The last piece of good news was about Future Technology's Phantom helmet.
In early April, Future Technology held a special VR game industry summit in the Silicon Valley branch of Los Angeles and invited hundreds of well-known game manufacturers around the world to sign a VR technology sharing agreement.
As early as the beginning of last year, Future Technology opened up VR software development tools at the request of all parties. However, because there was no supporting training organization, major game manufacturers made extremely slow progress when porting their games to the VR platform. And except for major manufacturers such as Microsoft, Sony, Sega, and Ubisoft, almost no one had the financial resources to rent a supercomputer as a server for their own game.
It was precisely because of this that until April this year, there was still no large-scale VR game other than Godly Land on the market.
But now this situation would soon end.
Based on the signed VR technology sharing agreement, Future Group would send technical consultants to major game companies to train a group of technicians who could use basic VR development tools. Future Group would hold 5% of the shares of these game companies participating in the agreement in the form of technology shares. These 5% shares would allow Future Technology to obtain a seat on the board of directors of each game company.
However, Future Group promised to exercise only limited voting rights on the board of directors.
At the same time, in the latest update of the Phantom helmet, the icon of VRgame was added to the menu interface. Although it was currently only a black box, it only popped up after clicking on it.
VRgame's positioning was similar to Steam on the PC, and users could purchase games through VRgame. All companies that joined the technology sharing agreement would be eligible to join VRgame. For games sold by other companies, Future Technology only charged 20% of the total sales as channel fees, and charged relatively low rent based on the server resource occupancy.
Because of technical reasons, Future Group completely blocked the possibility of piracy in the channel, and VR games were the development direction of the next era. Therefore, as soon as the VRgame application was launched, it immediately attracted the attention of countless game manufacturers.
Some even directly announced at their own company's shareholders' meeting that they would devote all their energy to the development of VR games and completely abandon the pirated PC field.
At the same time, the launch of VRgame also gave Hua's game manufacturers hope to rise. At the beginning of 2000, there were still many outstanding standalone games in Hua, including Meteor Butterfly Sword, Ancient Sword Tales, and Sword Sealing Demon Chronicles. However, these masterpieces that once had the potential to compete with the Japanese game companies all died in the hands of their own people. Before he could even step out of the country, he was already bankrupted by pirated discs.
The Legend of Sword and Fairy series, the only series that had managed to survive to this day, had also started to sell their sentiments to make money.
However, this situation could end now.
All VR games were run on Future Group's servers. Any server rental application without copyright registration would be rejected. In addition, the theme problem that worried some national game manufacturers could also be perfectly solved in VRgame.
The platform's built-in translation system made language not a problem at all. Even if the game didn't pass the review in the country, it could be sold in Xin and conquer the global market. The "loophole" in the Phantom Helmet also allowed players from other regions to buy games sold in Xin. In other words, as long as your game was good enough, even if it was released in Xin with a population of less than 100,000, the sales would still exceed 100 million.
Could the people from the incineration department go to Xin and burn your server?
Based on the relevant regulations of the WTO on virtual products and services, games sold across borders were tariff-free, so there was no problem of tax avoidance.
It was foreseeable that in the next few years, a batch of high-quality VR games would emerge from the Phantom Helmet, and the unique landscape of Future Technology would change to a landscape of blooming flowers.
…
Microsoft Game Studios, or MGS, was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft that developed and published games for Windows-based personal computers and Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles. The games it developed spanned from RTS to RPG, and its representative works included the well-known "Age of Empires", "Fable", "Rise of Nations", "Halo", and "Freedom Lancer". It was not an exaggeration to call it the world's "richest" console game company.
For this industry summit, Future Technology, of course, invited MGS, and MGS's CEO, Aiden Nelson, personally flew to California.
After attending the VR Game Industry Summit in Silicon Valley, Aiden walked out of the venue with a gloomy expression. He immediately flew back to Redmond, Washington and went straight to Microsoft headquarters with his suitcase.
He handed his suitcase to the assistant, stood at the door of the CEO's office with his briefcase, took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and walked in.
Just as he had expected, CEO Satya Nadella was at work. When he saw Aiden enter the door, Satya put down the pen in his hand and looked up at him.
"What's the situation?"
Aiden opened his hands and didn't know how to answer. He just took out a document from his briefcase.
"This is the VR technology sharing agreement given by Future Technology. The fruit they offer is very sweet, but the conditions … "
After thinking for a long time, Aiden spat out a word.
"Very harsh."
Satya didn't seem to hear the words of his subordinate. He flipped through the document and pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose.
Half an hour later, Satya put down the document in his hand, picked up the pen on the side, and signed his name at the end.
"Not bad."
Satya looked at the name and gulped.
"Are we really going to let them control MGS? Although it's only 5% of the shares … "
"Looking at it from another perspective, paying 5% of the shares to keep MGS alive is not a bad ending." Satya snorted and shook his head with a smile.
Giving up 5% of MGS's shares was equivalent to spending 500 million to join this agreement. Using only 500 million for the possibility of entering the virtual reality field wasn't a bad deal no matter how one looked at it. What's more, Microsoft didn't have much choice.
The launch of VR equipment was like an industry reshuffle. In this reshuffle, even a small workshop with a market value of 1 USD could become a multi-billion company that dominated the VR game market in the future. It was certain that those small-scale game manufacturers must have signed without hesitation. If Microsoft hesitated at this time, MGS might even be left behind by those small companies in the VR field.
What's more, in the agreement, Future Technology also promised to compensate companies with a high market value. This compensation was mainly reflected in the tilt of training resources. Large companies had a richer talent pool, and Future Technology would also send more technical consultants to "help" them familiarize themselves with development tools.
They were a family anyway.
"MGS's next strategic goal is to port Minecraft to VRgame. The only requirement is to occupy the sandbox game market and be ahead of all the other companies! "
Microsoft spent 2.5 billion USD to purchase Minecraft and originally planned to use it on the newly launched HoloLens. However, the sales of HoloLens had already proved their first defeat in the VR field.
Porting Minecraft to a competitor's platform, in a sense, was equivalent to admitting defeat. But from another perspective, it was also a good choice. After all, it was not a wise move to fight Future Group on VR equipment with an absolute advantage.
But … was this really good?
Eden picked up the agreement and looked at the expressionless face of the group's CEO. He finally couldn't help but ask.
"Is this really good?"
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
