“Sold out?”
“Over ten thousand phones, all sold out?”
“In one day?”
Pei Qian could hardly accept this fact. He had thought these phones would last at least two or three days, and that calling now would allow him to reserve one for himself in advance.
But he was one step too late!
Chang You hurriedly explained: “I’m sorry, Mr. Pei, I didn’t anticipate this either. This is my negligence!”
“Other phones have reservation numbers reaching hundreds of thousands. Even for a new phone brand, stock would be at least thirty or fifty thousand units. We only stocked fourteen thousand units, and it took a whole day of people rushing to buy them before selling out—that’s already pretty good!”
Pei Qian was speechless: “‘Only’ sold out? That’s not what you were saying a few days ago! You kept telling me all this inventory would pile up in the warehouse!”
Chang You quickly apologized: “I’m sorry, Mr. Pei, I was shortsighted. Now I see that your insistence on stocking up was absolutely correct. Our ten thousand plus units weren’t even enough!”
Pei Qian: “…”
Damn it, I wasn’t trying to brag!
According to Chang You, GOG officially launched at 8 AM today, with the official platform and various channels like Shenhua App Market all providing strong promotional resources for this game. So throughout the morning, the game instantly became a hit!
The review media had already completed the main part of the review video, but after seeing GOG mobile, they quickly tested it, inserted it into the editing file, rushed to complete it, and finally managed to post it on the AiLiDao website at noon.
As the popularity of this video continued to rise, along with the hard advertising promotions in GOG and “Hot-Blooded Battle Song,” sales of the OTTO E1 phone naturally showed rapid growth, finally reaching its peak an hour ago, quickly depleting all the painstakingly stocked inventory!
In short, the situation changed rapidly.
Although Pei Qian had anticipated that the phone sales would peak again after GOG mobile launched, he never expected it to happen so quickly…
Hearing Mr. Pei’s silence on the other end of the phone, Chang You quickly said: “Don’t worry, Mr. Pei, I’ve already instructed the contract manufacturer to continue stocking. As soon as the new phones arrive, I’ll send one to you immediately!”
Pei Qian: “…Alright.”
After hanging up the phone very reluctantly, Pei Qian leaned back in his chair, sinking into a long silence.
However, he soon pulled himself together.
“How could I be crushed by such a small difficulty?”
“Hang in there, hope isn’t completely lost yet!”
In that moment, Pei Qian felt as if he was emitting a light called “motivation.”
“Based on my understanding of the system’s nature, whenever it secretly closes a door on you unnoticed, it also secretly opens a window somewhere you haven’t seen.”
“The more money earned, the more ways the system allows for spending.”
“So, there must be new ways to spend money that can be utilized!”
“What seems like a crisis can be turned into an opportunity, just like after ROF computer assembly became popular, we could use the 1024 Digital Festival as an excuse for a spending spree…”
“Although this would pose a risk for the next settlement cycle, once the next cycle begins, I can find other money-spending industries and think of more ways to spend money…”
“Yes, that’s it!”
The success of GOG and the phones was about to bring Pei Qian another large sum of money. If these funds were left unmanaged, there would be no chance of a loss this cycle.
But Pei Qian clearly wouldn’t give up. He firmly believed that human effort could make a difference!
“The real challenge is about to begin. To lose money, it ultimately comes down to increasing outflow and decreasing inflow…”
“For decreasing inflow, we need to suppress the profits from GOG and the phones in the short term, at least until after settlement.”
“Create a ‘deferred purchase’ function for GOG where all skins that need to be purchased can be tried for a month at one-tenth of the price.”
“This way, we can directly cut GOG’s revenue this month by nine-tenths… no, that’s not possible. We need to consider potential retaliatory consumption behavior. Cutting by four-fifths should be about right.”
“And after a month, if players aren’t satisfied with the skin, they don’t purchase it, equivalent to renting it for a month at one-tenth the price. If they are satisfied, they pay the remaining difference after a month.”
“This might have some promotional counter-effects later, but at least this month’s settlement can be guaranteed.”
“As for the phones… a large portion of the profit comes from other departments’ concessions. While ensuring fund circulation, return all these profits to each department and let them digest all these profits themselves…”
“Many hands make light work.”
“In short, issue strict orders to each department that these returned profits must be spent entirely by the end of the month, without a penny left. Of course, they can only be used for burning money, not for developing new products…”
“And then, increasing outflow.”
“There’s a little over two weeks until settlement, which means in another week, there can’t be any unfinished products. Time is a bit tight, and it’s too late to have Chang You invest a large sum in research and development now.”
“But, some reward-based methods would still work!”
“First, spend a large amount on expanding GOG’s cloud server bandwidth. The reason is to give players a better network experience and prevent potential lag risks—that should be reasonable, right?”
“Second, find ways to splash some more money on the phone side. Rent some cloud servers for users to use for free, allowing them to upload space-consuming photos, videos, and other materials to OTTO cloud servers.”
“For phones with serious non-human-caused malfunctions, not only provide immediate replacement service but also give some cash compensation…”
“Finally, set up reward funds in GOG: 100,000 yuan cash reward for first place, 50,000 for second to tenth place, 30,000 for eleventh to fiftieth place, and 10,000 for fifty-first to two hundredth place.”
