Chapter 417: Chapter 401: Official announcement of the virtual concert!
Translator: 549690339
At NetDragon PR Department, Gary is overjoyed!
Yesterday, he was greatly disappointed when the streamers didn’t seem enthusiastic and went offline to rest after playing only a few hours.
Now looking back, he felt they had taken a great decision to rest. They all should take a break!
This was a major positive development!
No doubt about it, they needed to spend more money to hire more members of the so-called “Water Army”.
With the current chaotic situation, it was a perfect time for the ‘Water Army’ to show their worth.
Of course, they needed to modify the PR copy!
Things like ‘gameplay’, ‘NetDragon’s latest VR masterpiece’, and ‘you will regret missing the critical acclaimed game’… all these should be kept to a minimum.
Just focus on ‘VR games help to strengthen your body, building a healthier nation’!
Of course, Gary wasn’t the only one who saw the opportunity.
Deserted Island Game Company also took the opportunity to release a statement—
‘The value of VR games is not just about the game content, but also about the interaction between the players, equipment and the game.
In the past, we focused entirely on the game itself. It wasn’t until we were defeated by more advanced technology in terms of ‘immersion’ that we started to seriously reconsider—
Perhaps, the core advantage of VR games lies in the real interactions, rather than virtual statistics.
What we should improve upon is not just the characters within the game, but also the real-life players!
A brand-new production concept! A brand-new interactive gameplay!
Deserted Island’s Innovative Works is about to arrive!
Experience more scientific, reasonable, and engaging exercises!
Let’s explore another possibility of VR games!’
Flying Fox didn’t want to be left behind, and directly announced that “The Last Moment”, which had been delayed several times, would be officially launched in two weeks, on November 15th.
Regardless of Flying Fox or Deserted Island, both took advantage of the peak popularity and acceptance of VR games to announce their major news.
However, they both showed restraint. They just took this great opportunity to release their own games.
They didn’t want to step on Cloud Dream’s toes, not even mentioned it at all.
Even if netizens asked them in their comment sections, trying to get them to share their views, none of them responded.
All stayed impressively silent.
In spite of that, the consecutive major announcements from the three major VR game companies still gave many players a feeling of ‘Celebrating the New Year’.
First was NetDragon’s ‘Blaze 3·Red Flame’, followed by Deserted Island’s mysterious ‘Innovative Works’, and finally the ‘The Last Moment’ from Flying Fox that had been delayed several times.
All were major moves!
If this was half a year ago, the whole player circle would be celebrating the New Year.
Only now, it has turned into a small-scale ‘New Year’ celebration, or instead, it’s still the New Year, but without the festive vibe…
The greater impact was to further intensify the online debate between ‘VR games and virtual environment games’.
It was precisely this debate that led Assistant Miss to constantly advise Alex not to announce the cooperation with Cloud Dream at this time.
‘Isn’t this just taking shots for Cloud Dream?’
‘I’m not saying to refuse, but just postpone the announcement for a few days!’
‘As long as you nod, Alex, I will go negotiate with the people from Cloud Dream.’
This wouldn’t be difficult because of Alex’s status in the industry and Princess’s face, the cooperation agreement signed by both parties is quite flexible, and the cost of breach is very small.
Of course, the cost here refers to the small monetary cost.
But Alex knew very well that a small monetary cost doesn’t mean the actual cost is small.
It’s more likely that the real cost of the breach is not money, but other intangible aspects, such as reputation, opportunity, connections, etc.
No matter which kind, they were all more important to Alex than money.
Seeing the stressed Assistant Miss in front of her, Alex was a bit disappointed. Sister Li, who had been with her all the way, had gone to have a baby, and the new stand-in assistant, Xiao Tong, clearly lacked something.
She handled the industry’s various tasks very well previously.
But once she stepped out of the industry, facing a larger and more complex situation, she was clearly restricted by her past experience.
Even so, her biggest problem was not the limitations of experience and vision, but——
She grossly underestimated Alex!
12 o’clock noon.
