Global Monopoly of Technology

The latest website: Time goes by day by day, and the WRPO event finally came to the day of the finals.

On the last day of the event, the morning was the final of "Warcraft 3". The two sides of the battle staged the "Papaya War" again. This year's WCG champion from the Netherlands directly advanced to the WRPO round of 16 Grubby, who passed the test all the way. Reached the finals again.

And his opponent is Moon, who also played in the WCG finals, a Korean player who is called "Moon Demon" by players in the circle.

It is worth mentioning that the two teenagers, Like and Infi, under the BTG team, were eliminated, and their experience in the competition was obviously insufficient, and they were absent from the peak duel of this event.

Infi was placed in the death group and lost the qualification prematurely. Like was farthest to the top eight and was easily taken away by Moon.

The first WRPO lacked the old rival Sky, and the young players simply couldn't hold back the long-established top players, which led to Grubby and Moon appearing in the "Papaya War" together.

The final result was a repeat of this summer's WCG finals. Moon Demon failed to avenge WCG's revenge at the WRPO finals, and missed the "Number One Player" trophy, which represents the highest honor in e-sports.

Tears spilled over the arena again, as if yesterday had reappeared.

And Guabi Grubby became the biggest winner of the Warcraft project in 2008, and at the same time won the WCG championship and WRPO championship this year, which are the two most valuable trophies in the field of e-sports so far.

Grubby also successfully won the "Number One Player" honor of Warcraft in 2008, and successfully took home the RPO trophy of the first Warcraft project.

After Grubby won the championship, Luo Sheng appeared on the field again and personally awarded him the "2008 World of Warcraft No. 1 Player" certificate of honor certified by the WRPO Organizing Committee, and took away a bonus of 300,000 US dollars.

As an individual event, Grubby has exclusive access to the $300,000 (before tax), and can take photos with the world's first-class super-rich. Also envious of others.

Perhaps the most distressed is Moon, who was one step away but missed. After that, WCG was once again smashed into the hands of the deadly enemy.

But there is only one champion.

The final of "FIFA" started at noon,

In the afternoon, it was the final time of the CS team competition. The two teams were Fnatic from Europe and the United States and wNv from the mainland.

In the end, the wNv team narrowly defeated Fnatic, the CS RPO trophy was successfully retained in the mainland, and the wNv team also successfully took away the championship bonus of 1.2 million US dollars, which is 8.2 million yuan in soft sister currency at the current exchange rate. With more than 6 million yuan, the six wNv players can receive an average of 1 million yuan in prize money.

For them, it was a rhythm of getting rich overnight.

During the final, some family members of the team members also came to watch the game secretly. In order not to affect their game, they did not tell them.

Witnessing all of this with my own eyes, I understand that the children are not playful, they are really serious athletes, and after seeing the championship and winning millions of yuan in prize money, I no longer object to them playing e-sports.

too real...

At 18:00 in the evening, on the main stage is the finale of the final finale project WRPO "StarCraft". If it is said that which project is selected to represent e-sports, "StarCraft" is an undisputed project.

E-sports came into being because of Interstellar. In a sense, the development history of StarCraft is the history of the birth and fortune of e-sports.

Both sides of the battle are Koreans, which is impossible. The Koreans' current dominance in Interstellar is almost inexcusable. The top 32 in the Korean sub-division can pull out almost any non-Korean players.

The interstellar competition is probably the most competitive. Starting from the quarter-finals, all the players have tried their best, not to mention anything else. The championship prize of 300,000 is exclusive to one person.

"Ze Bing Li Shuang", known as the Four Emperors of the Contemporary Interstellar, joined hands to advance to the top four, namely, Jaedong, Bisu and Stork.

The 16-year-old Terran player swept the old rival Stork in the semi-finals and took the lead in advancing to the final. Bisu, known as the strongest Protos player in interstellar history, sacked Jaedong, the Zerg player known as the "Great Demon King", and advanced to the final with a player three years younger than him. Compete for the final championship trophy and that $30 bonus.

In this BO5 game, Bisu once again staged the tragic ending of his personal career, and he became the runner-up in a highly valuable event.

This also made the topic of the first WRPO event even hotter.

The result of the game was a 3-1 victory over Bisu, winning the cup and taking away the $300,000 first prize.

And this 16-year-old South Korean star player has been out of control since the end of this year, and his career has been out of control. , can even become a unique player.

