Text/Repair268 yuan, today "Black Myth: Wukong" finally announced the national pricing at WeGame Game Night.

In the past four years, as the content of the game has gradually surfaced, and after the offline public trial has been reassured, the focus of players' discussion has changed from "whether the game can be made" to "how much the game will sell".

Price is always the most sensitive thing for single-player players. There have been many cases of bad reviews due to pricing that does not meet user expectations. And this time, "Black Myth: Wukong" sells for 268 yuan, an unprecedented domestic price, but users say: "reasonable", "268 yuan is cheap", "so cheap? ”

Grape Jun feels that the domestic stand-alone market may really be about to change.

01

268 is not expensive

268 yuan, it must be expensive, and it is the most expensive in the context of domestic games.

Except for the whole price of a few games, domestic stand-alone machines have never been sold at this price. According to the statistics of Guoyou Sales Bar, the average price of 525 domestic games in 2023 is 32 yuan, and the median price is 28 yuan. Judging from the situation in the past 5 years, 100 yuan is the "dead line" of most national tours, and less than 70 yuan is the active price range of most national tours.

"Black Myth: Wukong" is priced three to eight times as much as them, and no matter how you look at it, this touches on the "blind spot" of domestic products.

But if you look at the 60 overseas traditional 3A masterpieces in the past 5 years, the average price of their Steam debuts in the country is 262 yuan, and the median is 298 yuan. Japanese games, in particular, are priced to a class of their own: Final Fantasy 7 Remake is 446 yuan, Forspoke is 446 yuan, and Resident Evil 3R is 414 yuan......

So if we define "Black Myth: Wukong" as a high-standard, big-budget game, the price of 268 yuan is actually not expensive. It's just that for a long time, domestic stand-alone games are often synonymous with low prices, and the country is also one of the low-price areas, this "abrupt" price is naturally particularly dazzling.

It is also because of this environment that domestic teams tend to be very cautious in terms of pricing, but this is not a good thing, because small profits are not necessarily more sales. In fact, many teams are stuck in a kind of loop by this so-called "low-price strategy":

After removing the sharing of distribution and platform, most of the R&D can only do low-cost projects, and then the category selection is also very limited, and can only be variants in several directions such as meat pigeon, simulation management, survival and construction - because the user base of these categories is large enough, the output ratio is high enough, and more playable content can be produced at a relatively low cost.

To a certain extent, this also explains why most of the domestic stand-alone games are indie games, and the results of slightly larger development scale are not satisfactory, especially for 3D action-adventure projects.

Because the embarrassment of this category is that the cost of wanting to do a good job is too high, but the market positioning is not up or down, and the profit margin is very limited.

A team of dozens of people, 3D appearance, development for several years, cost tens of millions, users will not classify them into the category of independent games, so the quality requirements will not be low; But compared with the real 3A game, this cost is stretched, coupled with the immaturity of talents and industry supporting programs, in the end can only come up with a relatively improvised.

So why can't manufacturers do a project with a big investment and a big return? This brings us back to the issue of market pricing.

Most of the domestic stand-alone machines are small profits but quick turnover, like "Ancient Sword and Legend 3" to such an extent, it can only be sold for 99 yuan. And if the pricing is raised to 198 yuan and 298 yuan, it will inevitably enter the context of overseas 3A masterpieces, and be compared with "Wolf" at 268 yuan, "God of War" at 279 yuan, and even "The Witcher 3" with a fracture of 38 yuan.

The first time the domestic team does a high-standard stand-alone project, can it beat these projects? No major factory in China dares to say this, because this thing cannot be quickly realized with money, and the talents, pipelines, and upstream and downstream industries behind it all need time and project accumulation.

So we naturally fall into the "chicken or egg" question:

In the case of limited profit expectations, it is difficult for large manufacturers with real resources to set up high-cost games, coupled with the cost of the same magnitude in China, they may only achieve half of the effect of overseas 3A, and the cost of trial and error is too high; The attitude of the players is understandable, and it is very natural to vote with their feet on the same platform, at the same price point. You haven't done as good as overseas 3A, why do you want me to buy it?

