Global monopoly of technology

Day by day, the WRPO event finally came to the finals.

On the last day of the event, the morning was the finals of "Warcraft 3". The two sides of the match once again staged the "Papaya War". This year the WCG champion from the Netherlands directly advanced to Grubby in the WRPO round of 16. Reached the final again.

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

It is worth mentioning that the two teenagers of the BTG team, Like and Infi, were eliminated. The competition experience was obviously insufficient and they missed the peak matchup of this grand event.

Infi was in the group of death and lost his qualification prematurely. Like stopped in the quarterfinals the farthest and was easily taken away by Moon.

The first WRPO lacked the old rival Sky, and the teenagers simply couldn't resist the long-established top players. As a result, Grubby and Moon played the "Papaya War" together.

The final result was a repeat of the WCG finals this summer. Moon failed to avenge WCG's revenge at the WRPO finals, but recently missed the trophy representing the highest honor of e-sports.

Tears shed the game again, just like yesterday.

Guabi Grubby became the biggest winner of the World of Warcraft project in 2008. At the same time, he won the WCG championship and the WRPO championship this year. These are the two highest gold trophies in the e-sports field so far.

Grubby also successfully won the 2008 Warcraft "top player" honor and successfully took home the first RPO trophy for the Warcraft project.

After Grubby won the championship, Luo Sheng once again appeared on the court and personally awarded him the honorary certificate of "2008 World Warcraft Player of the Year" certified by the WRPO Organizing Committee, and took away 300,000 US dollars in prize money.

As an individual event, Grubby enjoys the $300,000 (before tax), and can also take photos with the world’s top-notch super-rich. It can be described as fame and fortune. This year, it has directly reached the new peak of his personal event career, such a bright moment. Also envy others.

Perhaps the most distressing thing is that Moon is grinding Moon, but he missed it after a step away. After WCG, he was once again broken by the hands of his mortal enemy.

But there is only one champion.

The "FIFA" finals began at noon, and the afternoon was the final time of the team sports CS. 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, and the CS RPO trophy was successfully retained in the mainland. The wNv team also successfully robbed the championship prize of 1.2 million US dollars. According to the current exchange rate, it was 8.2 million yuan to convert into soft sister currency. There is also tax deduction. Over 6 million, the six wNv players can get an average of 1 million in prize money.

For them, it is the rhythm of getting rich overnight.

In the finals, some family members of the players also secretly came to the scene to watch the game. In order not to affect their game, they did not tell them.

Witnessing all this with my own eyes, I understand that children are not playthings, they are indeed serious athletes, and after seeing the championship and winning millions of dollars in bonuses, I no longer oppose them playing e-sports.

Too real...

At 18 o'clock in the evening, the final finale of WRPO "StarCraft" was going on on the main stage. If one project is selected to represent e-sports nowadays, "StarCraft" is an undisputed project.

E-sports was born because of interstellar. In a sense, the history of the development of StarCraft is the birth and development of e-sports.

Both sides of the game are Koreans. This is no way. The Koreans’ current dominance in StarCraft is almost unsolvable. Anyone from the top 32 in the Korean sub-division can almost sling the entire non-Korean player.

The interstellar competition is probably the fiercest competition. Starting from the quarterfinals, all the players are doing their best, not to mention anything else. The championship bonus is exclusive to 300,000 people, and it is not enough to beat all the blood.

"Ze Bing Li Shuang", known as the four contemporary star kings, joined hands to advance to the top four, namely Flash, Jaedong, Bisu and Stork.

The 16-year-old human player Flash swept his old rival Stork in the semifinals and advanced to the final. Bisu, known as the strongest Protoss player in the history of StarCraft, cut off the Zerg player Jaedong, known as the "Big Devil", and advanced to the final with three years younger than himself. Flash competed for the final championship trophy and the $30 prize.

In this BO5 game, Bisu once again staged the sad ending of his personal tournament career, and became runner-up in a super gold tournament.

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

The result of the game was that Flash defeated Bisu with a score of 3:1, successfully won the cup and took away the championship prize of 300,000 US dollars.

And the 16-year-old Korean interstellar player started at the end of this year, his career has been out of control, all the way super invincible, his consciousness is almost like opening a map plug-in, in the already master of interstellar world. , Flash can even become the only player.

As Luo Sheng appeared again and made his debut, the first WRPO event came to an end after he awarded the "Number One Player" certificate to the first WRPO interstellar champion Flash.

Finally, the WRPO Organizing Committee announced the location of the second World Number One Player Championship in 2009.

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

...

Luo Sheng left Shanghai that night. The first WRPO event was held successfully. Although the final financial audit data showed a loss of 47.42 million yuan, it was equivalent to burning one or two billion yuan to run this competition.

However, Luo Sheng didn't even think about making a profit in the first session, and only lost more than 40 million yuan. He was surprised that not four billion yuan.

This shows that the potential and prospects of e-sports are promising.

On the second day, the "Wall Street Journal" reported the WRPO event, and the newspaper's secondary page published an article by a Wall Street analyst.

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

The Wall Street Journal claimed that during the four days of the WRPO event, it directly or indirectly drove a consumption scale of approximately US$1.75 billion (11.9 billion) in the local area. The article praised the commercialization of WRPO and emphasized the importance of electronics JJJ’s current user scale 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 invested more than 10 billion to deploy the global e-sports industry. The e-sports division of Bluestar Technology Group created the WRPO event brand. Many people are not optimistic.

