Chapter 492: Partnering with a Mobile Phone Developer
Can mobile phones really replace handheld consoles?
From the perspective of players in the parallel world, the answer was obvious: of course they could.
Because the functions of mobile phones and handheld consoles heavily overlapped—both were portable devices, both could play games, and with current mobile phone specs being so high, they could easily run large-scale games of dozens of gigabytes.
What’s more, mobile phones had advantages that handheld consoles simply couldn’t match.
On one hand, everyone owned a smartphone, meaning every person was a potential user of mobile games. On the other hand, mobile phones had network connectivity and a much larger user base, making it easier for game developers to create multiplayer online games with many players.
Given that, why would most people spend an extra two or three thousand yuan to buy a separate handheld console just for gaming, on top of their phone?
It didn’t make sense!
So, people in this world hadn’t realized the potential that handheld consoles held.
But Chen Mo didn’t think that way.
Mobile phones could never replace handheld consoles. This wasn’t a problem that technological advancement could solve; it was an inevitable result of the different positioning of these two products.
In Chen Mo’s previous life, whether it was a home console or a handheld console, their buttons were relatively fixed—they had to have two physical analog sticks and at least ten physical buttons.
Clearly, these physical analog sticks and buttons couldn’t be added to a mobile phone because they conflicted with the phone’s own positioning.
For a mobile phone, making calls, sending messages, and using various apps were its primary functions. Playing games was just one of its secondary features.
Therefore, no mobile phone manufacturer would add physical analog sticks and buttons—features that served no purpose other than gaming—to their devices.
Ultimately, it came down to one point: a mobile phone was not a dedicated gaming machine, so gaming was merely a supplementary function.
A phone couldn’t be fully optimized for gaming, so the experience for core games would never reach its peak.
Additionally, whether for home consoles or handhelds, their true vitality lay in the core games available on them, and some games could never be ported to mobile phones.
In other words, the difference between mobile phones and handheld consoles wasn’t determined by the level of technological development, but by the different positioning of these two products. Their primary functions were different, so they could never become the same.
Of course, there was also the possibility that, as technology advanced in the future, people might use a virtual helmet or a pair of virtual glasses to enter a virtual game world.
If it progressed to that point, then not only handheld consoles, but also mobile phones, PCs, and other gaming devices would become obsolete.
And even if a new device replaced the handheld console, it wouldn’t mean the handheld console had died out; rather, this new device would become the new handheld console.
So, from the current perspective, handheld consoles and mobile phones, as devices with different primary functions, could coexist. If players wanted to experience professional, hardcore games, they would still need a handheld console to do so.
The handheld console Chen Mo wanted to design was clearly meant to fill a gap in the parallel world.
Of course, since there were no domestic manufacturers of handheld consoles in the parallel world, Chen Mo had to start from scratch.
But starting from scratch didn’t mean building every component from the ground up.
In the age of globalization, producing a mobile phone often required collaboration across many fields. Its components might come from different manufacturers around the world, and the actual developer only needed to provide the design plan.
Some developers even bought their design plans and could still produce a phone, as long as they could sell it.
Handheld consoles and mobile phones shared some technical similarities, so Chen Mo considered directly contacting some reliable domestic mobile phone developers.
...
Two days later, Lin Xiao handed a report to Chen Mo.
"Boss, this is an assessment of some mobile phone manufacturers. I contacted a few industry insiders and talked with the top management of these companies. The general situation is written in the report. Please take a look."
Chen Mo nodded. "Okay, thanks for your hard work."
He carefully reviewed the assessment materials on these mobile phone manufacturers.
It was somewhat similar to his previous life—this world also had a wide variety of mobile phone brands.
Domestic mobile phones had developed quite well, even better than in Chen Mo’s previous life. In some technical areas, they had even fully surpassed it.
After all, this world had many black technologies, so surpassing the previous life was normal.
After careful selection, Chen Mo chose a mobile phone developer called Lehui.
This developer, Lehui, was a relatively new company that had risen in recent years. Compared to other established developers, their main selling points were high cost-effectiveness and collaborations with popular mobile games on the market.
Their carefully designed phone models were all tailored to current popular mobile games. For example, a thousand-yuan phone could run a certain popular game, while models priced at three thousand or even five thousand yuan had corresponding high-end games.
In other words, if you wanted to play a certain popular game, choosing a Lehui phone at the corresponding price point was the most cost-effective option—both cheap and reliable.
This marketing strategy helped Lehui quickly capture the youth market, and among gaming enthusiasts, Lehui phones had a good reputation.
You could tell from the name "Lehui" itself: "Le" meant bringing joy, and "Hui" meant being affordable, highlighting the phone’s characteristics in gaming and cost-effectiveness.
Chen Mo chose this developer partly because he felt they had a keen sense of the gaming industry, making communication smoother on many issues, and partly because they were very strict about cost control, which would be helpful in the development of the handheld console.
Soon, Chen Mo contacted the relevant person in charge at Lehui and arranged to meet with the CEO at Lehui’s headquarters three days later.
...
Lehui’s founder and CEO was Zhou Jiangping.
In the domestic IT industry, Zhou Jiangping was a well-known figure. He came from a technical background, unlike some founders who relied on empty talk to trick investors.
Many considered Zhou Jiangping one of the more down-to-earth and diligent entrepreneurs in the country.
Of course, for Lehui and Zhou Jiangping, Chen Mo reaching out to them was also a huge surprise.
In the domestic gaming industry, Chen Mo’s Thunderbolt Interactive was already one of the giants, a highly influential game developer and distributor.
Moreover, Lehui phones were targeted at young people and closely tied to the mobile gaming market. As the best mobile game designer in the country (and arguably the only one at that level), Chen Mo was clearly worth Lehui’s utmost attention.