Microsoft's windowing system has many loopholes due to compatibility issues. Although Microsoft is trying its best to make up for it, it has been repeatedly attacked by hackers with vulnerabilities. Most of the hackers who discovered a vulnerability are secretly disclosed and use these vulnerabilities to obtain benefits!

Of course, Microsoft also has bounties for system vulnerabilities, but there are too few people who earn these bounties. It is better to sell any vulnerability to security antivirus software than to sell it to Microsoft!

The failure of the previous generation of systems seems to have not affected the monopoly position of the Microsoft empire. The timely launch of w7 can be called a repair to the situation. With w7, Microsoft's dominance is still unshakable.

Apple also gave up the idea of ​​taking Microsoft's path and decided to focus on the closed ecosystem. Microsoft gave up markets such as gaming and computers, decided to focus on the office field and young people, aiming at the same age group, and decided to accumulate hardware to make the product reach the top level in all aspects!

It is actually not profitable to make hardware. Software companies are the most profitable. A best-selling software accounts for extremely low cost, but the software is related to hardware, so it has to make hardware!

Without the right opportunity to build a software system for global users, Apple can only do it together with hardware and software; companies that succeed in making software must eventually take this path.

Entities are actually very difficult to do.

Take StarrySwitch as an example. After adjustment, the price in China is 2,499 yuan, but what about its comprehensive hardware cost? It is only about 1,100 yuan, and the hardware cost accounts for less than 50% of the selling price, and it seems that you can make 50% of the profit.

But after deducting a series of costs such as R&D, assembly, advertising, distribution, taxation, etc., StarrySwitch will eventually only get a net profit of about 100 yuan.

That is, the hardware cost is 45%, other costs are 50%, and the profit is 5%... The profit only accounts for 5% of the overall selling price. This profit rate, if you have a little promotion, this profit will be gone.

The current price of StarrySwitch is not cheap, but the cost is not low. Advertising and marketing is a necessary expense. Currently, the word StarrySwitch is not a well-known company. If it becomes famous, the marketing costs will be saved, but it will not save too much!

No matter how big a company is, it has to spend money to market its reputation, which is an indispensable expense!

This is also the reason why Yang Yi did not enter the mobile phone industry first. In the mobile phone industry, which is known for its huge profits, the profit margin is at most less than 20%. Of course, the current iPhone is the same as other mobile phone manufacturers. It is good to have a net profit margin of 5%.

Initially, excluding all costs, the net profit margin of StarrySwitch can reach 15%... On the premise that the price is set at 2,699 yuan.

That is, Yang Yi can earn more than 300 yuan for each StarrySwitch.

However, the total sold at this price is only 50,000 units. Of course, after the price adjustment at Christmas, these users have already given a compensation coupon of 300 yuan per person. Of course, this coupon cannot be reflected and resold. They can only buy products under Starry Sky Group, which can be recharged into various online games, or used to buy games or game consoles, or buy some Starry Sky Group's unique products.

In other words, in fact, the StarrySwitch can only be calculated at a price of 2499, and the maximum profit is 100 yuan. Now the overall sales volume has reached more than 9 million, and the profit is about 900 million yuan.

This is the result of Xinghai Company saving a lot of expenses in the intermediate links such as advertising, research and development, and distribution!

This money seems to be a lot. After all, ordinary people can't make money in their lifetimes, but this money is saved. After all, it's not like other things. As long as the cost of hardware-related experiments is added, it's not a matter of hundreds of millions.

Just a chip is not something that can be done by several hundred million yuan. If you can buy such a suitable chip of 900 million yuan, they are willing to spend ten times the price for Microsoft!

This is not a false statement. Microsoft has contacted the business department of Starry Sky Group and wants to purchase chips or authorize them. The price of technology authorization alone has now increased to 200 million yuan, and the cost of technology transfer has even increased to 10 digits.

It can be seen how powerful a chip is. Sony's ps3 is the processor of the next-generation game console jointly developed by ibm, Sony and Toshiba. Although Microsoft's xbox360 was released one year later than Sony's ps3, its performance has not improved at all. Microsoft has also invested huge funds, but the results are not satisfactory!

StarrySwitch is weaker than these two companies in terms of performance, but after plugging into the base of the handheld machine, the performance is basically the same, and it is even better in some aspects.

You should know that the main running program of StarrySwitch is just a handheld machine, which is not much larger than Sony's PSP. The performance will be very powerful if you look at it from this point of view!

Therefore, not only Microsoft, but some mobile phone manufacturers are considering this chip. The cost of developing chips is too high. If you invest hundreds of millions of yuan, you can only waste it. If you have good luck, you can achieve results with almost 300 billion or 50 billion. If you have bad luck, you will need more!

...

Yang Yi will not transfer technology, such as lithium battery technology. What he demonstrates is that there is no advanced technology for current lithium battery technology, and it is the level of direct manufacturing of current battery manufacturers.

In the StarrySwitch handheld mode, the battery life is only one and a half days. The battery used is authorized to produce it from Huaguo Datang Industry and Chen Guoshengshi Energy.

