After the high-definition Q version of Plants vs. Zombies wallpaper was made available for download on YY, it was downloaded more than 10 million times within a day. Just on the wallpaper download page, more than 100,000 users left messages. These users came from all over the world. Everyone’s Behind the nicknames, there is a small national flag of the country where they landed. A quick look at the comment page shows that they are all flag icons from all over the world. Messages in various national languages appear on the same page at the same time, which makes Li Mu suddenly feel as if he is on the same page. Browsing YouTube, the popularity of the game is evident.
Now, "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has only been online for two days, and its online number has exceeded 50 million. On the third day, the game's single-day sales of props and skins reached 3,500. Ten thousand yuan, its strong revenue capability impressed the entire industry.
Li Mu is someone who has been there and is very aware of the development trajectory of paid skins in games. As more and more people use paid skins, although other users’ normal games are not affected by any interference, the potential impact caused by aesthetics has been fermenting. , until one day, ordinary users can no longer stand the same original skins, and start to pay for it, never to return.
Li Mu can already predict how popular YY's skins and YY shows will be once they are designed. I am afraid that the single-pay YY show will be able to create a lot of revenue for the company.
It is said that all the game companies on the market are studying "Plants vs. Zombies Online" and are promoting the imitation route as quickly as possible. This even includes the famous Blizzard. Even they want to imitate "Plants vs. Zombies Online" , make a tower defense game.
However, even if game companies around the world try to imitate "Plants vs. Zombies Online", Li Mu will not worry at all, because he knows very well that the only non-replicable success condition for "Plants vs. Zombies Online" is YY.
Without YY, even Blizzard would not be able to promote a similar tower defense game;
Without YY, even Microsoft would not have been able to make netizens around the world crazy about this game;
Without YY, even if Steve Jobs and Nokia installed the same game on their mobile phones, it would not be possible to trigger interactions among players' friends on YY.
Anyone, and any company, who wants to make a similar game completely reach the height of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" must meet the conditions, that is, he must also have a social product that is highly consistent with YY, otherwise there will be no chance at all.
Both KFC and McDonald's have received an offer from Makino Technology to cooperate on the cartoon images in the game. Makino Technology's cooperation plan is: McDonald's or KFC will pay a certain amount of copyright royalties, and Makino Technology will authorize the packaging use rights of the cartoon images in the game. Give them so that they can print cartoon images on their product packaging. If they want to obtain the license to use derivative products, they have to pay extra, such as: dolls and dolls made using game cartoon characters;
In China, most companies use their own cartoon characters to produce various products and hardly pay a dime in copyright fees. But this is not the case in the United States. If any company dares to use its own copyright without authorization, it can He won the victory without any suspense in the American courts and demanded huge compensation;
Multinational companies such as KFC and McDonald's have had similar cooperation with many well-known copyright owners before. McDonald's cooperates very closely with copyright owners such as Disney and Pixar, and often launches products with Disney or Pixar cartoon characters as the core. Derive small gifts, and then combine them with the packages in your own store for promotional activities;
In addition to close cooperation with some companies in the United States, KFC also has very in-depth cooperation with Japanese copyright owners. For example, this year, KFC launched a "Doraemon" set meal, which was very popular in China. In addition to using In addition to the packaging with Doraemon's name and image, it also comes with a remote-controlled Doraemon toy. This toy is very popular among children.
However, neither of these two companies has had similar cooperation experience with local Chinese copyright owners. So far, all of China’s cartoon image copyrights have seriously lacked influence in the international market, whether it is Calabash Baby or Black Cat Police. Well-known domestic cartoon characters such as Chang and Shuke Beita are not recognized in the international market, even Sun Wukong is the same.
It can be said responsibly that the cumulative development results of China's domestic cartoons over the past few decades cannot compare to the global influence that "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has accumulated in the past three days. Not even close!
"Plants vs. Zombies Online" became popular all over the world in a short period of time, which also made the game's cartoon characters familiar to more than half of the world's people. Therefore, behind every cartoon character in the game, there is huge profit margin.
Therefore, when Makino Technology found two companies, both companies showed very strong interest.
Li Mu was very able to understand the pain points of these companies. He asked BD to find these two companies and propose cooperation intentions, but did not make actual quotations. At the same time, he released news to let the two companies know that he was working with them on the same matter at the same time. Negotiations create a sense of urgency for both companies.
