Mei Yiqiu stood facing the wall, pipe in mouth, looking at the map on the large screen through the white smoke he exhaled. The map was densely covered with red dots, and the more developed the area, the denser the red dots became, with some areas even forming a sea of red.
He reached out and randomly tapped a red dot on the eastern United States, and a small window immediately popped up next to it:
City: Miami
Population: 5.59 million
Sales: 119,500 units
Number of users: 231,325
He then randomly clicked on a red dot along China's eastern coast:
City: Yongcheng
Population: 8.2 million
Sales: 173,220 units
Number of users: 437,709
Next, Mei Yiqiu opened several more locations in Europe, Japan, and other areas with a high concentration of red (international) users. Data showed that although the number of users varied from place to place, the overall difference was not significant. The average sales volume of the Space Box was about one-fortieth of the population, and the number of registered users of Dream Guide was two to three times that of the Space Box, indicating that each Space Box was shared by about two or three people, which was within his expectations.
On this matter, there are significant disagreements among the game's operators and the regional distributors of the Space Box, which escalated into a heated debate during a recent video conference. Penguin Group believes the most crucial element of the game is its user base, so they can encourage people to share Space Box; if the cost of the Space Box weren't so high, they could even give them away for free. They argue that once the user base grows and users develop sufficient dependence, charging for the game and value-added services in the future will be a natural progression. However, the distributors, led by Huanyu International, believe the core of the entire project is the Space Box, and that the Dream Guide game should be permanently free; making money through hardware is the key.
Another point of contention is whether or not to connect to the Internet. 5G technology is already mature and commercially available, and the external mobile Internet can fully handle the data volume and Space Box requirements of Dream Guide. Building base stations is too costly, and countries are currently in a wait-and-see state. Whether to vigorously build 5G base stations or build a separate dedicated network for DreamNet is a problem. Everyone is dragging their feet and not daring to take big steps.
Because 5G base stations cannot be upgraded on the basis of 4G, major telecommunications companies around the world had already developed independent network plans in the past two years. However, the emergence of Space Box delayed the implementation of this plan. It actually overlaps with Dreamnet and could have been used interchangeably, but the Third Space Foundation and Mei Laboratory insisted on independent networking. No one wanted the 5G network they had spent a lot of money to build to end up being useless.
The prevailing call now is to open up the Dream Guide data and merge Dreamnet with the internet to conserve social resources. However, many mobile phone and hardware manufacturers do not support this, because it would mean that all communication and VR devices, including mobile phones, would face obsolescence in a very short time, except for the Space Box itself.
This is exactly what the agents of Space Box are happy to see. A true overlord who will unify the world will emerge. The world from now on will be the world of Space Box and the world of Dream Guide.
Of course, many companies have already filed antitrust lawsuits in their localities, suing the Third Space Foundation and its affiliated technology companies and related laboratories for violating antitrust laws. Even at the United Nations General Assembly, a bill was proposed requiring the disclosure of technologies crucial to humanity's fate, demanding that the Third Space Foundation and Mei Laboratory disclose the core technology of the Space Box. However, if this bill were passed, it would mean that all nuclear and aerospace technologies from developed countries would have to be made public worldwide, so it is clearly unlikely to pass.
However, opposition is sweeping the world, with calls for technology openness, network consolidation, and hardware price reductions growing louder. Everyone is feeling the pressure and doesn't quite understand why Mei Yiqiu on independent networking and rapid expansion. These are two contradictory things; no one can expect to achieve such a large project overnight.
Throughout the entire video conference, Mei Yiqiu remained silent, simply watching, listening, and smoking. Only when everyone else had fallen silent did he slowly say, "We'll see."
Those usually arrogant and domineering capitalists were completely helpless against this sprightly, white-haired old man. This was probably the least efficient business meeting they had ever held in their lives, but for the sake of the project they couldn't afford to give up, they had no choice but to accept it. In the face of capital, capitalists are always the epitome of being able to bend and stretch.
However, for Mei Yiqiu, these things were not important. What mattered was how to achieve his goal in the shortest possible time—at least one billion users, preferably two billion, or even five billion. Of course, the latter was probably something he could never achieve in his lifetime.
The reputation of Dream Guide is phenomenal, with almost no negative reviews. The malicious reviews online are easily identifiable because the reviewers have never actually used the Space Box. However, any genuine user, even those hired by competitors, becomes truly addicted to the game after just one use, willing to go bankrupt to buy a Space Box. As a result, reports of people selling kidneys to buy Space Box have surfaced online.
Mei Yiqiu randomly clicked on a few more red dots in densely populated red areas on the map. For a game that requires expensive hardware, a user coverage rate of nearly 10% was quite astonishing. But this was still far from Mei Yiqiu's requirements. Even if all regions in the world reached 10%, it would only amount to 700 million users.
Of course, it's easy to fake data. Penguin Group's operations department had already suggested that he could easily increase the number of users fivefold, but Mei Yiqiu rejected the plan. He didn't need duplicate, inactive accounts to attract investors' attention; he needed real users, each one independent, unique individuals whose identities could be verified through DNA and individual consciousness.
However, apart from the developed areas, there are still large gray areas on the map, with scattered red dots, and some places have no red dots at all.
His outstretched finger slid across the map, tapping on a red dot in western China:
City: Doucheng
Population: 3.69 million
Sales: 1532 units
Number of users: 3421
The city's user base is less than one-thousandth of its population, and it's not even one of the poorest regions in China. Mei Yiqiu then swiped his hand to the west coast of Africa, finding a lone red dot amidst the vast expanse of gray. He clicked on it and saw the data:
City: Monrovia
Population: 1.15 million
Sales: 1 unit
Number of users: 1
Even in the poorest regions, there are wealthy people, but in the capital of this Africa country, only one person bought a Space Box. Mei Yiqiu didn't know who that person was, but he knew the root cause of the problem that these places couldn't promote the technology—there were no base stations there, and the maintenance companies wouldn't build base stations for a few users.
The sole user in Monrovia must have leased a special satellite data channel provided by Third Space, which would have incurred additional costs.
"Professor, is there really no way to connect with the existing network and equipment?" Mei Ziqing asked cautiously from behind.
Mei Yiqiu shook his head. "No amount of data encryption can stop a Ghost lurking in the online world!"
"But I don't understand why we have to stop it? As long as it can't rewrite our data, its existence won't affect our ability to identify Parasitic Consciousness!" Mei Ziqing said.
"How do you know that a consciousness existing in an electronic network isn't a parasite?"