As it turns out now, oh my go, the commercialization potential of the e-sports industry is still okay.

It has to be said that Luo Sheng is not only a large number of blind admirers in China, but also more and more people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

In their eyes, the son of the Internet is simply a miracle.

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

This is incredible, and it is impossible not to let people worship blindly.

Although many people don't want to accept their subjective wishes or even believe them, they have to believe the facts before them. Those who follow him have basically made a profit. On the contrary, they are heartbroken and regret not following the trend.

Now suddenly there are more people studying e-sports than before. There are various signs that maybe this industry may really grow up to become a market with an output value of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions, as Luo Sheng originally described. industry.

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

Now that no capital dares to play like Luo Sheng, then no one wants to overturn the status of the WRPO event brand. Then Bluestar Technology will definitely be able to dominate the competitive industry.

...

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

That's right, it is the first concert of the virtual singer Hatsune Miku that its "virtual idol" plans to create.

E-sports, which has generated widespread enthusiasm in China and Europe and the United States, does not seem to be cold in Japan.

Also, small books lack interest in e-sports and can even expand the scope. Most Japanese gamers 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 major e-sports games CS, StarCraft and Warcraft are all PC online games.

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

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

This is the benefit brought by 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 only one week left before the first virtual concert of Hatsune Miku. Time is up.

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

At this moment, a staff member ran in front of He Chao in small steps. His expression was a little nervous. After seeing He Chao, he cautiously said, "Which, there is a problem with the screen."

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

The staff member said weakly: "We found that the glass plate has undergone serious deformation and cracks..."

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

"Hurry up and inform the factory in the United States to work overtime to rebuild a brand new airlift for me. Within 72 hours, I will require the transparent glass screen on the stage to be complete." When everyone was ranting about why they want to go live, He calmed down quickly 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 true holographic projection technology.

Because Hatsune Miku is projected on a transparent screen, and human eyes look three-dimensional and real.

From the establishment of the “virtual idol” project that He Chao is responsible for, the total budget investment has exceeded 1.53 billion U.S. dollars. The research and development of projection imaging technology has eaten up the 200 million U.S. dollars of the total budget. The transparent glass is a piece of domestic Production is currently unavailable, and the R&D department is also set up in the United States. The "Virtual Idol" plan provides about 40% of the manufacturing and R&D 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, it is necessary to use a lot of dedicated projectors to project on a huge screen, and to generate special processed computer images. By overlapping these images to form a three-dimensional projection image, artificial intelligence technology is needed here. ’S assistance.

Using a transparent screen to project images is good and the effect is also 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 dim, so there is only one compromise. The virtual concert will be held at night.

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

However, technical problems are not coming, and it takes time to invest in research and development. The Blue Coast company is recruiting research and development talents on a large scale, increasing the scale of research and development investment, and output also takes time.

As for the new material of graphene, mass production technology is currently not available in the world.

The accident happened halfway and did not delay the progress. The plan proceeded according to the original arrangement. After receiving the news, the factory in the United States immediately expedited manufacturing and prepared for air shipment.

...

At the same time, the publicity of Hatsune Miku’s first virtual concert has begun. The first concert has a total of 6,280 tickets, except for the tickets that were originally sold for the three-piece "virtual idol" product. 5,500 tickets were sold through online channels three days ago and sold out in 1.88 seconds.

The enthusiasm of the dead houses greatly exceeded the organizers' expectations.

It is worth mentioning that the "virtual idol" three-piece product with a retail price of 19,999 yen in Japan. The cumulative sales have reached 1.87 million sets, which greatly exceeded expectations, with sales reaching 2.465 billion yuan. Sister coin.

It is a best-selling product if the sales volume exceeds one million, and the three-piece suit is not cheap. It is equivalent to a retail price of $193 excluding exchange rate changes.

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

Over the past year or so, the "virtual idol" project that He Chao is responsible for has also continued to develop. Hatsune Miku has released three official albums in succession, of which the second album is the best-selling album, which has won 980,000 worldwide. Sales of copies nearly broke one million.

During this period, Hatsune Miku is attracting fans all over the world as a virtual singer. Among them, the number of fans and enthusiasm in Japan can be said to be the highest.

However, if the cost is shared, whether it is album sales, or the sales of the three-piece movie soundtrack, game and sound production software, all the sales will be shared or loss.

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

As for the current development of Hatsune Miku, the operation team of He Chao is also happy and relieved.

On the second day, the "virtual idol" operation department of Bluestar Technology Group promoted Hatsune Miku's Tokyo concert and released a 290-second top CG promotional video, which was the theme promotional video for the Tokyo concert. .

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

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

If you want to recoup the cost of this CG promotional film by holding this concert, it is a fantasy. The concert tickets are sold out but the total revenue is just over 900,000 US dollars, which is less than the fraction of this promotional film. During the period, all the income from peripheral authorizations and hand-made works are included, and the comparison of the figures is a drop in the bucket.

What's more, other inputs for holding this virtual concert have also been added.

The cost of the investment can also indirectly reveal the ambition of the Bluestar Technology Group. If you want to build an epic IP from scratch, and eventually make it a cash cow, you have to cultivate it.

...