Game Development Giant

The large-scale player testing and the smooth development of several games are all good news, but sometimes not everything is good news, and there are also some things that make Jester unhappy. After receiving its own capital injection of 8 million, Dell developed extremely rapidly, much faster than in history. In the original history, Dell only reached 6,000 in annual sales two years after the establishment of its own company. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

And now, because of his own investment of eight million US dollars, this time Dell was able to establish his own direct telephone sales network on a large scale in the early stages, which allowed his sales to almost double in the past few months. Up to now, there is still more than a month until the end of the year, and the peak sales season of Christmas and New Year's Day have not yet arrived. Dell's cumulative sales in the past six months have reached 8 million US dollars.

This made Dell, a young man about the same age as Jester, very excited. In the past six months, he had witnessed Jester's rapid rise in a very short period of time, which shocked him a lot. Dell is A very conceited person, he never thinks that he is inferior to anyone, and in his eyes, the market for personal computers is much broader than that of video games. He believes that he can do the same as Jester matter. Since Jester can achieve jaw-dropping success, so can Michael Dell.

When Jester came to Dell and wanted to discuss with him the manufacture of a high-performance computer, this computer would use a 16-bit image processing card that had just been successfully developed by a display chip company called ati, and was specially developed by the startup company. A sound card coupled with Seagate's large-capacity hard drive would of course be much more expensive than Compaq's top-of-the-line 386 machine, but after careful consideration, Dell rejected Jester's suggestion.

Because Dell feels that this proposal is not very good, he is currently relying on low-price strategies to compete with Apple or other IBM-compatible machines for market share, and the rapid growth of his own sales also shows that the sales strategy he chose is correct. .

The kind of computer that Jester told him would obviously be very expensive and the sales volume would not be high. Moreover, when people buy computers nowadays, they don’t need such powerful hardware at all. They just type words and make a form. , what graphics card and sound card to use? For those who buy computers, why use a 16-bit graphics card and a dedicated sound card?

But after thinking for a moment, Dale thought of Jester's purpose. game.

Only games require such high-performance hardware configuration. Dell sneered at this. The price of a computer is much more expensive than a home game console. In the past, Atari's game console was so popular for only $200. , if you ask him to sell it for two thousand dollars, it is impossible to sell much sales.

After all, a game is just a toy, and few people will spend two to three thousand dollars for a toy.

Moreover, not many people buy computers to play games, so Dell categorically rejected Jester's proposal. Only people like him would not do this kind of thing of making wedding clothes for others without benefiting himself. Although Jester is also a Dell shareholder.

This incident made Jester a little dissatisfied. He had already agreed with He Guoyuan before that he would find a home for their new graphics card, and in order to promote it, he would personally design a game for this graphics card. Unexpectedly, Even the cooperation with Dell, which was definitely no problem in his expectation, was not concluded.

This also made Jester a little depressed. He Guoyuan was waiting for his news over there, and he knew that there would definitely be a big market for high-performance graphics cards in the future, so after thinking about it for a night, Jester directly gave it to He Guoyuan. Made the call.

"Old He, let's make our own computers." As soon as the call was connected, He Guoyuan heard these words through the phone receiver.

Jester's words surprised He Guoyuan. His original entrepreneurial goal was to focus on personal computers, because he worked at Wang Computer Company for several years when he was in Hong Kong and had a deep understanding of this aspect. He also sees great potential in personal computers.

However, his friend has the ability to develop display chips, and the two sides had differences when discussing their entrepreneurial goals. Moreover, the investment in making display chips is much less than that in making personal computers. After all, one requires research and development, while the other is just simple. OEM, so after several intense discussions, they planned to start with display chips that require less investment. As for the personal computer business, it will depend on the situation later.

Just at this time, Jester came to them, but the premise of Jester's investment was that they wanted to do the display chip business. Although it was not the personal computer that He Guoyuan wanted to do most, display chips were also in their previous plans, so The two parties also reached an agreement on a cooperation plan.

Moreover, after Jester's description of making display chips, He Guoyuan had a new concept. The most important thing is that as long as he designs a display chip for Jester that meets their requirements, then Jester's company can Place your first order of 5 million coins directly.

This is very attractive in He Guoyuan's eyes.

