Chapter 2616 Subsidies are marketing

Summer is not only the peak season for the film industry, but also for many industries.

For example, in mobile phone sales, most new mobile phones will be released in the summer, such as the latest flagship phone Aster5 just launched by Asda.

Another example is the gaming industry.

After the holidays, for many student parties, there is time to play games.

This summer, Changyou has a wave of promotions.

It mainly revolves around two games, "FIFA2K13PES" and "NBA2K13". Zhoubuqi originally meant omni-channel promotion.

However, taking into account Changyou's stock price and the brand of the game, some adjustments were made and a cooperation method was adopted between Changyou and Ziweixing International's game platform Steam.

Other channels still sell at the original price.

But on the Steam platform, players only need to spend $9.9 to purchase the digital version of "FIFA2K13PES" or "NBA2K13".

The original price of the game is $49.99 for the former and $39.99 for the latter.

Now Steam is promoting a wave of subsidy activities to reward new and old users.

In these two promotional games, players actually paid 9.9 US dollars on the platform, and Changyou’s final revenue per game was US$19.98.

It is equivalent to Changyou and Steam each paying a sum of money to gain their respective markets.

Changyou has won the two major sports game markets of football and basketball, and Steam relies on this powerful subsidy activity to attract more players to the Steam platform.

After more than half a month, the effect is very good.

"FIFA2K13 Live Football" sold an astonishing 6 million copies on the Steam platform during the promotion period. It is expected that the total sales volume will reach 10 million copies throughout the summer promotion season!

Although in this event, Steam will subsidize nearly 100 million US dollars to Changyou, it has also gained a large number of new users and paying users.

Changyou has also earned a lot of benefits. The revenue from each game is US$19.99, which is US$39.99 less than normal sales. However, this US$19.99 is the income received, and there is no need to deduct excess channel fees. At most, it is a loss of US$7. -$8.

But it can maximize the market share of "FIFA2K13 Live Football".

Price reduction subsidies are an important measure for Internet competition.

Compared with its competitor EA, Changyou has greater financial and resource advantages, allowing this game to gain market faster.

There are too many similar cross-industry subsidy businesses in the domestic Internet industry.

Just like JD.com’s promotion.

This low-price promotion comes from two types of subsidies. One is subsidies from merchants. Merchants give up a certain amount of profits to expand sales and gain market share; the platform provides certain subsidies to attract new users to the platform and gain competitiveness.

But this model is not popular in the United States.

The reason is that they have been injured.

During the Internet bubble crisis in the late 1990s, too many similar things happened. In order to acquire new users, major companies were actively adopting subsidy strategies.

For example, in PayPal, if a new user successfully registers, he or she will have $10 in the account; if an old user successfully introduces a new user, the old user can also receive a $10 cash reward.

It's just burning money to attract users.

Fortunately, PayPal's entrepreneurial team had clear ideas and quickly merged with Musk's X.com, so the intensity of subsidies can be appropriately weakened.

PayPal survived the bubble crisis.

But most Internet companies have died due to crazy money burning and subsidies. This has caused a collective trauma in the American Internet industry, and they are all frightened by the model of subsidizing users.

The domestic Internet was not so miserable, and there were not enough lessons learned. This made the domestic Internet industry really take subsidies to the extreme in its subsequent development.

It can even be called cruel.

Such as Douyin.

When Byte launched Douyin in the previous life, there were already many competitors in the market. How could Douyin stand out? It has adopted a series of amazing subsidy activities, not only to subsidize creators, but also to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala to subsidize users.

At that time, Douyin’s account had a total of 1.2 billion. The marketing team made a plan, saying that they wanted to spend 400-500 million for a promotional event during the Spring Festival. Zhang Yiming decisively rejected the plan, saying that if it doesn’t succeed, it will be a success. Opportunities When you come, you must increase the leverage to the maximum and invest all the funds in your account with all your might!

Then Douyin became popular and became a national product.

