Game Development Giant

Now Nakamura Masaya is also facing a very difficult choice.

When he made the decision to cooperate with Nippon Electric before, he was full of ambitions. It is not accurate to say that. If it were not because Hiroshi Yamauchi's conditions were not so harsh and the two parties just maintained a good cooperative relationship, then he would not have will make this decision.

If this thought were known to Jester, he would definitely laugh at Masaya Nakamura's shamelessness.

Although Nintendo's royalty system is relatively harsh, even among the six major development companies that enjoy privileges, they and Hudson are the most privileged. Of course, since Capcom's betrayal, other price franchise companies After going out, there were only three companies left. The royalties for each cassette were one thousand yen, and the royalties for Namco and Hudson were only a symbolic one hundred yen. In terms of profit sharing, Nintendo They also gave them great discounts.

To be honest, when he first joined Nintendo's third-party alliance, Nakamura Masaya was very excited, and the actual report was much more than what they made just by making arcade machines.

But people’s desires are getting bigger and bigger. When the sales volume of a game cannot reach a certain limit, this platform method, because all games on this platform have a certain sales volume guarantee, although every game has a certain sales volume guarantee. Each game requires profit sharing with Nintendo, but overall, the revenue is still greater than before.

But if there is a game that is very successful, as successful as their "Iron Plate" back then, and then through this method of profit sharing, then their losses will be very large, so they have been worrying about it in the past few years. With this in mind, Namco has never produced a game that can be compared with "Iron Plate". Of course, this refers to home consoles. In the arcade, they still make great works, such as the "Ridge Racer" series.

Many later generations of players think this game was the first to appear on the PS. In fact, this game was developed very early, and Namco developed this game for only one reason, and that was to compete with Sega's Sleepwalking America series. With the All-American Rally Series.

Of course, the current Sega does not have the All-American Rally series, because it has been produced first by Mars Entertainment and has become popular in North America. However, Sleepwalking in America was completed under the leadership of Yu Suzuki, and with its incredible physical expression, it seized a large market. Namco also saw the golden mountain of racing games. As a major arcade manufacturer, they naturally couldn't help it. Will show weakness.

Therefore, in the arcade field, the three most outstanding and most popular racing games among players are Mars Entertainment's "All American Rally". Sega's "Sleepwalking America" ​​and Namco's "Ridge Racer", it's not that Namco doesn't want to transplant "Ridge Racer" to home consoles, but that current home consoles are still unable to accept such huge 3D racing. game.

Namco is jealous that Nintendo and Mars Entertainment have robbed a large amount of profits from the franchise fee system. They are confident that their research and development capabilities are no worse than Nintendo. Naturally, they cannot give up. At that time, Nippon Electric wanted to enter the electronic game industry, and the two parties contacted Hudson, who wore the same pants as Namco, and jointly launched the PC-e project.

For PC-e, both parties have high hopes. Both Namco and NEC want to get a share of the huge video game market, and the situation was indeed good at the beginning. But they never expected that Sega would also intervene at this time.

Moreover, Sega plays the same cards as them, and even their cards are much better than theirs. They claim to be the PC-E of the 16-bit computer era, but in fact they only use 16-bit PPU for the display chip. Moreover, For CPUs that handle game operations, eight-bit CPUs are still used. It’s not that Nippon Electric doesn’t want to directly develop a 16-bit PC-e, but because they have no experience in this area before, and the technology to develop one is already very mature. The difficulty of the eight-bit computer is very small, and you can also accumulate skills.

To directly develop a 16-bit computer, this is not a problem for Nippon Electric, which has strong capital. The problem lies in the development process that takes at least a year, whether it is Namco, Hudson, or Nippon Electric itself is unacceptable.

At this time, Sega's 16-bit machine came out, and their PC-e could only become a joke.

The failure of pc-e also put them into a completely embarrassing situation. They left the cooperation of pc-e. This is for sure. This more than a year has made them extremely embarrassed. Namco, they can say that, After all, there is still the profit from the arcade machine to maintain stability. As for Hudson, they lack a stable profit point like Namco's arcade project. They have always relied on the profit from the home machine project to maintain stability. \u003c-e project invested almost all of their wealth. The failure of the pc-e project this time made them retreat long ago.

