Back to 1995

Chapter 379 Upgrade

The general elections in America every four years have reached the hottest time, and the whole of America has become a large-scale show. Candidates from all walks of life who aspire to become the general have begun to work hard in various media and various occasions. Promote yourself and promote your own ideas.

From the posters in the streets and alleys, you can vaguely see something. The current commander-in-chief is the most powerful. Whether it is from the TV station media or the posters on the street, the commander-in-chief is the best, and then the elephant party launched it. Dole.

In addition to the Donkey Party and the Elephant Party, there is also Perot, the founder of the technology giant EDS who canvassed for himself as a third-party candidate. How much support you get, basically accompany you throughout the whole process.

And in this atmosphere, "Diablo" appeared on the streets of America, and it was quite different from those canvassers. Those who bought "Diablo" were basically young people and Most of them are veteran hardcore game users. These people don't care at all about who is elected as the commander-in-chief, but at least they don't care that much. If it is equivalent to a game...

Not only in America, but "Diablo" has started simultaneous sales in [-] regions around the world, from America to Canada and Mexico in North America, to England, France, Germany, Lao Maozi in Europe, and finally in Japan. Begin full sale.

Thanks to the overwhelming publicity and promotion, many game players have begun to have a little interest in "Diablo". Blizzard's brand awareness is far from being able to carry the banner, but it has more or less already With a little popularity, there was a long queue early in the morning in front of the largest "Game Station" flagship store in New York, which is rarely seen in today's game industry!
With sufficient supply, the stores of major game retailers in America are filled with "Diablo" discs.

Not only offline, but e-commerce websites such as Amazon and eBay in America, and Yeadex in Eastern Europe also launched the "Diablo" product in the first place.

In the ICQ office building, the office on the first floor belonging to Xueleshan was in chaos early this morning, and the phone rang one after another.

Song Yang, Irene, Greg, Marcus and others have all come to Xuele Mountain. Ken Williams and his wife, as well as the Blizzard staff, are constantly busy. As far as game studios are concerned, they are basically not in the mood to develop games today, and they are all waiting for the statistics of game sales to be released.

Those who are concerned about the release of "Diablo" today are not only ICQ and Sierra, but many Internet companies in Silicon Valley are also observing the Internet and the game industry to see what kind of sparks can be created.

Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and Wall Street institutions are also staring at ICQ. If the sales volume is good enough, the valuation of ICQ will also soar. On the contrary, ICQ’s large-scale investment in debt this year will become a failure !

"At present, "Diablo" has been fully released, and offline game retailers and online e-commerce platforms are already available for purchase, and sales are still being counted."

Ken Williams, Roberta and his wife, who have experienced strong winds and waves, also rarely felt a pressure at this time.

Knowing what Song Yang was paying attention to, Ken Williams said directly, "Xue Leshan online game platform has also been launched, and the number of downloaded users has exceeded [-]!"

Such a result, if for a new website, it has more than [-] download users as soon as it goes online, this result is already quite good, and the advertising company can already use the result to find the sponsor to settle the bill.

However, for some ICQ and Hotmail that directly attract traffic, double-clicking Xueleshan Online, which uses Yahoo, Netscape, IE, AOL and other large websites to attract people everywhere, can only be regarded as quite satisfactory. You must know that Hotmail used viral marketing before, but it did not work at all. Spend so much money.

"Use the reward mechanism. Xueleshan directly releases an announcement. Online users, for every new registered user, can get ten Xueleshan online platform game coins. These game coins can be used to directly purchase games on the platform!"

Song Yang said directly to the Xueleshan executives on Ken Williams' side that he wanted to play the head-grabbing method of fighting Xixi. This trick has been tried and tested. It is an upgraded version of viral marketing and a new way of cutting leeks.

"Issuing game currency directly?!" Ken Williams couldn't help but said, "If this is the case, users of that platform only need to attract six users to directly purchase the game of "Diablo"..."

Ken Williams is afraid, let Xueleshan online, the compensation is too miserable, you must know that the global price of Diablo is 59 US dollars, and now the Xueleshan online platform gets the game currency, and the price between the US dollar The exchange ratio is basically one to one, that is, a user only needs to pull six heads to be able to prostitute a set of "Diablo" for nothing.