Before "Plants vs. Zombies Online" became popular, there were countless competing products in the international cartoon copyright market. Even if one of the two companies found a cooperation opportunity in this market, the other party could also find other similar competing products, such as KFC has cooperated with Doraemon, and McDonald's has cooperated with Toy Story. They are all equally matched, and no one will be left behind by the other; if KFC takes Hello Kitty, McDonald's can also take SpongeBob SquarePants.
However, the current game market is not a cartoon animation market. At this stage, the only game that can be cartoonized and popular all over the world is "Plants vs. Zombies Online". If your opponent seizes this opportunity, you will It is very difficult to overtake.
Even if the global cartoon animation market is brought in to compete with "Plants vs. Zombies Online", it may not be easy, because the global cartoon market currently has a lot of familiar and well-known cartoon characters, and there is nothing new in the past two years. Cartoon images can become globally famous.
So this also involves an issue of heat.
The cartoon image of Doraemon is indeed very powerful. At least one-third of the people in the world know it. However, although Doraemon is famous, it has nothing to do with its popularity. It is as if everyone in China knows Doraemon. Little Soul Boy, although he was still well-known in 2015 and 2016, he was no longer popular. The appearance fee may not even be 100,000, but the little fresh meat who was popular at that time, even though he had just debuted for a year or two, due to the popularity High, the appearance fee is as high as several million, this is the importance of popularity.
Nowadays, all the cartoon images from the past century around the world have been taken out. Count them one by one, and there is no image or series that can be compared with Plants vs. Zombies. Therefore, for companies like McDonald’s and KFC, Makino Technology does not use this It’s okay to cooperate with the fast food industry if the image comes out. Once it is presented, you must try your best to get it.
The same goes for Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
These two families have been bitter rivals for decades. They are basically "mirror brothers". Whatever you produce, I will produce. If you produce Coke, I will produce Coke. If you produce Sprite, I will produce 7Up. If you produce Fanta, I will produce Meinian. Da, not only fights to the death on its own products, but also often spreads this kind of war against Maimang to other areas. If you cooperate exclusively with McDonald's, then I will cooperate exclusively with KFC, and the strategic partners are also sworn enemies...
Under such circumstances, "Plants vs. Zombies Online" suddenly wanted to discuss cooperation with both parties, which suddenly started the war. Moreover, if the party that loses the competition this time, there will be no other similar competing products to choose from.
Makino Technology's BD, under Li Mu's instruction, gave KFC, McDonald's, and Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola two cooperation plans for them to choose from:
The first type is that cartoon images are licensed on an annual basis. Each company will give a quotation for the annual licensing fee, and the one with the highest price will get it;
The second type is that the user promises the amount of display. For example, Pepsi-Cola can promise that the image of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" can be displayed 100 million times on their various products within a year, and Coca-Cola can promise to display it 200 million times, but who Whoever commits the highest number of impressions can obtain exclusive authorization. On this basis, Makino Technology only collects a symbolic copyright royalty of US$100,000 per year;
However, Makino Technology has a clear definition of display volume: for each product sold using an authorized image, the display volume is calculated once. If the actual display volume does not reach the promised display volume, Makino Technology will be compensated at a cost of US$0.2 each time.
In other words, if these companies want to obtain the image license of "Plants vs. Zombies Online", they must either pay more or produce more products related to the "Plants vs. Zombies Online" image.
Li Mu himself prefers the latter. What he cares about is not the annual licensing fee of US$100,000 or US$5 million. What he wants is to quickly sell Plants vs. Zombies through these companies with strong offline channel capabilities. The image of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has been promoted to offline areas around the world, filling the offline gap of "Plants vs. Zombies Online", enhancing the global influence of "Plants vs. Zombies Online", and increasing the popularity and influence of the cartoon images in the game. In terms of quality and gold content, it can be pushed to the top level in the world. This is what Li Mu wants most.
Online is Li Mu’s absolute advantage. If the Internet world is an ocean, then Makino Technology is the biggest whale in the ocean. However, no matter how strong the whale is, it will be difficult to become the overlord on land. For Makino Technology, the offline reality Society is equivalent to that "land".
The difference is that companies such as KFC, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola are all giants in the offline industry, which is what Li Mu lacks.
If Coca-Cola and Pepsi want to get the exclusive license for "Plants vs. Zombies Online" with the least amount of money, they must make the highest possible commitment in terms of the number of impressions. If Coca-Cola sells 50 billion bottles of Coca-Cola every year, Li Mu wishes they could directly With a commitment of 50 billion impressions per year, the image of Plants vs. Zombies can truly reach every corner of the world!
(End of chapter)