“This way, 3.25 million can be spent each time… seems a bit insufficient.”
“Let’s also give something to the Ultimate Masters ranked two hundred and first to five hundredth—1,000 yuan per person. That’s only 300,000… No, make it 5,000 yuan, so that’s 1.5 million.”
“With all these added up, 4.75 million can be spent in one go.”
“Hmm… that’s about the cost of doing charity once.”
“This might exacerbate the prevalence of smurfs, but it doesn’t matter. There would be smurfs whether or not rewards are given. We can penalize them through other means.”
“Oh, right, PC and mobile games should be matched separately, so they need to be calculated separately. That means double the joy! Multiply this amount by two!”
“But there’s still one problem: this money must be distributed before March 31st, otherwise it won’t make it in time.”
“So let’s do this: each year is one season. This year is 2011, so it’s Season 1, but to be able to spend money at the end of March, divide each season into four stages.”
“January 1st to March 31st is the Spring Competition, April 1st to June 30th is the Summer Competition, July 1st to September 30th is the Autumn Competition, and October 1st to December 31st is the Winter Competition.”
“This is for ordinary players. If it’s for professional competitions, we would need a different system, leaving time for world championships… No, no, no, this game won’t have any world championships!”
“These dates are a bit misaligned with quarters, but to make this settlement, there’s no choice. We’ll make do, and players will gradually adapt.”
“Use the last three days of each stage for settlement, data statistics, and prize distribution, ensuring this money is distributed before the final day.”
“This way, nearly 40 million can be spent each year, which should be enough to spend most of what GOG earns in the early stages…”
“I’m doing this to further boost GOG’s popularity, to make high-ranking competition more intense, and thus better seize the initiative in competition…”
“Reasonable, right?”
Pei Qian tested it and found that the system didn’t raise any objections, so it was clearly feasible.
Pei Qian decided, let’s do it this way!
He glanced at the calendar. The settlement was on March 31st, and the money had to be spent before then, so GOG’s ranked data would need to be locked on March 29th.
GOG mobile was fine. From now until March 29th, there were still two weeks, enough time for players to play their brains out.
But GOG PC would only launch next Monday, leaving players just one week to compete for the Strongest King title.
In one week, reaching first place would earn a 100,000 yuan reward, and making it to the top five hundred would earn 5,000 yuan.
A weekly salary of 5,000, a daily salary of 700—truly exciting.
According to the original design, it should have taken three months to earn this money, but due to the current special circumstances, the time had been greatly shortened.
There was no choice. Mr. Pei was in a hurry, so these people would benefit.
However, even so, those who ultimately received the rewards would be a group of gaming prodigies.
After settling all of this, Pei Qian felt much more at ease.
Indeed, methods for spending money were like water in his brain—squeeze, and there would always be some.
Many problems in this world could be solved by splashing money. If they couldn’t be solved, then splash more.
So far, Pei Qian couldn’t be certain that he had completely solved the issue of all this money, but at least… he had addressed a crucial part.
The rest could be mindlessly dumped into Startling Inn. Dumping several million or ten million shouldn’t be a problem, as long as it ensures that Startling Inn will be officially completed in the next cycle.
After checking that there were no issues, Pei Qian arranged for Assistant Xin to notify all departments.
Since the gaming department had the most tasks, Pei Qian specially organized the plan and sent it separately to Hu Xianbin.
…
At this time, Hu Xianbin was no longer focused on GOG mobile but was continuing to work on finalizing GOG PC, striving to officially launch it two days earlier.
However, in his spare time, he was still a bit conflicted.
The GOG mobile version was so successful, yet Mr. Pei didn’t praise me at all!
Although it wasn’t a big deal, Hu Xianbin still felt a little emotional.
Just as he was conflicted, he suddenly noticed a document sent through Tenda’s internal chat software.
And it was personally sent by Mr. Pei!
Hu Xianbin was taken aback and hurriedly checked it.
“This, this is…”
The plan detailed GOG’s subsequent promotion strategy, including server expansion, the skin deferred purchase function, seasonal rewards, and more.
After reading it, Hu Xianbin fell silent.
So that was it!
No wonder Mr. Pei didn’t praise my work, it’s because my work still had many loopholes!
And this subsequent promotion plan perfectly plugged these holes.
To prevent server pressure from a sudden surge in popularity, spend money to expand server bandwidth.
To further promote skins and cultivate consumption habits among players who like freebies, introducing the skin deferred purchase function.
To stimulate high-end players, further enhance game popularity, and increase game competitiveness, launching seasonal rewards, giving GOG an excellent competitive foundation from the very beginning…
Hu Xianbin suddenly felt very ashamed.
I wronged Mr. Pei!
So Mr. Pei didn’t praise me because my work wasn’t really good, and there was still much room for improvement!
Isn’t Mr. Pei fixing all these problems for me?
Ah, my work wasn’t thorough enough!
I must work harder, absolutely cannot let Mr. Pei down!