There is another point that Ken Williams did not say, that is, the original launch of Sierra Online was to compete with other game retailers and distributors. If Sierra Online still adopts this kind of publicity method, then for users of other platforms, It is equivalent to drinking leeks. Think about it. On Xueleshan Online, as long as you pull a few heads, you can prostitute a game for free, and you will spend dozens of dollars in the game store. The balance is weird!

"It's all worth it. Let's make an announcement on Xueleshan Online!" Song Yang said to Ken Williams. Anyway, offending those game retailers won't happen just once or twice, as long as the game sells well. Well, those game retailers know that Xueleshan is cheating them, but they have to endure it for the sake of the dollar.

Cameron is a veteran game fan. He started to get in touch with games during the glory days of Atari. It was still the arcade era at that time, but now he has entered console games.

Early in the morning, Cameron came to the streets of Chicago and entered a game store. At this time, Chicago was still in a calm state, and the law and order were not bad. In addition to the broad daylight, those gangs tossed all night , At this time, they are all staying in their lair, and the streets are also the safest time.

As soon as he entered the store, a man in his 30s with tattoos on his arms picked up a copy of the "Diablo" game and threw it in front of Cameron, "The latest game, produced by Blizzard, all in America They're all on sale for $59!"

Cameron picked up the "Diablo" disc and glanced at it. He had watched the promotional film and expansion film many times. People have discussed the game and analyzed how the game is played.

Cameron looked around and saw that the small shop in front of him was almost full of "Diablo" discs or cassettes. Cameron, who was familiar with the game industry, couldn't help complaining that he didn't know how to develop this game. How much has the company of this game sold?

No matter what he thought, Cameron didn't stay idle, and directly cursed at the tattooed man in front of him, who was also the owner of the store, "Funk, Thomas, why don't you go grab it with those people from the Lame Gang!"

I don't know how many times I have been to this store. Cameron knows that the man in front of him looks like a gangster, but he is not a gangster. The two have known each other for a long time.

"$45!" Cameron yelled directly, gesturing to pick up a PC version of "Diablo". When discussing on the IGN forum, someone discussed that the gameplay of "Diablo" is different from that of consoles. It seems that you can use the mouse and keyboard to control the game controller. In addition, on the official website, it also revealed that there will be some "surprises" after installing the PC version. Cameron doesn't know whether it is true or not, but he wants to try it.

Hearing Cameron's offer, it was the turn of the store owner named Thomas to be unhappy this time, and Cameron uttered a burst of local Chicago slang, "Fuck, even the lame gang is not as cruel as you, Fifty dollars, this f*cking father only earns a dollar for your travel expenses!"

In order to promote "Diablo", this time, Sierra Mountain has left a lot of room for profit for various channel dealers, agents, and retailers. Just like Thomas in front of him, every time he sells a copy of "Diablo", he can Earning five or six US dollars is equivalent to getting about 10% of the profit of the entire Diablo. For other games, it would be good to earn more than 5% of the profit. Some even sell a few copies to make money. One dollar!

This time, Xueleshan still wants to stimulate sales, so that game distributors, stores, etc., will work hard to promote "Diablo".

After some haggling, Cameron bought a PC version of Diablo for fifty dollars.

Cameron's family background is good. His mother is a teacher and his father is an architect. Naturally, computers were configured at home early. When he came to the study and turned on the IBM computer, Cameron began to install Diablo.

After tossing around for a long time, after following the installation instructions, Cameron entered the "novice tutorial". After entering the game with the mouse and keyboard, for Cameron who used the keyboard and mouse to control the game for the first time, it felt jerky but Another special feeling.

When discussing on the IGN forum, Cameron also believed with many people that "Diablo" is an ARPG game like "Legend of Zelda". Two completely different games.

"This is the real ARPG game!" After familiarizing himself with the game operation and beginning to immerse himself in the game, Cameron manipulated the characters in the game. road.

After installing the game, when Cameron felt his eyes sore, he looked up and saw that it was already dark outside, and Cameron found that he had been playing for a whole day.

Rubbing his eyes, Cameron opened the webpage through the IE browser. The Netscape browser was installed in Cameron’s home before, but it was too expensive. It has crashed too many times since this year, so he had to replace it with IE browser.

Opening IGN with a browser, Cameron, who was going to "splash water" and express his feelings about the "Diablo" game, couldn't help but want to slap his mouth. At this time, the IGN forum was already "exploding"!
(End of this chapter)