Video Game Tycoon in Tokyo-Chapter 944: Envy and Covetousness
Chapter 944 - Envy and Covetousness
Belrade gave a brief opening speech, thanking every player in attendance and those watching the livestream.
These players, after all, were the most valuable asset of Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
He then began unveiling a wide range of data and achievements from the company's PC Battle.net platform to the public.
Total registered users had reached 500 million. Globally speaking, that meant one out of every fourteen people on Earth had at least registered a Battle.net account.
The platform's best-selling game: Counter-Strike, which sold 42 million copies before going free-to-play.
Peak concurrent players exceeded an average of 10 million, with tens of millions around the world simultaneously enjoying the joy of video games.
These figures left the three hidden industry giants in the audience quietly stunned.
Such a massive user base was almost hard to fathom.
They thought: If we had a platform like Gamestar's Battle.net, we could be generating far greater value instead of operating in near silence. It wasn't until these statistics were made public that they realized this seemingly unassuming platform had amassed such a huge player base—with enormous spending power to match.
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Finally, Belrade revealed the total number of games launched on Battle.net over the past year: 11,023 titles.
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Of these, more than 90% came from individuals or indie teams.
The remainder came from various game companies publishing their titles.
In the past, a home console would only see a few hundred new game releases a year.
It wasn't until the internet era of gaming that the scale of releases began to rise, maybe exceeding a thousand games annually.
But compared to Battle.net's enormous volume, console releases were just a drop in the bucket.
"Seems like I underestimated the PC platform,"muttered Ueto Hayakawa, narrowing his eyes, barely hiding his envy.
He imagined that even if each of those thousands of games sold just a few dozen or a few hundred copies, the collective annual revenue could match that of a top AAA title.
Gamestar's Battle.net took a 30% cut on all sales.
And that didn't even include Unreal Engine licensing fees.
Of course, licensing fees for Unreal Engine only applied once an indie developer crossed a certain revenue threshold.
Below that line, Unreal Engine was offered free of charge, making developers even more tightly bound to the ecosystem.
By now, the Battle.net platform had formed a highly self-sustaining and virtuous cycle.
At that moment, Ueto Hayakawa recalled the financial report his company released not long ago.
For the first time, their PC game revenue had surpassed $100 million in a single year.
While that wasn't a jaw-dropping figure for a company the size of Surrey Electronics, it was notable—especially considering that the PC releases hadn't even been part of their original plan.
Launching on PC had simply been a side deal with Gamestar.
But clearly, he had underestimated the potential of the PC market.
He now realized that Surrey should be releasing more games on PC.
However, the painful part was: for every game sold, Gamestar took a 30% cut.
"Maybe we should build our own PC platform, like Battle.net,"he thought."As soon as I get back, I'll assign a team to start building it."
Ueto Hayakawa felt his trip here had been very worthwhile.
At the very least, he had discovered an entirely new path.
Meanwhile, the other hidden titan, Hack Brown, was also deeply impressed by Battle.net.
Gamestar had gathered countless talented game developers to publish PC games on their platform.
Ordinarily, the PC was an open platform—you didn't necessarily need a central channel to distribute your game.
But a platform like Battle.net acted as a massive showcase.
If your game wasn't good enough and didn't have this kind of exposure, it could be dead on arrival.
And that wasn't just speculation.
Plus, piracy outside Battle.net was rampant.
That wasn't because Battle.net had poor anti-piracy measures—on the contrary, it offered such a high-quality legitimate service that players were happy to stay.
It had everything: forums, mod workshops, achievements, and social features. These were hard for players to give up.
So they willingly remained on Battle.net and paid for the experience.
At the same time, Hack Brown was now considering launching his own PC platform.
He could start with his company's flagship MMORPG Mystic Dragon's Treasure, using that to draw in a player base, then use his own popular shooter and action games to further attract fans of premium titles.
Given the popularity of his games, he believed he could secure a solid share of the market.
Previously, he had simply thrown his games onto existing PC platforms without much thought. Now he realized how much money he had left on the table.
Even if future sales stayed the same, he figured it would still be worth it—at least no middleman would take a 30% cut, and that money could go directly back to him.
"Much better than giving it to Gamestar,"he thought.
Both Ueto Hayakawa and Hack Brown were now thinking the same thing:
"Yeah... it's time to build a PC platform team."
As for the third man, Myron Case, CEO of MicFo, his thoughts weren't on Battle.net's small margins.
Besides, his company had never released any games on Battle.net, so he had no idea how much Gamestar was actually earning.
But just hearing about 500 million users and peak concurrent users exceeding 10 million was enough to make his heart pound.
Those numbers were terrifying.
If it were him, he'd probably be grinning ear to ear.
"When will our MK series phones have that kind of user base?"he wondered.
Honestly, Myron Case had always believed his MK line of smartphones was revolutionary—a product that could've attracted massive users. It wasn't supposed to end up like this.
To date, his MK smartphones and PC division combined only had about 100 million users.
He felt that was a massive letdown. He never imagined it would be only that.
