal material is the material used to open the box of krypton gold. There will be a similar double sales discount for the first charge, and 160 crystals can be drawn once. According to the probabilities published on the official website of "Yuan Shen", the rarest 5-star characters and 5-star items in the game have a basic probability of 0.6% and 0.7%, respectively. You will win a 5-star rare character 90 times, and you will win a 5 star 80 times. Star items, under this slightly complicated sales mechanism, the revenue of "Original God" has been rapidly increased.

It is not unreasonable that the Krypton gold card drawing mechanism is popular in the mobile game industry. Although "Pascal Contract" performs well in terms of gameplay and player evaluation, the buyout system is indeed not particularly popular in the mobile game industry. The habit of domestic players It has not been established yet, and everyone is used to free.

Even Nintendo, which is known for its gameplay, has not escaped the limitations of the mobile game environment. Although mobile games are not Nintendo's main business area, it has actually made several mobile games in the past few years. Both the mobile games "Super Mario Run" and "Pokemon Go" launched in 2016.

Although they are all free games, the free version of "Super Mario Run" only opens a few levels. Unlocking all game content requires an additional $10, while "Pokemon Go" is a traditional Krypton in-app purchase design in the mobile game industry. Similarly, the performance of the two in business income is also very different.

"Pokemon GO" and its derivative IP have swept the world's players 2.5 billion U.S. dollars from its release in 2016 to 2019, and the "Super Mario Run" released in the same year had a cumulative global revenue of only 60 million U.S. dollars in 2018, and 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. This data is far apart.

Moreover, "Super Mario Run" is a self-developed product that Nintendo has spent a lot of time on, while "Pokemon GO" is only its authorized work, during which it only provided some suggestions to the game developer Niantic.

Even in the end, Nintendo admitted that the "Super Mario Coolpad" buyout sales model hindered the success of the game. The gold-absorbing ability of the krypton gold business model has been proven once again.

The above cases all prove that compared with the developers who are good at gameplay such as "Pascal Contract", the development company of "Original God" is obviously superior in commercial operation.

Some are good at making games, and some are good at business operations.

As for "Word of mouth crash", why are so many players downloading "Original God" and continuing to pay for it. This may be that many paying players are the "silent majority."

Silent majority

Sensor Tower’s statistics show that of the US$245 million brought in 30 days before the release of the original God, Chinese players contributed US$82 million, followed by Japan and the United States with US$59 million and US$45 million respectively.

Although the word-of-mouth of "Original God" is approaching collapse in the major domestic game communities and social media, there are still a large number of players downloading and paying. Is it that the negative reviews of the game and the paying players are not the same group of people.

The answer may really be this. The similarities between "The Original God" and "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" affect most of Zelda players or fans, and most of the console players are affected by the battle between console and mobile games.

Do ordinary mobile game players really care about the originality of the game?

We asked a few ordinary mobile game players around us. Most of them said that mobile games are just for entertainment and stress relief. They didn't take the initiative to understand the information related to the originality of the mobile phone, and they knew less about the relevant information.

If they can only represent a few people, we might as well look at the performance of the "majority".

As mainstream social media and social networking sites are flooded with negative reviews of "Original God", coupled with the high popularity of "Original God", players have begun to rush into Miyou, a game community developed by Mihayou. Miyoushe even ranked fourth on the App Store free social application rankings, and has remained in the top 50 for a long time since the release of "Yuan Shen".

This shows that there is a "silent majority" among the players. They don’t care about the originality of the game, they don’t have time to play, and they don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to buy a game console. They just want to pick up their phones for entertainment. They just want to get it through the game. happy.

Sometimes, what we see on the Internet is not all facts, and survivor deviations have always existed. The commercial success of "Original God" relies on most ordinary mobile game players.

This situation may not change in the short term. When players are familiar with free games, it will be even more difficult to return to paid games.

Of course, as players, what we are most looking forward to is a highly successful game like "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", which is both gameplay and commercial.

This requires the support of more ordinary players, so that buyout games and krypton games can obtain similar commercial returns. Whether it is console games or mobile games, more "The Legend of Zelda: Wilderness" interest".

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