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These days, the most discussed topic in the gaming circle must be the "Black Myth: Wukong” On the first day of its release, it set many new industry records and became the single-player game with the most concurrent online users on Steam, finally bringing domestic games to the forefront of the global gaming industry.

At almost the same time at the Cologne Fair in Germany, more domestic games were trying to shine at this industry event.

In recent years, Chinese game companies have been trying to increase their presence in the PC and console markets, and the Gamescom has become an important window for Chinese manufacturers to compete with global mainstream manufacturers. At this year's Gamescom, domestic manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, Seasun House, and Papergames also brought their flagship products to the show.

GamescomThe huge mecha exhibition stand of "Limited Machine"

"Unlimited Machine" at the Cologne Game Show

Among them, Seasun released a new real machine demo of its own sci-fi mecha game "Limited Machine" and held a 6V6 battlefield mode show match at the Cologne Exhibition, which attracted a lot of attention from overseas players and media. According to Seasun's plan,"Limitless Machine" will also be exhibited at the 2024 Tokyo Game Show in September this year.


Image source:Phil Spencer, President of Microsoft Gaming

Seasun CEO Guo Weiwei also appeared at the Microsoft booth at this year's Cologne Games Show. Microsoft Games President Phil Spencer also took a photo with Guo Weiwei at the booth to show his support."Limiting Machine", and according to the information released earlier,Unlimited will be available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 (PlayStation 5).

As far as I can remember, this is not the first time that the game has sparked the enthusiasm of overseas players. Since its debut at TGA last year, the overseas discussion of "Limited Machine" has continued to rise. On August 3 this year, after the game launched the "Pioneer Action" test on Steam, more than 1 million players added the game to their Steam wishlist, and the number of reservations worldwide exceeded 2.7 million.

NVIDIA recently announced that "Unlimited Machine" has become the world's first game to showcase the "NVIDIA ACE" digital human technology. The game was demonstrated by Seasun CEO Guo Weiwei himself, who interacted directly with the in-game mechanic through dialogue, helping players customize the appearance of their mechas and providing combat advice.

GameLook noticed an interesting phenomenon. After becoming NVIDIA's first AI NPC and releasing a new real machine demo at the Cologne Expo, the domestic game "Limited Machine" received rave reviews overseas, with a much higher volume than in China. Not only were overseas players more excited than Chinese players, but even foreign media gave it high praise, which is rare.

We can say responsibly that based on this popularity alone, Xishanju may win again.

The media is full of praise, and overseas players are much more excited than domestic players

From the first exposure to small-scale testing, and then to the first test on Steam, "Limited Edition" has always maintained a high level of attention among global player communities.

Guo Weiwei once revealed in an interview that "Limit-free Machine" had been tested once in the United States and Japan, and the results were good. According to official data, the "Pioneer Operation" test on the Steam platform has received amazing responses: it has attracted more than 1.4 million participants worldwide, and the number of online players has reached 51,000 at the same time.

Although this is related to the fact that there is no limit on the number of players in this test, for a sci-fi mecha PC game with an original IP, such popularity is amazing. It is not difficult to guess that after the game is launched, it is very likely that it will continue to hit 100,000 people online at the same time.

Now, with the new trailer of "Limitless Machine" exposed at the Cologne Expo, GameLook found that the overseas discussion of this domestic game is still soaring, and the excitement of players and media is far greater than that in China.

Overseas media, especially Japanese media, were generous with their praise. For example, Japanese gaming media 4Gamer described "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" in a series of articles as "movie-style", "full of romanticism", and "captured the hearts of fans with the unique romance of mecha"... Such praise is rare in Japan, the birthplace of mecha culture.

The British media pcgamesn called it "a fierce new rival to the MechWarrior series"; the overseas website kakuchopurei directly praised it as "a stunning work of mecha theme"; compared with the theme, the American game media pcgamer praised the game's 60-player large-scale battle mode: "Even if you are tired of battle royale games, this still sounds great."

Compared to the relatively restrained media, overseas players, especially mecha fans who are fed up with the lack of progress in the "Gundam" series, have shown extraordinary enthusiasm for this game.

If some players were relatively excited and calm after watching the latest trailer, then a larger group of players have collectively fallen into "boasting mode".

Some test players said that this was the only game they had tried that was not "overly promising"; some players lamented that this was the most Gundam-like non-Gundam game they had ever seen; and some hoped that Seasun would produce "slower" and polish this game, which could become "the most perfect and complete mecha game ever."

There are even more core mecha game players who have been "sleeping" for too long and have begun to praise "Unlimited Machine" as "the best game of the year", "the game of a lifetime", "come and take my money". Some fanatical players even called out: "Everyone else thinks we have disappeared, and it's time for mecha game fans to stand up."

How did Xishanju hit the excitement point of overseas players?

Everyone may be very curious about how Xishanju used a "limit-breaking machine" to touch the excitement points of overseas players?

First of all, science fiction mecha is a subject that has almost no cultural division. For example, the "Transformers" IP is built up by seven blockbuster movies in Europe and the United States, and the mecha culture in Asia is led by Japanese companies, and its influence has even spread to the world. The saying "mecha is a man's romance" can be said to be universally accepted.

However, mecha themes have always been classified as a niche in the gaming circle. In the Japanese market, where mecha culture is the most prosperous, although there are classic series such as "Gundam" and "Super Robot Wars", most of them are medium-sized works, and there are no phenomenal games that have emerged.

When Japanese manufacturers' development focus is not on mecha themes, this blank market is naturally easy to be captured by keen Chinese companies.

For domestic players, the most familiar mecha game is the SD Gundam series represented by 9you. But in fact, there are already domestic teams exploring Chinese mecha games, such as NetEase's Mobile City Alpha and Zilong's recent good performance of Steel Storm.

However, it is the first time that a large company like Seasun has personally participated in the globalization and multi-platform scale. It is reported that "Limited Machine" will start its first Xbox test on August 25, which is also the first game of Seasun to land on the host platform.

In order to present mecha designs that will satisfy players around the world in this original IP, "The Limit" specially invited two Japanese mecha designers: Takashi Yanase, who participated in the creation of "Metal Gear Solid", "Gundam" and "Armored Core", and Jun'ya Ishigaki, who worked on "Macross", "Xenogears" and "Gundam", to join - judging from the results, the game's original mechas have indeed received a lot of praise.

In comparison, the reason why "Limitless Machine" has sparked the enthusiasm of overseas players is that it has seized the lack of multiplayer competitive gameplay.

Looking around the world, there is still a lack of a large-scale, multi-platform mecha competitive online game. Even the "Armored Core 6: Skyfire" released by FromSoftware last year, although the cumulative sales of 3 million copies are not bad, it is not a competitive online game after all, and the players' demand for "multiplayer battles" has not been met.

On the other hand, "Limited Machine" not only has 3V3 competitive mode, 6V6 battlefield, and 60-player super PVEVP battle royale battlefield, but also has begun to lay out the e-sports process. The official "Pioneer Anchor Invitational" runs through the entire "Pioneer Operation" test, and it will be natural for the next step to launch e-sports events.

Even before it was launched, Xishanju's "Limited Machine" has already gained such a high reputation overseas. If the multiplayer mecha competition gameplay and even the subsequent e-sports path can really run smoothly, it is unimaginable how popular "Limited Machine" will be in the world in the future. The only thing that can be confirmed is that Xishanju should have won the game by then.

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