But this time Jester suddenly said that he wanted to make a computer, which made He Guoyuan a little confused. Aren't they doing a good job in making display chips? Although personal computers are profitable, even if we want to build a computer, we still need to get rid of the display chip first. Let’s wait until the market stabilizes.

A display chip company has just started and wants to operate across fields. Does my boss know how to start a company?

However, after Jester's explanation, He Guoyuan somewhat understood.

This time, the personal computers they made were not focused on low prices like other computer companies that make IBM-compatible machines today, but they took the initiative to build a high-end gaming computer brand for differentiated competition, and the niche was definitely It is a niche, but there will always be some users who like it.

And this way he can also make some games in advance that in his impression can only be made when the computer's performance reaches a certain level. For example, this time he plans to make an action-adventure game in order to promote ATI's high-performance graphics cards. Reference This is the "Prince of Persia" in his impression.

There is also the exclusive real-time strategy for computer players. Of course, the simulation game series is indispensable. After all, I have two of the world’s top masters of simulation business games, Sid Meier, the father of civilization, and Will, the father of The Sims. Al Wright.

Of course, in the future, high-performance computers will definitely be used to open 3D games.

After his high-end gaming brand computer is released, he can let Sid Meier and Will Wright become independent from the current team, set up a studio, and officially start the development of simulation strategy games. This is also his goal. The idea only came up in the past few days because Sid Meier recently gave him a very detailed game plan.

Jester took a general look and found that it was basically a replica of Sid Meier's Pirates, an epoch-making simulation strategy game in history. You can see from this plan that Sid Meier's Pirates Mel has a lot of unique insights into how to design this type of game.

His understanding of this type of game is even deeper than his own.

Jester was not very impressed by the game "Sid Meier's Pirates" because the computer game was too old and he had never played it, but that did not prevent him from reading about it. To be honest, when Jester saw this game by Sid Meier, another game about sailing came to mind.

Perhaps for many domestic players, the first time they played this type of game was An Rong's masterpiece "Age of Discovery". However, An Rong is still just a small company and has not even considered games in this area. In Jester's memory, Sid Meier made "Pirates" much earlier than An Rong made "The Age of Discovery."

Of course, the two games are actually very different in terms of gameplay, but the two most famous games with a navigation theme that can still be successful are Sid Meier's "Pirates" and An Rong's "Age of Discovery". .

Therefore, Jester talked a lot with Sid Meier about this plan, mainly about the idea of ​​adding more RPG elements to the game. This is also one of the PSP versions of Anrong's "Age of Discovery 4". That’s why it’s hailed as a masterpiece.

Jester's suggestions about RPG elements also greatly inspired Sid Meier. After the two talked all night, Sid Meier directly stated that he would make a new version of his game about pirates and As for the new planning of a game with a navigation theme, he also believes that adding more RPG elements to such a game is indeed a very cool suggestion.

According to his own words, “I can’t wait to see this game!”

He Guoyuan over there was also a little moved after hearing Jester's statement. Although their current eight-bit display chips have very good sales data with the support of Mars Entertainment, a buyer with huge demand, they have devoted all their efforts to develop The sales of their 16-bit graphics cards were poor, or in other words, basically no computer company was interested in their expensive, high-performance graphics cards.

"Lao He, I have been thinking about it for a long time. The only way to promote the sales of graphics cards is to rely on users who think your product has strong performance to actively buy it. This is because this product is meaningless to them. There is only one When the product interests them, they will have the desire to buy something that was of no value to them before, because if they don't buy your graphics card, they won't be able to play the games they really want."

Jester explained this to He Guoyuan on the phone, trying to make He Guoyuan understand his point of view. After all, the computer brand he was planning to make this time was intended to be under the name of ATI, and He Guoyuan also had rich experience in this aspect. experience.

These words also inspired He Guoyuan a lot, and it seemed that he understood how he should develop his own display chips in the future. He was a little excited, but also a little uncertain. He pondered for a few times, and then asked tentatively: "You Does it mean that before we release a new graphics card every time, we need some products that require this kind of graphics card to experience the experience to stimulate our users. If you want to play this game, then you must come Buy our graphics card?”

After Jester heard this, even though he was talking on the phone and it was impossible for the other party to see his expression, he nodded involuntarily and replied with a smile: "Yes, I think that in the future, game developers and graphics cards will Business is definitely a win-win situation because their goals are the same, which is to put money in the players’ pockets.”

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