Because the technology has not been fully understood, what is produced is more than doubled compared to before, and there are also higher risks, but the risks are also higher. The danger of lithium batteries cannot be ignored. Although according to strict technology, ordinary people are not prone to danger as long as they are not thrown into the fire to roast.

Yang Yi doesn't need to copy the display screen on her own. Due to various reasons, the display screen she needs is not high...

In this world, Yang Yi will not use the method of pulling seedlings to encourage growth, but will use pressure to force it. If various manufacturers do not force it, they will not invest money in R&D. The purpose of capitalists is profit, and without profit, they will not invest money in R&D.

For example, if Intel does not have a follower behind it, it will not invest a lot of money to upgrade the process. Without Amd, Core will only squeeze toothpaste. There are not many real differences in performance for several generations of products!

This is true in hardware, but in software, for example, game manufacturers, except those who really love games and want to be a great company, are basically all karze fish. No matter how much they make, they are reluctant to invest in making a good game!

The current mainstream business model of games is the sales of game-specific hardware (game consoles) as the core. Even if a game console is added with multiple functions, its core purpose and user's purchase reason is that it is just playing games.

The console manufacturer controls the quality of the game on the game console, and high-quality games are released on the console, and assists in publicity and sales. Games that do not meet the standards set by the hardware manufacturer are generally not allowed to be released on the game console.

But it is not necessarily true. In this world, Sony has always followed this standard, and Microsoft's standards are also very strict. Sega and Yarida are not so pure. Therefore, players vote with their feet. These two companies are gradually lagging behind the first echelon. There is also one, the Little Overlord of China, but at the low console price, it won over a large number of small game producers to make a large number of small games, and the market is not small!

Console manufacturers generally charge licensing funds from each game sold to obtain their own profits, but they all use the share instead of the licensing funds. Microsoft and Sony even in turn pay the game studio for early development funds.

Although it is unwritten, currently console manufacturers are actually supporting the game development business on the game console in the form of personal development, first-party investment or official recommendation.

Under this model, players get the best games technically allowed, console manufacturers get monopoly profits from drought and flood, while game developers will use those epoch-making products to become top companies in the industry, forming a closed loop of three-party benefits until the next generation of technological progress arrives and a new round of console war begins again.

To date, all the winners and important participants of the game console war, from Sony, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, Yarida, etc., have faithfully implemented this game rules.

This model supports the world's largest and most capable game companies, as well as the most costly and well-made game products; game developers and console manufacturers obtain money from their loyal users and then re-invest in the next-generation game wonders with larger scale, higher technical skills and more amazing.

Of course, it is not that no one has tried other styles of game business models. After entering the new century, with the development of technology, other business models in the game industry seem to be very successful at present: pc boxed games, mobile games, free games, web games, casual games...

In fact, from the perspective of the global market in the past two years, the total market size of non-console games has almost reached about half of the console game market, and is still growing rapidly.

The development of PCs and smartphones has also allowed more functions in hardware, and many fun and boutique games have emerged, such as World of Warcraft, Age of Discovery ol and other games.

But there is a fact that is undeniable: the most invested and best-quality games in the world are always in the market for console games; although non-console games also have a huge market size, even if they are the most invested online games, their investment cannot be compared with the most invested 3a games under the console game system.

The investment gap between second-tier games is even bigger: in console games, second-tier and even third-tier 3A works have at least tens of millions of yuan to calculate investment, and hundreds of millions of yuan are very common.

Instead of console games, such as free online games, web games, and mobile games, second- and third-tier works, can be called masterpieces with millions of investment, and most of them even have 20 to 30 million yuan in production funds, which is considered extremely sufficient resources - and in the world of console games, this is just a "high-budget independent game" - many independent game studios have this number of budgets obtained from crowdfunding and first-party subsidies.

The gap between the game quality and risk-bearing ability of the two parties is just as eye-catching as the investment amount: the objective risk of developing console games with large investments is actually lower than that of free games with huge profits!

Most console game developers and studios have been operating for more than ten years and decades, studying the most advanced graphics technology, looking for the latest expressions and game design methods, and successfully transitioning from one generation of consoles to the next generation of consoles; while developers of online games, web games, and mobile games, although the development cost is lower than that of console games, the market size is larger than that of console games, and the operating time is shorter than that of console game developers, in fact, they bear higher risks than console game developers.

Basically, the real elites in the game industry will probably agree with this conclusion. Every change in the market model is accompanied by a large number of R&D companies going bankrupt; even if the company does not go bankrupt, the frequency of layoffs and disbanding production teams is much higher than that of console games. Even if the largest and most profitable companies in this field do not have much willingness to retain the development team to conduct pure R&D and improve technical capabilities.

Moreover, this market form is not unique to "online games", nor is it the only feature of markets such as "mobile games" or "web games" that adopt similar business models.

In the non-console and failed consoles, similar scenes are repeated: market participants invest less investment but have to bear greater risks; although market leaders have gained huge profits, they do not dare to invest more money in game research and development, but choose to withdraw huge profits and invest in other fields.

