Game Development Giant

Time flies very quickly. It has been more than three months since I returned from the UK. The development of "Fire Emblem" has also entered the middle and late stages, and the process has been surprisingly smooth. Some difficulties that Jester had expected before, such as full map scrolling, , large map data processing, etc. were all solved with the efforts of the entire R\u0026D team, and as the entire game gradually took shape, when this epic game with huge content gradually revealed its original appearance in front of the development team , everyone became curious about the complete appearance of this game.

For his designers, especially those who grew up playing dnd board games and have been addicted to primitive running group RPGs such as "The Witcher" and "Genesis" for a long time, witnessing a real, flesh-and-blood, and historical , there are stories, everything they thought of, and the birth of the magical world of magic and swords that they didn't expect is the most exciting thing.

Jester also experienced this feeling for the first time. He thought of the documentary about the tenth anniversary of Warcraft released by Blizzard at the 2014 Carnival. The original designers of Warcraft It was because of playing eq that we came up with the idea that we could make a better game, and then put this great idea into action. So, despite three months of intense work with almost no breaks, everyone still retains great enthusiasm.

The news that Mars Entertainment's "Fire Emblem" project is personally hosted by Jester is no secret in the gaming industry. Both "Game" and "Famitsu" have reported a lot during this period, and "Game" was still the main focus of the report, and Nintendo was naturally not idle during this period. Originally, Nintendo was not used to the style of starting to promote the game before it was finished, but after seeing its competitor Mars Entertainment play this are becoming more and more sophisticated, so they begin to follow suit.

However, in the North American market, Nintendo cannot compare with Mars Entertainment in terms of channels and influence. "Fire Emblem" is now more popular than "The Legend of Zelda" in North America.

But in terms of publicity in the Japanese market, it is completely dominated by Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda". Although James Hawke has just taken over the marketing team originally established by Tamahide Yoshiro, he has not yet officially released his own game in Japan. The Mars Entertainment console is naturally much weaker than Nintendo, which has unified the Japanese home console market. What worries Jester most about the instructions given by Jester is that Shigeru Miyamoto's progress is much faster than his, because the content and structure of "The Legend of Zelda" are far better than his own "The Legend of Fire". "Heraldry" is much smaller, so three months was enough for him to complete the framework of the entire game and almost fill in the content. According to Jester's estimation, it will take at most two months for "The Legend of Zelda" to complete post-production, plus at most one month of debugging and testing before it can be officially released.

Calculating the time, Jester couldn't help but sigh that Nintendo had chosen the right time. It happened to be the summer vacation. It was launched at this time and could rely on the quality of this game. Sell ​​a wave of console sales climax and give yourself a beautiful counterattack, because the selling point of the game "The Legend of Zelda" is innocence. It happens to be the G-spot of those children who are still in the second grade of middle school and who are still dreaming of dreaming that they can save the world.

But to be honest, in the past three months, Nintendo originally wanted to rely on insufficient production capacity of Mars Entertainment, which made it impossible to distribute goods smoothly. He took advantage of Mars Entertainment's free period to fight back, but Hiroshi Yamauchi really didn't expect that Jester directly negotiated the merger with Guo Taiming. With the help of Hon Hai, although the current production capacity of Dreambox is still not comparable to that of Nintendo, which was fully prepared for this and has kept inventory for half a year, the sales of Nintendo's NES in North America are not very popular. Therefore, in terms of overall market share, Mars Entertainment still firmly has the upper hand.

Faced with a 20% share of the North American market, it is impossible for Arakawa not to be impatient, but Mars Entertainment's status among North American players is really too high, and the quality of the games currently launched by Mars Entertainment is not inferior to its own. - This is a polite way of saying it. In fact, the quality of Mars Entertainment's games is far higher than its own games.

In particular, the sales of "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World" and "Salomandar" are like crazy in the North American market. It is said that they have sold more cassettes than machines. To the extent that even the sales volume of "American Cube", which had been released in the arcade version before, is not inferior to these two games, both have exceeded the million-unit mark, and are still selling like crazy.