The Internet industry in the United States developed relatively early and over-developed the subsidy model at the wrong time, which caused huge trauma to them.

When domestic Internet companies such as Douyin, Pinduoduo, and Xiyin went overseas and relied on crazy subsidies to spend money to develop the market, all the Internet giants in Silicon Valley, including those in Silicon Valley, were fooled.

Many people believe that this strong subsidy model is not tenable. When time passes and the situation is not right, it is too late. The opponent has already seized the market with subsidies.

This is true for American Internet companies, and even more so for EA.

As soon as Changyou's subsidy strategy came out, it went all out to operate the two games "FIFA2K13 Live Football" and "NBA2K13 Basketball", and it was impossible for EA to follow up.

As a result, the prices of their games remain high and their market competitiveness is greatly weakened.

This cooperation between Steam and Changyou is an experiment between the platform and the merchant. Both parties are companies with Zhou Buqi. If he controls the market, the cooperation will go smoothly.

The effect is also surprisingly good!

After Joel Hart returned from France, he focused on doing this. When he heard Boss Zhou's call, he reported good news one after another.

The cooperation was a success!

Joel Hart said: "Steam will subsidize approximately US$200 million for this summer sale. But this has formed an event marketing, and many media and game bloggers have reported on it, creating a new world for us. The marketing value is no less than US$200 million. After the start of the summer season, the number of Steam users has increased by 20 million."

Zhou Buqi asked: "The marketing fee for a new user is US$10?"

"Just a little more!"

Joel Hart is delighted.

By attracting new users through this kind of subsidy, the cost will not increase but will be reduced.

Zhou Buqi nodded, "In the era of mobile Internet, the logic of traffic will play an increasingly important role. If you buy traffic outside, the price is too expensive. The best way is to create 'events' and pass them through Create an event that attracts attention and let outside media, institutions and social media take the initiative to report it.”

Joel Hart was convinced, "Create events to attract free traffic."

Zhou Buqi said: "Yes, there must be an incident. If there is no incident, then take the initiative to create it. You can even create some controversial incidents."

Joel Hart nodded and said: "Our marketing team should indeed have a deeper understanding of the traffic logic of the Internet."

"This model should continue."

"This is what I'm thinking about. After the membership service of the Steam platform is launched, we will include such promotions in the membership service."

"It can work over the long term."

"It is indeed necessary. I have already communicated with Changyou. It would be best to add such promotions to the Steam membership service from time to time."

Joel Hart has seen the benefits of this subsidized promotion.

It’s not just a subsidy, it’s a marketing campaign.

It can bring surprises and expectations to the market and players.

Now, Steam is developing a streaming membership service, which charges US$9.9 per month... This will be a business that Steam will focus on building in the future.

As there are more and more games, players will face increasingly difficult choices.

However, the budget is limited, what should I do?

Then we need to change the model and change "limited budget" to "limited time".

No matter how experienced a player is, he can only play games for up to 24 hours a day. As long as the monthly membership fee can satisfy the 24-hour all-nighters and still have a surplus, this kind of game streaming platform can be developed in the future, even like Netflix.

In the past, online movies were all on-demand.

Just spend $5 or $8 to order a movie and watch it online. Netflix has changed this model, from a "limited budget" on-demand system to a "limited time" membership system.

It's like eating a buffet.

The price is fixed, and you can eat as much or as little as you want in the restaurant, but the amount of food is always limited.

If it can really be done, then Steam may really dominate the gaming world.

Zhou Buqi said: "It doesn't necessarily mean Changyou. If the platform provides subsidies, I believe many game manufacturers will be willing to join in the future. Members of Steam can not only play all the games in the membership package for free, but also use Buy the latest popular games at promotional prices. In this way, the appeal of Steam will be revealed, and the value of Steam membership will be further amplified."

…

On June 14, "Thor 2" was officially released. This is the second movie released by Marvel Studios this summer.

Because Zhou Buqi liked the film's heroine Natalie Portman more, he also attended the premiere.