It is like treating gamers as cows responsible for producing milk. The purpose of paying for the game is to be deprived of cash and then invest for "investment-conscious" entrepreneurs, or waste them in other fields, or make high-value consumption, etc.

What then appears is often a vicious cycle: as the investment amount decreases, the market also becomes stagnant, declines and niches, gamers are lost, investors are rushing to the "next trend" and abandoning this market.

This kind of game industry that "get a hand and leave" is natural and suitable for capitalists. When an industry trend arrives, it comes immediately. The cost becomes higher. If everyone does not want to take risks, they shout "bubble" retreat. In the end, it is natural to leave a group of people in this sunset industry.

However, successful host manufacturers want to write "fun" and "innovation" firmly into the obsession of gamers like genes, completely replacing the "speculation", "making money" and "washing" of capital.

A new positive cycle was born in this mode, replacing the vicious cycle caused by the profit-seeking nature of capital: when a user purchases a game console for an outstanding game, he will expect that other excellent games of quality can be purchased on this console, thus providing high-quality purchasing power; when investors see that this console has so many high-quality users, they will expect that as long as I make games of equally excellent quality or above, I can recover my huge investment; while game console hardware vendors will expect that as the game types and quality increase, the total game sales on the machine will continue to rise, thus recovering the huge cost of host hardware and developing games as a first-party.

The business model of the console actually becomes a game that absorbs new users through publicity and a game that improves the quality of the game to attract old users.

In other words, there is actually only one true core competitiveness of console games: by producing outstanding games, it reduces the expected risks of investors investing in and developing games seriously.

It is very important to reduce the expected risks, rather than the real risks. First of all, as a high investment and high risk entertainment product, the risks of games are inevitable; every game may fail, and you cannot determine whether this game will really sell well, or even whether a game will not sell well.

But the expected risks are controllable and more important; they determine how much manpower and material resources people will invest, and the direction of the development game.

A best-selling game console can naturally attract developers to invest in the development of games on this platform. If there are high-quality products, it will even make people buy game consoles because of a certain game!

This is also the reason why StarrySwitch succeeds. Through continuous high-quality games, players can see the company's openness and level. Then, they use several IPs that have been successfully launched to launch game consoles, and initially have several exclusive high-quality 3A-level masterpieces, attracting players to the trap.

Finally, we used a popular online game to attract traffic and develop a limited edition hero and other measures to truly make this game console popular and attract third-party game studios.

Another reason for the success of StarrySwitch is that it is still a handheld machine. At present, for the mobile entertainment field, smartphones have risen, but they have not yet fully risen. At present, the quality is uneven, the price of high-quality products is too high, and they cannot play a 3A-level masterpiece at all.

Successful game console platforms have successfully achieved "reducing the expected risks of game investors". Sony and Microsoft paid exclusive funds and purchased first parties not only to defeat their opponents, but also to increase the attractiveness of the entire console platform.

Another reason for a successful game console platform is that the console is best-selling, which requires tens of millions of units. After this sales volume, many third parties began to contact and seek technical standards without negotiating.

To achieve this goal, there are various specific commercial means to use, such as cheap sales hosts to attract players, conduct various commercial promotions at the exhibition, personally invest and train first-party developers, pay huge exclusive fees to third parties, etc.; but the common feature is huge investment in the early stage.

"Reduce the expected risks of other investors", this matter itself is somewhat contrary to capital's instinct: it means that console hardware vendors need to take this risk regularly, which is something that most "ordinary" game market participants are simply unwilling to do.

Whether it is acquiring a game studio, or as the first party investing in 3a games or spending huge sums of money to buy exclusive games, you have to pay huge amounts of money and risk losing all your money.

However, console manufacturers that can achieve this goal through risks can win in this business model. As long as a game console system can achieve this goal, it is actually on the road to victory; even if it does not win, it can fully maintain itself. As the second or even third place in the console market, the current gaming circle is enough for the three or even four major consoles to survive together.

From the perspective of capitalism, the "natural market" is indeed unreproachable: capital should indeed seek profit and avoid harm. If everyone's expected risks are so high, it would never be possible for them to create an inexpensive game, which will create this positive cycle.

Whether there are any console vendors to reduce the expected risks of investing in games for everyone is the difference between whether they can become a successful console vendor.

In order to succeed in StarrySwitch, Yang Yi made a lot of efforts to acquire shares in video companies and acquire online entertainment tools such as online literature. He built-in product ports in StarrySwitch, making it a thorough entertainment tool, which is why it is now successful.

Entertainment products have the strongest influence. At present, when the 4G network is not popular, games are the most influential and have a great impact on teenagers and even adults. This field cannot be given up.

With the efforts of OEM, StarrySwitch has produced 430,000 units per day, but the current sales through official channels are still in short supply. Experts predict that this product will be sold from 10 million to 30 million at the beginning. Some experts have already called for a forecast of 100 million.
Chapter completed!