On the contrary, my own company has high hopes. "Mario Brothers", which sold miracles in Japan, suffered a failure in the North American market. The sales volume was very unsatisfactory. It was not even a fraction of the similar game "Snowman Brothers" from Mars Entertainment. If it were not for our own side, "Motocross", "Circus", "F1 Racing", Namco's "Pac-Man" and Hudson's "Bomberman", "Golden Digger" sales are pretty good, then I'm afraid I won't be able to even get 20% of the share.

This is not what worries Minoru Arakawa the most. What he is most afraid of is that several American game companies that he had negotiated with before the official release of his nes have changed their plans to produce games for him, such as EA, Activision, Famous American game companies such as Xueleshan have secretly told themselves through their own channels that Mars Entertainment has contacted them before, and the terms they offered are much better than Nintendo. In addition, the current market share in North America shows that Due to all the problems, these game companies have given up their intention to continue cooperation with their own side, and have switched to the third-party camp of Mars Entertainment.

This situation is similar for Jester, and it is similar in Japan. It is extremely difficult for Mars Entertainment to recruit third-party game companies in Japan, and those small companies are not favored by Jester, and some famous companies are not favored by Jester. I am a little worried about Mars Entertainment, which has not yet officially entered the Japanese home console market. Moreover, what these manufacturers see in front of them are manufacturers from the Nintendo FC camp who have already made a lot of money. On the other side, Mars Entertainment just issued empty checks and joined The American version of Anei's "Nobunaga's Ambition", which belongs to the Mars Entertainment camp and released their first Dreambox game, did not have very optimistic sales in North America.

Although "Nobunaga's Ambition" was listed as one of the first rated games by the original scoring mechanism of "Game" and was given a high score of 36 points, only "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World" and " "Saloman", "American Cube", "Avengers" and other few games have higher ratings than him, and they have also received high praise from most editors of the entire "Game" magazine. Among some senior video game players In my eyes, this is an out-and-out masterpiece, but this game is still too hardcore for the vast majority of North American players.

Moreover, a game from the history of the Warring States Period in Japan is time-consuming and labor-intensive to play. Most people cannot simply appreciate the fun that the game can bring. They cannot enjoy it without IQ like other games. Because of the fun that the game can bring, it is inevitable that the sales volume will be bleak - of course, the so-called bleakness is also relative. More than 60,000 copies were sold in more than two months after the official release, and the sales curve is extremely stable, and It is still rising steadily, which seems to be the result of word-of-mouth. According to this curve, there will be no problem if the number of copies exceeds 150,000 or even 200,000 by the end of the year.

According to Jester's regulations, during the development period, twenty to thirty minutes should be spent discussing the work to be completed today before formal work, so there will be a routine morning meeting every day.

Jester is usually the earliest among everyone. In fact, during the more than three months of development, he has only left the company to spend nights out a few times, and half of the time it was because of Claudia I made a special trip to the United States to see him. From this point of view, the entire development team admired Jester.

Just when it was time to go to work today, Jester was waiting in the conference room for the development team to come to the meeting. He was browsing today's work plan in his hand, and finally looked to see if there was anything that could be modified. At that time, Yuji Naka and Yasushi Matsuno walked into the conference room side by side. During their stay in the United States, their behavior gradually changed towards those of their colleagues in the United States - at least they did not act like nine-year-olds as soon as they met. Bowed ten degrees.

However, Jester saw the two of them looking extremely angry. One of them, Matsuno Yasumi, was holding a rolled-up magazine in his hand. Judging from the Japanese on the cover, it should be "Famitsu".

"Famitsu" is now the best-selling game magazine in Japan. After the great success of "Game", it was released one year earlier than in its original history. After "Game" pioneered the forty-point method, After some released games were rated at levels of masterpiece, palace, platinum, gold, etc., and were well received by readers, "Famitsu" also copied the same rating system, and even copied the game levels. But the only difference is that when it comes to American games, they are always more 'personal'.

Therefore, for two games with almost the same quality and even similar categories, on "Famitsu", the score of the Japanese manufacturer must be higher than that of the American manufacturer, and now it specifically refers to Mars Entertainment. Of course, It's not disrespectful to reciprocate. "Game" will also give "subjective" ratings to Nintendo games.

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