With Luo Sheng appearing again and appearing on the stage, after completing the award of the "Number One Player" honorary certificate to the first WRPO Interstellar Champion, the first WRPO event came to an end.

Finally, the WRPO Organizing Committee announced the location of the 2009 Second World Number One Player Competition.

So far, this four-day global e-sports carnival feast has finally come to a successful conclusion.

...

Luo Sheng left Shencheng that night. The first WRPO event was quite successful, although the final financial audit data showed a loss of 47.42 million yuan, which is equivalent to burning 12 billion yuan for this competition.

However, Luo Sheng never thought that he would make a profit in the first session, and only lost more than 40 million. He was surprised that there was no 400 million.

It can be seen that the potential and prospects of e-sports are promising.

By the next day, the WRPO event was covered by The Wall Street Journal and an article by a Wall Street analyst was published on the secondary page of the paper.

This article is about the user scale and business prospects of the global e-sports industry.

The Wall Street Journal claimed that in the four days of the WRPO event, it directly or indirectly led to a consumption scale of about 1.75 billion US dollars (11.9 billion yuan) in the local area. The article praised the commercialization of WRPO and emphasized the electronic The current user scale of competition may have exceeded 50 million globally, and its business prospects may need to be re-evaluated.

These news undoubtedly made people turn their attention to Luo Sheng again. At the beginning, he spent more than 10 billion to deploy the global e-sports industry. The e-sports division of Bluestar Technology Group created the WRPO event brand, and many people were not optimistic.

As a result, it seems that now, oh my go, the commercialization potential of the e-sports industry is still good.

It has to be said that Luo Sheng now not only has a large number of blind admirers in China, but also more and more people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street are flocking to him one after another.

In their eyes, this son of the Internet is simply the representative of miracles.

He has never overturned a car, and has maintained a state of victory in both the technology and business worlds.

It's unbelievable, and it's impossible not to make people worship it blindly.

Although many people do not want to accept their subjective wishes or even believe them, they have to believe the facts in front of them. The people who follow him basically profit. On the contrary, they are heartbroken and regret not following the trend at the time.

Now there are suddenly more people studying e-sports than before. There are various signs that this industry may really develop and expand to a market size of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars as described by Luo Sheng at the beginning. industry.

If this is the case, Bluestar Technology Group will become the overlord in the field of e-sports, and the latecomers are basically difficult to shake.

There is no capital that dares to play like Luo Sheng, so I am afraid that no one wants to overturn the status of the WRPO event brand, then Bluestar Technology will definitely dominate the gaming industry.

...

At the same time when the WRPO e-sports event was held in full swing in Shanghai, a team in Tokyo, Japan next door was also stepping up the arrangement of another large-scale event, and it still belongs to the industry of Bluestar Technology Group.

That's right, it is the first concert of the virtual singer Hatsune Miku, which is under the "Virtual Idol" plan.

E-sports, which have generated widespread popularity in China and Europe and the United States, do not seem to catch a cold in Japan.

Also, the small book lacks interest in e-sports, and can even expand the scope. Most gamers in Japan are console gamers, and there are not many PC players.

It is not surprising that e-sports has not caused much movement in Japan. At present, the three mainstream e-sports projects CS, Interstellar and Warcraft are all PC online games.

However, there are still some Japanese dead houses who have paid attention to the Shanghai WRPO e-sports club. Of course, their focus is not the e-sports itself, but the virtual singer Hatsune Miku that is linked with WRPO this time.

During the WRPO event, Hatsune Miku was not the protagonist, e-sports was the theme, but because of Hatsune Miku, WRPO also gained some popularity in Japan.

This is the benefit of linkage.

...

Tokyo.

He Chao has been in Tokyo for more than a month. He is the head of the "Virtual Idol" project department under Bluestar Technology. There is still one week left before the first virtual concert of Hatsune Miku. It's time.

At this moment, He Chao is at the concert scene. It is a busy scene now, and the staff are nervously building the hardware equipment of the stage.

At this time, a staff member came to He Chao in small steps. He looked a little nervous. After seeing He Chao, he said cautiously, "What, there is a problem with one of the screens."

Hearing this, He Chao turned around and stared at the other party: "What did you say?"

The staff member said weakly: "We found that the glass plate was severely deformed, and there were cracks..."

He Chao took a deep breath, and the people around heard it and realized that there was trouble, and it was still at this juncture.

"Hurry up and notify the factory in the United States, and work overtime to re-build a brand-new one for me. Within 72 hours, I require the transparent glass screen on the stage to be complete." When everyone thought why Chao wanted to roar on the spot, He quickly calmed down and ordered.

