Recently, it has been rumored that Blizzard negotiated the "return of the national server" with a number of domestic game manufacturers, and finally chose to re-cooperate with NetEase. After the cooperation is confirmed, the two parties need to rebuild the national server operation team and test the server and related systems, so the game may have to wait for half a year or more to be launched.
However, at the beginning of this year, NetEase and Blizzard's "breakup" was in an uproar, and NetEase once accused "Blizzard Green Tea" and "Blizzard has no heart". And NetEase, which once reprimanded Blizzard, now plans to reunite with Blizzard.
This news coincides with the recent ** stock price, is it too much of a coincidence?However, under the influence of the current policy of "strong supervision", I am afraid it is still difficult to recover the general trend of game stocks.
Recently, speculation has emerged that Blizzard will re-enter the Chinese market.
On December 15, some players said that they had received a text message notification from NetEase, which clearly marked "[NetEase] Warcraft Returns!".For the first time!It's free!".
Although the text content mainly describes the promotion of the new version of "Diablo: Immortal", the words "Return of Warcraft" with special emphasis seem to convey some kind of sign, suggesting that NetEase may once again be responsible for the domestic ** work of the Blizzard series of games.
People familiar with NetEase who have been in contact with NetEase have said that during the renewal process, Kotick clearly required NetEase to pay nearly two years of honorarium in advance, with a total amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, in order to achieve the effect of allowing Activision Blizzard to submit better financial reports, so that the deal with Microsoft can be successfully completed by the end of June this year.
However, in NetEase's view, such a strategy involves financial fraud and has violated its bottom line, so it has no choice but to terminate the cooperation.
It has been reported that for the next agreement with NetEase, Blizzard has set the following strict conditions: The first condition is to require NetEase to receive more than 50% of the total revenue and net profit from NetEase from the contract period from 2019 to 2022 in the futureThe second condition stipulates that the ** of all Blizzard games must remain global uniform, and the price of Chinese games is generally 20% lower than that in other regions, but now it must be increased.
In addition, NetEase also needs to follow the model of "Diablo Immortal" to develop mobile games under Blizzard's other IPs and release them globally, but only enjoy the operating revenue share from the Chinese market.
Many industry insiders believe that this is actually Blizzard's attempt to use its strong brand influence and rich value-added services to get the lion's share of Blizzard's game operation dividends from NetEase.
According to foreign media reports, Kotick will officially step down on January 1, 2024. He said in an internal email: "I have made my position clear many times and will do my best to help make the transition smooth." I strongly agree with the expectations of the whole society that our team and loyal fans will be able to integrate smoothly through the joint efforts of all of us. ”
According to a person familiar with the Warcraft project, Kotick's departure will undoubtedly have a significant impact on promoting NetEase and Blizzard to rebuild their old relationship.
Because Blizzard has decided to return to the Chinese market, it is undoubtedly a great importance to its game market position. On July 15 this year, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra publicly responded to questions about Blizzard's game national servers in a live broadcast.
When asked by an audience whether the server in Chinese mainland is expected to reopen this year, Mike Ybarra replied in the affirmative, promising that he firmly believes that the Chinese server will return to the public eye as soon as possible, and is also actively engaged in this task.
Looking back on October this year, the news of Microsoft's successful acquisition of the game giant Activision Blizzard has finally settled. However, Microsoft has remained silent about when Blizzard will actually return to the Chinese market, and has not disclosed any details.
However, all of these dramatic events began on the afternoon of December 22 this year, when the likes of many well-known game companies began.
By the time of the day, the stock price of NetEase, a well-known Internet company, had fallen sharply by about 2460%, and its market value has lost nearly 130 billion Hong Kong dollars.
Also suffering a heavy fall is Tencent, whose stock price has risen by 1235%；The share price of the Bilibili animation platform, which is popular among young people, also fell by 967%。
The day after the draft regulation was officially released to the public, the relevant person in charge of the National Press and Publication Administration immediately responded, making it clear that they would conduct in-depth research on the draft and promised to make further revisions and improvements to the draft after fully listening to the opinions of relevant departments, enterprises, users and other stakeholders.
At the same time, at the same time as the release of this consultation draft, on December 22 this year, the National Press and Publication Administration announced a new round of imported game version list, with a total of about 40 games initially approved.
Then, just three days later, on December 25, the National Press and Publication Administration once again decided to broadcast a total of 105 game versions to the outside world.
Obviously, the introduction of the draft regulations is not aimed at forcing the development of the gaming industry to stagnate in a "tightly controlled" way. In the face of the current situation that the market expectations of the game industry are not optimistic, it is particularly important to scientifically interpret the content of this policy and enhance market and social confidence.
Why did the market show such a strong shock to the fact that this regulation mainly focuses on the regulation at the "content" level, rather than restricting the development of the entire industry as a whole?
From a macro perspective, it is clear that a variety of uncertainties at home and abroad have been the driving force behind the overreaction in the Chinese market.
First of all, China's economy is currently experiencing a period of "ups and downs, zigzag forward" economic recovery, while the overall trend of the global economy is showing a downward trend, the domestic market still has many unstable factors, and the overall market expectations are relatively fragile.
Secondly, the current complex international political situation has also had a certain impact on the growth rate of the domestic market, and the overall confidence of the market is quite lacking, so any wind and grass on the market will cause huge repercussions, and investors have always been difficult to relax their vigilance in the market turmoil. As a result, "stabilizing investment expectations" will be the key to addressing potential market problems, and investor confidence is at a premium, especially in the current uncertain Chinese market.
Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that NetEase wants to use this wave of news to revive the sharp fall in the previous day.
Although NetEase was silent, Blizzard China gave a response, who is hanging whom, and who is begging whom, it is estimated that only NetEase itself knows.
The **all** in the article is on the Internet, invaded and deleted.