But we always hope that someone is willing to take a huge risk to break this cycle and give the market a chance to prove it.

So 268 yuan is not only the price of "Black Myth: Wukong", but also the new price anchor of domestic stand-alone: such quality, such a price, how many people will pay?

02‍

Black myth is not worth it

It's hard to say whether a game is worth it or not until you actually play it, and everyone's psychological expectations are different.

What we are talking about here is whether it is worth it or not, more about the investment in "Black Myth: Wukong", and whether the market positioning is worthy of this price.

Let's start with the first layer: scarcity. Some people will say that for the same price, can the quality of "Black Myth: Wukong" be better than the God of War Old Man Ring? But we also have to take into account the supply and demand of the market.

Maybe "Black Myth: Wukong" can't compare to these world's top masterpieces in terms of absolute quality, but you will never be able to play a Journey to the West-themed action game with such specifications in the hands of overseas manufacturers.

After all, most of the elements of traditional Chinese culture are foils in overseas triple-A, just like Chinese/Chinese actors in Hollywood. In terms of influence, it is completely inferior to Japanese ninjas, western cowboys, European knights and other themes.

The second layer: content volume, that is, the actual cost input. According to the situation that Grape Jun understands, the level design and task laying of the game may not be as mature as overseas 3A, but the amount of content is absolutely sufficient, and the number of bosses exceeds most ARPG games on the market.

Previously, Feng Ji revealed in an interview with Touch that the development cost of 3A games is about 15 million ~ 20 million yuan per hour. Grape Jun learned that the project cost is about 4-600 million. If this is estimated, the length of the game flow is about 20 hours.

This magnitude is already above the specifications for the ARPG category. If the quality of the overall process is consistent with the previous offline trial meeting, or even higher (after all, a year has passed, and the higher-spec boss battle levels have not yet been revealed), then it matches the price of 268 yuan.

The third layer: faith. Many people may not notice that the price of a product will not only affect the user's desire to buy, but also change the user's positioning of the product.

If the price of "Black Myth: Wukong" changes from 268 yuan to 198 yuan, or even 98 yuan, it may change from "God of War" to "Ruins 2" in the hearts of users, and then to "Crab Crab Treasure Hunt Adventure".

It's not about how good or bad the product is, it's about what users expect from the project's specifications.

For a project like "Black Myth: Wukong", which pays attention to volume specifications, it is obvious that the low price will affect the user's confidence in the product - the team is not confident in its own product, is the game not enough in size?

In fact, the price reduction itself is a market action, there is no end to rolling up, today you sell 198 yuan, then tomorrow I come to 98 yuan is not a greater advantage?

In fact, the low price strategy is sometimes ineffective, simply reducing the profit but not selling more. Because the price reduction itself does not have the function of breaking the circle, the original theme content is very heavy, and the game with a high threshold for gameplay cannot reach a wider range of users by relying on this.

This is also why some vertical, core-oriented scarce games, obviously not 3A specifications, or even PPT screens, often dare to set a price of 400-500 yuan.

Because they are targeting core users and have a small number of users, they need to increase the unit value (including high-priced and high-volume DLC) to maintain the project's profits.

Players who don't like to play these games won't just because the price of the game drops.

03‍

Finally, a heartfelt word

In fact, this article does not intend to prove whether "Black Myth: Wukong" is worth 268 yuan, because it can't be proven.

Everyone has their own scale in their hearts. I'm more hopeful that people will be willing to think that Black Myth: Wukong is worth the price.

After all, there is a huge Chinese market, and before them, no one dared to do such a project, and no one was willing to do such a project.

Although this is an off-site factor, it is also the core foundation of this project, otherwise the game would not be so popular in 2020 - we have never seen such a domestic game.

So I don't think anyone will question why the game's first exposure video is obviously not as good as the trailer of a triple-A masterpiece, but why can it get a higher number of views and attention than "Elden Ring"?

Obviously, there have been so many top-notch masterpieces brought by well-known teams in the past few years, but deep down we still crave a single-player project like "Black Myth: Wukong", which is not mature enough for the first time by a team that does online games and mobile games?

Maybe it's not that important to be worth it or not, it's important whether you want it to be worth it or not.

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