From VR to TV games, neglected offline channels are experiencing a new lease of life

"It doesn't seem like a quick way to promote games played on TV in home appliance stores, but we did it anyway, and the results are pretty good."

For mobile games and online games, getting electronic games into stores is a slow and low-profit "home-grown method" that is similar to setting up stalls to sell them. But for those new platform games that are of good quality but have difficulty in letting players know about them, offline promotion will be much more effective than online bragging.

So who has brought the game offline?

VR Headsets

Virtual reality (VR) is nothing new to the technology world, and even seeing it too often makes people feel that its content is too stereotyped. But no matter how you look down on it, it does not affect the fact that VR helmets are still the darlings of major technology exhibitions and game exhibitions. The exhibition area with the most people queuing to experience it must be the "Virtual Reality Zone". The reason for this phenomenon is simple. VR equipment cannot convey its gaming experience through pictures, texts, and videos alone, which makes it difficult to promote VR products through the media. Users must put on the helmet and play it themselves.

Based on this situation, some VR manufacturers and VR enthusiasts have begun to try to promote VR experience stores offline. It is understood that there are already hundreds of VR experience stores of all sizes across the country, and the offline business model of various manufacturers is basically the same - paid experience + equipment sales. Currently known are the Nibiru offline experience store of Nanjing Ruiyue Information, the EMAX virtual reality experience store launched by Shenzhen Yanjie Company, the Wow VR Experience Hall, the offline experience store opened by 3Glasses, and the experience stores operated by VR enthusiasts themselves.

Game consoles

Since Xbox One and PS4 entered the Chinese mainland market, they have encountered many difficulties in promotion. Chinese players are unwilling to temporarily put down their mobile games to learn about the best game hardware products in the world today. This has always been a major concern for Microsoft and Sony game consoles after entering China. Xbox One and PS4 are priced at two or three thousand yuan, and the price of game discs is also around three hundred yuan. This is difficult for domestic players who are used to playing free mobile games and PC games to accept. Even if the manufacturer makes the advertisements more gorgeous, and the media touts the effects and gameplay of TV games, players are unwilling to bear this risky expenditure.

What to do? "Try before you buy" has become the best sales method, so Xbox experience stores have appeared in supermarkets, home appliance stores, and large shopping malls in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou for players to experience game hardware and content for free. In particular, somatosensory games equipped with Kinect will attract a large number of children. It is observed that during holidays, these experience stores are constantly crowded with customers, and queues often occur, showing that they are very popular.

Smart TV Games

Compared with the offline promotion of VR and game consoles, smart TVs have not been around for long. In recent months, more and more game CPs have chosen to cooperate with TV manufacturers to hold activities in stores. Compared with online channels, the biggest advantage of physical stores lies in user experience. Through close contact between sellers and consumers, consumers are guided from passively accepting smart TVs to actively experiencing and understanding them. In this process, there is a lot of room for offline cooperation between TV terminal manufacturers and content developers, and both parties can convey the product theme to consumers well.

At present, TV terminal manufacturer Hisense has started to carry out offline game experience activities in Hisense counters in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen and other places, and has formed the first offline channel promotion alliance in China. In terms of game CP, ATET has also cooperated with terminal manufacturers such as TCL, Skyworth, Konka, etc., and carried out a series of offline player activities of "good TV and good games" in TV brand stores, which also received good results.

What is the effect of game promotion after it has been widely promoted?

A founder of a domestic VR manufacturer made such a calculation, "An offline experience store needs a 30-square-meter storefront, with a monthly rent of 10,000 yuan and a staff salary of 6,000 yuan. Currently, a store has 30-40 customers every day. Based on the price of 30 yuan per experience, the monthly income is about 30,000 yuan. Everyone says that VR is not profitable, but through offline experience stores and franchise models, we can actually make money."

In addition to achieving profitability, offline experience stores also undertake the task of educating players in the long run. Regarding offline TV game activities, Xu Jianjiong, vice president of Huanzhong Games, said, "TV games have entered an era of refined operations. In addition to requiring more sophisticated games, the development of offline TV game activities also allows players to gain a deeper understanding of TV games and find people to communicate with in the game."

Compared with the online promotion of mobile games, VR and TV game platforms have found fertile ground for growth offline. Take VR as an example. Wearing VR equipment for a long time will cause dizziness, while short-term experience is more easily accepted by users. Secondly, the cost of excellent VR equipment is high. Some good experiences must be combined with more peripherals, such as game consoles, heterosexual peripherals, etc. These have become objective conditions for opening offline experience stores.

Industry insiders believe that "for consumers in first-tier cities, the latest technology products are readily available, but for consumers in second- and third-tier cities, it is difficult. However, most Chinese consumers are in these small cities, so there is still a huge market for guiding consumers to buy game products through offline experience in the future."

Although offline promotion is unlikely to bring about an overnight success, and some people think it is a drop in the bucket, for a game platform in its early stages, users are the greatest wealth, and offline promotion is worth a try.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.