Deserts, mountain streams, dense forests... The trailer brings players into a natural world full of traditional Chinese cultural conceptions at the beginning, and the many action details, gameplay design and even the exquisite soundtrack revealed later in the film are all amazing. Satisfies the player's appetite.
In China, the number of clicks on b website and Weibo reached 3.067 million times in just two hours, and the number of comments exceeded 40,000; while overseas, well-known game accounts such as ign and playstation simultaneously released on YouTube. The trailer also received a total of 141,000 views. Players have expressed their unspeakable excitement for the game, and are full of expectations for the transformation gameplay and magic weapon system such as the "Seventy-two Transformations" in the trailer.
"Black Myth: Wukong" game screenshot image source: "Black Myth: Wukong" official website
As a leading domestic game, "Black Myth: Wukong" pre-sales are extremely popular, with sales exceeding 100 million yuan , Showing players' high expectations for this 3A-level game (game terminology, usually refers to a game that spends "a lot of money, a lot of resources, and a lot of time"), it is reported that the development cost of the game is expected to exceed 400 million yuan, and its pre-sale price for the basic version is 268 yuan.
According to industry insiders, the hot pre-sale of "Black Myth: Wukong" not only reflects an important step in the quality and innovation of domestic games, but also reflects the strong market demand for high-quality domestic games. The pre-sales and market response of "Black Myth: Wukong" have also made the market look forward to the "spring" of domestic 3A games.
"The screen is full of Chinese style"
"The screen is full of Chinese style." This is the evaluation given by most players to this game after watching the trailer.
Whether it is the theme of Sun Wukong and "Journey to the West", or the Yuan Dynasty cultural relics based on real history - the Yuan·Blue and White Phoenix Head Flat Pot, as well as Dule Temple, Yuhuang Temple, Chongfu Temple, etc., "Black Myth: "Wukong" has been highly restored, showing the beauty of ancient Chinese architecture. As a game deeply rooted in the soil of Chinese culture, it not only inherits classics, but also uses innovative techniques to bring new vitality and vitality to traditional culture. .
Picture source: "Black Myth: Wukong" official Weibo
The buildings, scenes, characters and other elements in the game have been carefully designed. While striving to restore Chinese classical aesthetics, it also allows global players to feel the charm of Chinese culture. .
Behind this is the strong technical support of "Black Myth: Wukong". It is reported that the game uses Unreal Engine 5 and supports Nvidia's dlss technology, ensuring that the game can provide a smooth and high-quality visual experience on different hardware platforms. The game creates realistic objects, buildings and landscape graphics by scanning real temples, Buddha statues, forests, rocks, etc., and combines it with ray tracing technology to create life-like graphics and pictures. In addition, innovative gameplay such as "Seventy-two Changes" in the game brings players a new gaming experience.
official news shows that the game is expected to be officially released on August 20, when it will be launched simultaneously on all platforms of PC, PS5 and Xbox. Yang Qi, the art director of Game Science Studio, revealed on social media that the recently released final trailer may actually be the "penultimate trailer", suggesting that there may be a new trailer released before the game is officially unlocked, further Aroused players' expectations. Feng Ji, founder of
Game Science, revealed in an interview that the development cost of "Black Myth: Wukong" for players to experience per hour is about 15 million to 20 million yuan. The team estimates that the overall game time will be more than 15 hours, but the actual development time is more than 1.5 times that time. If this is used as a benchmark, the research and development cost will be at least 400 million yuan.
In addition, commissions taken by publishers and platforms will also be added to the cost. Generally, the platform takes 30%, publishers and channel dealers take about 40%, and the rest can be used as the developer's income.Calculated based on this ratio, without taking into account subsequent discounts and promotions, "Black Myth: Wukong" needs to sell at least 5 million copies at the original price to recover the original price.
Is the "spring" of domestic 3A games coming?
In fact, the pricing of "Black Myth: Wukong" is already the "ceiling" among domestic stand-alone games. The physical deluxe edition with bonus gold hoop (limited to 20,000 sets), and the physical collector's edition of and protagonist model (limited to 10,000 sets) are priced at 820 yuan and 1,998 yuan respectively. But currently, the physical collection version has more than 430,000 reservations.
As early as when "Black Myth: Wukong" announced the price of 268 yuan, some media posted relevant votes on Weibo. When answering the question of whether the price is expensive, 17,000 of the nearly 20,000 participants chose "not expensive." It is worth mentioning that at the same time, there are also buyout games on the domestic market where you can enjoy all the content of the game with a one-time payment, and the price is generally less than 100 yuan.
Is this the preference of domestic players for "Black Myth: Wukong", or has "Black Myth: Wukong" promoted players' increased price acceptance?
According to the "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2024", the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market was 147.267 billion yuan, of which mobile games accounted for 73.01%. With the booming development of mobile games, the in-app purchase system of setting up various charging points in the game and constantly paying for a better gaming experience is a model that Chinese players are more familiar with.
The buyout system is a commercial feature of 3a games, and it is also the "identity tag" that all previous winners of the four major awards in the gaming industry basically have. The pricing of "Black Myth: Wukong" this time is basically the same as other 3A games, such as "Red Dead Redemption 2" and "Assassin's Creed" series.
Why is there no other stand-alone production team in China that offers such a price for the first time? The fatal reason is that paying in advance raises the threshold for playing games, and the uncertainty of the quality of game content also increases. When a reporter from "Daily Economic News" interviewed Wang Pei, general manager of Sutu.com's game division, over the phone, he also said that he dared to make buyout games because he was confident in his own content.
Game industry analyst Zhang Shule said that stand-alone games are only a very niche field in the domestic market. Its overall bleakness, as well as its reliance on the "Three Swords" (Gu Jian Qi Tan, Legend of Sword and Fairy, Xuanyuan Sword) and Some independent game support. When browsing the Steam game store,
reporters also noticed that these "Three Swords" are often only priced at around a hundred yuan, relying on small profits but quick turnover. However, at the same time, the R&D expenses and player expectations of a single machine have not shrunk accordingly, and it is even more normal for the price to be discounted during the promotion season.
In contrast, online games and mobile games can create extreme revenue with minimal innovation. After the short-term explosion around 2000, stand-alone games can only become emotional retention under revenue pressure. At the same time, this is also 3a Zhang Shule analyzed the reason why games have not appeared in the Chinese game industry for 20 years.
This time, "Black Myth: Wukong" has been nurtured for many years in the "Nuwa Stone" of game science. It is finally about to be released, which has also given a lot of shock to the industry, and also made 3a, a Chinese gamer, gather together expectations and bitterness. The pursuit has come true. This is also the reason for its extremely high popularity and discussion.
In the context of intensified competition in the mobile game market, will the stand-alone market become a new choice for the game industry?
Regarding this, Zhang Shule believes that in the future, with the iteration of network updates, stand-alone games will continue to enrich their content, so the console game platform is also adopting a subscription model, and separate payments will be made for particularly outstanding works to maintain the attractiveness of the game platform. . The buyout system will gradually become the standard for independent games in the future, and 3A masterpieces will move towards a new stage of first-time payment, expansion pack renewal, and even free games and subscription payments.
Source: Daily Economic News
