He's already the Chief Operating Officer; the next person above him is Pony Ma.

It's clear that Ma has no intention of stepping down from his leading role so soon.

“Pico wants us to port Heroes of the End to their platform.”

After its release, "Heroes of the End" did not disappoint Tencent's massive investment.

It became a phenomenal online game on the VR platform, with popularity comparable to the early days of League of Legends.

Of course, considering that VR and PC ownership are not on the same scale, the comparison here is only in terms of proportion.

Back in the day, nine out of ten computers in internet cafes were used to play League of Legends. Now, with brain-computer interfaces and VR, it's the same principle: nine out of ten devices are used to play Heroes of the End.

Ren Yu remained noncommittal: "What kind of terms can Pico offer?"

Although Tencent is the second largest shareholder of Sci-Tech Future, the ownership of games and other related products belongs to Tencent itself.

It was not developed and published by a joint venture.

“Pico has indicated that it is willing to give us a portion of its shares.”

Previously, major domestic internet giants had all made moves in the hardware field.

Tencent acquired Black Shark Technology, a company specializing in gaming phones. Ali became the sole investor in the Series C funding round of a well-known domestic AR glasses manufacturer.

But ByteDance made the biggest move, spending 7 billion RMB to acquire pico. It also appears to be their most successful foray into metaverse-themed hardware.

I just didn't expect that Tencent could partner with Kechuang Bio to launch a groundbreaking VR product.

For ByteDance, being willing to relinquish its stake in Pico is a tough decision.

Zhou Hongwei spent a lot of effort persuading Zhang.

Ren Yu laughed and said, "Zhou Hongwei is really persistent. He knows it's impossible, but he still insists on coming to find us."

The fundamental conflict between ByteDance and Tencent lies in the fact that everyone's energy is limited, and every app wants to capture users' time.

What ByteDance needs to do is to completely restrict Tencent's software, so that WeChat can just focus on its own communication service. Why add so many additional features?

It's both on WeChat Moments and through mini-programs.

ByteDance's products occupy users' time, which reduces the traffic that Tencent's product matrix can obtain.

The fundamental conflict between the two sides lies in vying for users' time and traffic.

As early as Q1 of 2022, short videos surpassed instant messaging for the first time in terms of average daily app usage time per user on the mobile internet.

This was a landmark event, after which the gap between the two sides gradually narrowed.

Short videos here include not only ByteDance's products, but also Bilibili, Kuaishou, and others.

Therefore, if we only consider product usage time, Tencent is still ahead of ByteDance, but the gap is already very small.

Tencent's strategic space has been greatly squeezed.

Before 2016, if someone had said that Tencent and Ali would face a fundamental challenge...

Everyone would think the person who said that is crazy.

However, in reality, Tencent and Ali have indeed been undermined in their foundations over the years.

Ali is in a worse situation than Tencent. Tencent only surpassed Tencent in short videos, not the other way around.

Ali's market share has been severely squeezed by Pinduoduo, while Douyin, as a new entrant, is also doing e-commerce, and JD.com is watching closely from the sidelines.

Both new and veteran players were eyeing the meat in Ahri's bowl.

The subordinate, understanding the implication, suggested, "Should I just reject them outright?"

Ren Yu shook his head and said, "Don't rush to reject them. I have an idea, and I need to organize it."

"I'll give Pico feedback after I finish my internal meeting and discuss it."

Brain-computer interface VR is an experiment by Tencent. If it proves successful, they will increase their investment.

In this situation, partnering with Pico is not in line with Tencent's operating style.

Not to mention that ByteDance is Tencent's biggest rival.

The subordinates had many questions.

At 6:30 p.m., when he was eating at the Tencent cafeteria, Ren Yu called him over:

“We told Pico that the controls of Heroes of the End were too complicated and not well-suited to their products.”

"However, 'Heroic Apocalypse' and all of Tencent's VR products can be streamed on the Pico platform."

"The permission for personal video editing is also being opened up to ByteDance products."

It's rare for Tencent to be so generous. Back in 2016, when ByteDance wasn't as successful as it is now, Tencent filed its first lawsuit against ByteDance for copyright infringement.

Over the next five years, Tencent and ByteDance engaged in approximately 40 copyright lawsuits against each other.

One of the more well-known cases is that Tencent (the company behind Tencent) demanded that Douyin (TikTok) be prohibited from disseminating short videos of "Honor of Kings".

Even the viral "Anti-gang Storm" video, which was shown all over the internet back then, was required to be taken down by Tencent on Douyin.

Although Pico is not Douyin, as a subsidiary of ByteDance, it is not much different from Douyin.

“Mark, I’m curious why you were willing to grant Pico access this time.”

Ren Yu said seriously, "It's not for Pico, it's for all VR devices."

“We won’t be porting it specifically to other regular VR games, but we need to make sure all VR players can watch Heroes of the End.”

"It's not just 'Heroes of the End,' but also 'Assassin's Creed,' 'The Legend of Zelda,' and other games. All of these live stream content will be made available to all VR players."

"When they frequently watch live streams of VR brain-computer interface users, their next product will most likely be Futureverse."

This is equivalent to cultivating the market; Pico users can see brain-computer interface VR players streaming "Heroes of the End".

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!