Announcement from Alex’s studio.
Announcement from Dream Cloud Studio.
Gary, the media, netizens, and players, countless people concerned with the development of the matter, participated in the internet chaos. Everyone noticed that Dream Cloud Studio had made a statement.
Everyone thought Dream Cloud would respond to the questions that the media and netizens were concerned about, whether it was a defense or comfort, denial or acknowledgment, they needed to take some stance.
This would have been normal PR behavior.
But they would never have guessed—Dream Cloud doesn’t have a PR team at all!
After handling Cathy’s issue, Daniel, who has a background in public relations, returned to her operations role.
Lincoln asked her: Are you interested in setting up a small PR group?
Daniel immediately insisted she wasn’t, that she was happy in operations where the atmosphere was relaxed and the bonuses were high, and she didn’t want to face daily insults from players and media. She had no desire to return to PR.
So, Lincoln didn’t bring it up again.
After the media and netizens flooded over, they were surprised to see that Dream Cloud didn’t respond to everyone’s concerns. Instead, they announced——
A collaboration with superstar Alex!
The details were very brief:
“Night City Circular Concert Hall, the first virtual concert——
Alex [Time to Meet]
November 8, 18:18, we are expecting you!”
The image accompanying the announcement was a poster of the circular concert hall. Under the dim lighting, the concert hall’s gorgeous decorations were shrouded in darkness.
In the corner of the poster, Alex, dressed in a long dress, holding a microphone, stood alone on the stage, singing quietly.
Seeing this, everyone was stunned and automatically checked Alex’s personal account and studio account for verification.
They quickly discovered that Alex’s studio account had simultaneously released similar news——
“Alex [Time to Meet] Personal Virtual Concert.
Long time no see, Alex is back.
Face-to-face with fans, explore more possibilities in music!
November 8, 18:18, Friends who are free, remember to come and listen to the songs.”
The announcement from Alex’s studio, differed somewhat from the usual concert announcements, also had a certain uniqueness.
But at this point, no one cares about the writing anymore!
This is superstar Alex we’re talking about!
In the past few years, media has claimed that Alex retired. Alex never refuted these rumors – because she did consider it.
Gradually, everyone had no choice but to accept it.
But now, out of nowhere, she pops back up!
And as soon as she reappeared, she announced a concert – happening a week from now!
How incredible is Alex’s influence?
At the moment of the announcement, Dream Cloud, 4 hours after opening sales for the remaining 20 million units of [Mirage 2.0], had its inventory numbers start to plummet dramatically!
Not a drop of hundreds or thousands, but tens and hundreds of thousands at a time!
At the same time, the sales of “Speed Chase” suddenly began to skyrocket, the increase in speed was not inferior to when the game was first released.
Within 10 minutes, an additional 8 million orders were placed! And it’s still growing!
This pulled a steep incline out of the originally stable sales curve.
Many stubborn players, who only have records of playing “Light Encounter” or “Paradise”, seem to have collectively lost their minds, and started buying “Speed Chase” like crazy.
——These people are hardcore casual gamers, they skipped “Assassins’ Alliance” altogether, and they would never have bought “Speed Chase” if it wasn’t for Alex.
Previously, many people were just watching the virtual reality gaming world get caught in a mire of public opinion controversy, watching the media, netizens, and players get into a mess, and just regarded it as entertainment.
But even those netizens who had been decrying it a few minutes ago; “If this continues, our country will not be,” “Virtual reality games must be restricted, they cannot be allowed to continue unchecked,” had immediately cast aside what they said.
While going to Dream Cloud’s official website to place an order, they deleted their previous posts and posted things like “Dream Cloud is the best, Virtual Reality is invincible!” Instead.
The examples like this were countless!
Under Dream Cloud’s announcement, the number of likes and comments soared, and the top-ranking comments were quite interesting:
“Thank you! For bringing Alex back to sing!”
“As long as you can get Alex to sing, you will always be my friend!”
“I declare: Lincoln is a great guy!”