Now is not the time to be held accountable.

Hatsune Miku's concert uses the projection imaging technology independently developed by Bluestar Technology, but it is not a real holographic projection technology.

Because Hatsune Miku is projected on a transparent screen, and the human eye looks three-dimensional and real.

He Chao's "Virtual Idol" project has total budget investment of more than 1.53 billion US dollars since the project was established, of which the research and development of projection imaging technology has eaten up a huge sum of 200 million US dollars of the total budget. Production is currently unavailable, and the R\u0026D department is also set up in the United States. The “Virtual Idol” program provides about 40% of the manufacturing and R\u0026D of hardware facilities in China, and the rest are overseas, mainly Japan and the United States.

In order to create a sense of three-dimensionality and realism, projection on a huge screen requires the use of many special projectors, and generates specially processed computer images. By overlapping these images to form a three-dimensional projection image, artificial intelligence technology is required here. 's assistant.

Using a transparent screen to project images is good and the effect is very good, but the disadvantage is that it cannot produce brightness, so the best effect is to hold a concert at night.

If the brightness of the projected image is increased, the transparency of the screen will inevitably decrease, which will make the audience aware of the existence of the screen.

In order not to reduce the transparency of the screen, the surrounding light must be dimmed, so there is only one compromise, and the virtual concert will be held at night.

However, this also means that the current technology still has a lot of room for improvement. In the screen, the best material is graphene. The screen made of this new material with ultra-high transparency can solve this problem. question.

However, technical problems are not urgent, and it takes time to invest in R\u0026D. Cote d'Azur is recruiting R\u0026D talents on a large scale, increasing the scale of R\u0026D investment, and output also takes time.

As for graphene, a new material, there is currently no mass-produced preparation technology in the world.

The accident did not delay the progress of the accident, and the plan was advanced according to the original arrangement. After receiving the news, the factory in the United States immediately expedited manufacturing and prepared to be shipped by air.

...

At the same time, the promotion of Hatsune Miku's first virtual concert has begun. There are a total of 6,280 tickets for the first concert. Except for the tickets that came with the "Virtual Idol" three-piece product, the rest The 5,500 tickets were sold through online channels three days ago and sold out in 1.88 seconds.

The enthusiasm of the dead house people greatly exceeded the organizer's expectations.

It is worth mentioning that the "virtual idol" three-piece product with a retail price of 19,999 yuan in Japan has now sold 1.87 million sets, which greatly exceeded expectations, with sales reaching 2.465 billion yuan. sister coins.

It is a best-selling product if the sales volume exceeds one million, and the three-piece set is not cheap. It is equivalent to a retail price of 193 US dollars without exchange rate changes.

It can be seen that the consumption of dead houses is powerful.

Over the past year, the "Virtual Idol" project in charge of He Chao has also continued to develop. Hatsune Miku has released three official albums one after another, of which the second album is the best-selling, and has won 980,000 worldwide. The sales of copies almost broke one million.

And these days, Hatsune Miku is attracting fans all over the world as a virtual singer, and Japan's fans and enthusiasm can be said to be the highest.

However, if the costs are shared equally, whether it is album sales, or the sales of the three-piece set of film and television soundtracks, games and sound production software, it will still be a loss.

This project was originally intended to operate at a loss for ten years, so the loss is not unexpected.

As for the current development of Hatsune Miku, for He Chao's operation team, it is also happy to lose, and relieved to lose.

On the second day, the "Virtual Idol" Operation Department of Bluestar Technology Group promoted the publicity of Hatsune Miku's Tokyo concert, and released a top-level CG promotional video with a length of 290 seconds, which is the theme video of this Tokyo concert. .

Well, when seeing the picture quality of this promotional video, the first feeling of fans and audiences is that the funds are burning.

And this CG publicity cost is a sky-high price of 17.98 million US dollars.

If you want to recover the cost of this CG promotional film by holding this concert, it would be a fantasy. The concert tickets were sold out, but the total revenue was just over 900,000 US dollars, which is less than a fraction of this promotional film. Even if the concert is sold out During the period, the surrounding authorizations, figures and other income are all included, and the comparison of the numbers is also a drop in the bucket.

What's more, the other investment in holding this virtual concert is also added.

The amount of money invested can also indirectly reveal the ambition of Bluestar Technology Group. To build an epic IP from scratch and eventually make it a cash cow, it has to be cultivated with blood.

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