Of course, neither Namco nor Hudson have figured out specific measures on how to retreat, but they must retreat. This is a formula that has been discussed by both parties, but how to retreat? Keep pushing to Nintendo's side? Or go to Mars Entertainment, Nintendo’s mortal enemy? Or go to Sega, which is currently performing strongly? Or is it something else?

"What should we do, Kudo?"

In a private room of a restaurant that Nakamura Masaya often went to, he took a sip of sake, frowned and muttered something.

He had people meet with Sony personnel before, and he was very moved by the conditions offered by Sony. But being moved is one thing, and whether he wants to go or not is another matter. From Nakamura Masaya's point of view, going to Nintendo is his decision. The last thing he wanted to choose was that he was too familiar with the old bastard Hiroshi Yamauchi. If he went back, he would definitely face his ruthless and endless ridicule and humiliation.

Hudson has a much shorter history than Namco. They were only founded by the Kudo brothers in the 1970s, and Nakamura Masaya's status in the Japanese game industry is too high, so they have always been in Nakamura with their descendants. Show yourself in front of Yazai.

This time, only the eldest of the two Kudo brothers, Kudo Yuji, came, while Kudo Kazuji’s younger brother, Kudo Hiroshi, had something to go to Aooka. In addition, Nakamura Masaya’s proposal for this meeting was in a hurry, so he could not come.

When Kudo Yuji faced this question from Masaya Nakamura, he didn't know how to answer it. No one knew the current internal situation of Hudson better than him. The current Hudson can no longer survive in this big quagmire. If it continues, otherwise, what is waiting for him is to sink into the bottom of the quagmire and die without a burial place.

However, he was also faced with this confusing question of how to withdraw.

Facing Nakamura Masaya's question, Kudo Kazuji also knew that he should not answer. He had no choice but to take the opportunity to pick up the sake in front of him and pretend to take a sip. In fact, he was thinking about it, but the time it took to take a sip of wine was so long. There was no way he could come up with any reliable answer in such a short period of time, so he could only talk about it, hoping to take advantage of this opportunity to brush off the topic.

"Nakamura-senpai, it's impossible to return to Nintendo anyway." This sentence should have been decided by Kudo Kazuji a long time ago. As a proud and arrogant person, failure is already very frustrating, so let them return to Nintendo. Accepting ridicule is something they cannot accept under any circumstances.

Nakamura Masaya just smiled after hearing this. He was not surprised by this answer. He and Kudo Yuji had the same idea. Then he continued to ask: "What about Mars Entertainment? If we join their development camp If you go inside, you can at least get treatment that is not inferior to Capcom."

Capcom was established the latest among the original six major software vendors and had the weakest development capabilities, but what about now? They have almost become the largest third-party game development company in Japan. Even in the arcade field, with the help of Mars Entertainment, they have also developed rapidly.

Hearing Nakamura Masaya's words, Kudo Yuji's eyes first flashed with joy, but soon, this joy quickly disappeared. For him, joining Mars Entertainment is indeed a very good idea, and with him With his ability, it is not difficult to get seriously injured among the many developers of Mars Entertainment.

However, the problem is that there are too many third-party development companies under Mars Entertainment. For Mars Entertainment, which almost monopolizes the North American market, the attraction is too strong. The potential of the North American market is enough Let any game development company flock to it.

This is just one of them, is it the second one...

Thinking of this, Kudo Yuji raised his head and glanced at Masaya Nakamura, who still had a gentle smile on his face, and then he sneered disdainfully in his heart. He didn't believe it when he mentioned joining the development camp of Mars Entertainment. At that time, the other party still had such a gentle smile on his face.

Yes, for him, Kudo Yuji, and his Hudson, joining the development camp of Mars Entertainment is not a big deal. This is his natural choice as a game company. Of course, it will definitely be rejected by some conservatives. Japanese companies angrily accuse themselves of being Japanese traitors, but so what?

But for Nakamura Masaya and his Namco, it is absolutely impossible for them to join Mars Entertainment even if they return to Nintendo. As for why? It’s enough to look at the series of titles Nakamura Masaya currently holds on his head. If a person like him joins an American game company like Mars Entertainment, what kind of appearance will he have and continue to hold such titles on his head? How many titles? (To be continued...)