It's a pity that the movie was average and Portman didn't show any acting skills at all.

It's like fried chicken and French fries, which are quite enjoyable but are actually junk food.

Zhou Buqi returned to his home in Silicon Valley that night.

He found Senior Sister Zhen Yu in his study.

"Huh?" Zhou Buqi was a little surprised. He walked over and hugged her gently, "Didn't you go to New York?"

Zhen Yu pursed her lips, "I've just arrived a while ago, and I have something to tell you."

"Um?"

"Didn't I say that I wanted to buy Microsoft's stock? It's over."

"One billion dollars?"

This is Zhou Buqi's promise to Ballmer that he will personally invest a large amount of money to subscribe for Microsoft's shares, helping to increase Microsoft's stock price and stabilize Ballmer's position.

Zhen Yu nodded lightly, "Yeah, one billion US dollars."

Zhou Buqi asked: "Does the family still have money now?"

Zhen Yu chuckled and said: "There are still some projects to invest in farms, but...the project to acquire a rugby club has to be postponed."

Zhou Buqi didn't take it seriously, "The negotiation is not going well, so we may not be able to buy it. It doesn't matter. It's best if you can buy it. It doesn't matter if you can't. We don't know much about rugby."

Zhen Yu continued: "There are also collections."

"Well……"

Zhou Buqi scratched his head. He had promised senior Wu Yu that he would take her to New York to meet Rockefeller's family when he was free.

The Rockefeller family had long been unable to make ends meet, and had to rely on selling off their property to maintain a decent life.

All the stocks in the family business were sold, and the Rockefeller Building was no longer the property of the Rockefeller family. In the end, the only way left was to sell antique collections.

In the past few years, there has been a special auction of the Rockefeller family almost every year.

Since you want to sell it, you might as well trade it privately.

With large quantities, high efficiency, and strong confidentiality, the reputation of the Rockefeller family can be maintained, and those fine collections will not become a tool for art speculators to make money, and there will be no need to pay a large commission to the auction.

Zhen Yu said softly: "If we reduce expenditures in other areas and squeeze out more, we can have up to 200 million US dollars left this year for collection projects."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "There's no need to rush, take your time, buy a little every year, and that's enough. With Senior Wu Yu's character, I guess she has three to five years of enthusiasm, and that's about it."

Zhen Yu said with a smile: "Art collection is a long-term career. You can't just rely on passion. You have to take your time. There are so many precious collections at home, who doesn't like them? I am happy to see them."

Zhou Buqi said grandly: "If you like it, buy it! It's just money!"

Zhen Yu suggested: "You can go talk to the Rockefeller family. If it's just a part of the deal worth a few hundred million dollars, just raise it casually. If it's a big deal worth billions of dollars, you might have to sell or pledge the stocks." ."

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "Didn't we just invest US$1 billion in Microsoft? With this investment, we can start our art collection! When will a stock of US$1 billion be worth 10 billion?" If you have US dollars, you can sell it.”

Zhen Yu chuckled and said, "Are you so optimistic about Microsoft?"

Zhou Buqi said: "The family is big and the business is big. If any business is started, Microsoft's stock price can take off. Ballmer's current position is saved, but I guess... it may not last long."

The next day, Microsoft officially announced good news.

Microsoft's acquisition of most of the assets of UC Group for US$4.25 billion was approved by the US authorities, and the transaction was successfully completed!

Baidu also officially announced the good news that day.

Baidu's acquisition of part of the assets of UC Group for US$1 billion was also approved by the US authorities. There was no monopoly obstacle and the transaction was successfully completed.

That day, Microsoft's stock price rose 5.8%.

With the help of UC Browser, the capital market is optimistic about Microsoft's future development in the mobile field.

Baidu's stock price is even more exaggerated, with an increase of an astonishing 12.7%.

Zhou Buqi didn't pay much attention at all.

In three days, PayPal will be listed on the Nasdaq IPO.

This is the big deal!