A sudden surge of nearly 100%! China's market welcomes a "historic moment"

FX168 Financial News Agency (Asia Pacific) News: The first 3A game in Chinese history, "Black Myth: Wukong," was officially launched on Tuesday, August 20th, with total platform sales exceeding 4.5 million copies and sales revenue exceeding 1.5 billion RMB. Following the positive news, the WUKONG meme coin (Black Myth WuKong) surged nearly 100% at one point, then retraced to $6.03.

According to the national bestseller list, as of now, "Black Myth: Wukong" has sold over 3 million copies on Steam alone. Combined with sales on WeGame, Epic, and PS platforms, the total sales have exceeded 4.5 million copies, with total sales revenue surpassing 1.5 billion RMB. Currently, the game maintains a positive review rate of over 95% on Steam, with Chinese reviews accounting for about 90%.

(Source: Steam)

"Black Myth: Wukong" is developed by the Chinese game developer "Game Science" using the Unreal Engine 5, based on the classic novel "Journey to the West," creating an action role-playing game set in a world full of immortals, Buddhas, monsters, and myths. The open pre-load on Tuesday led to a surge in Steam download bandwidth to 70Tbps, breaking the record of 50Tbps set by "Cyberpunk 2077" at the end of 2020.

With its high development cost and long development cycle, the game is hailed as China's first AAA masterpiece, highly anticipated by Chinese players, referred to as the "pride of domestic games," likened to the Chinese versions of "God of War" and "Elden Ring." Players will take on the role of the Chinese mythological character Sun Wukong, defeating the monsters wreaking havoc on the human world.

It is reported that Game Science was founded in June 2014 and has deep ties with Tencent. The founding team all came from Tencent, with the main creative team mainly from Tencent's projects such as "Dragon in the Sky," "QQ Huaxia," and "National Airplane Battle." For example, the founder of the company, Feng Ji, was a core member of Tencent's "Fight the God" project, which was also based on the great IP of Sun Wukong.

Tencent is one of the main investors in Game Science. After the release of the demonstration video for "Black Myth: Wukong," Tencent immediately formed a team for research and development, and subsequently acquired a 5% stake in Game Science through additional investment. It is estimated that Tencent's investment in Game Science may exceed 200 million RMB. This investment is different from the past. Tencent has promised the "three nots" principle of not interfering with operational decisions. Game Science will continue to maintain independent operations, and its autonomy will not be affected. In addition to receiving strategic investment from Tencent, in May 2017, Game Science also received a 60 million yuan investment from Hero Entertainment (now known as Hero Games), raising the valuation of Game Science to 300 million yuan.

Chinese netizens generally hold a positive attitude towards "Black Myth: Wukong". Some netizens speculate that the online player count for Black Wukong has exceeded 1.4 million, which is 400,000 higher than the peak of 2077. Will it reach 2 million online viewers by the weekend? The only suspense is whether it can break the record of 3 million concurrent players in PUBG.

However, at the same time, there are also doubts within the gaming community about "Black Myth: Wukong". Some have raised concerns such as "The combat in Black Myth is not very meaningful, just hitting with a stick from start to finish. I don't know if there will be any changes later on", "The experience mainly relies on exploring and picking up monster skills", "Even in Sekiro, it's just one sword from start to finish. To be honest, I prefer the feeling of trying out new weapons in other Souls games, but if a weapon is well-made, it's not bad".

With the high popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong", the WUKONG meme coin also surged, reaching a high of $10.67 at one point, with an increase of nearly 100%, but then falling back to $6.03.

(Source: CoinMarketCap)