Game Development Giant

"real?!"

Seve Dabowater couldn't believe his ears. He really didn't expect that his boss would ask him this. Although he had thought about it before, he was so excited when it really came true. Still irrepressible.

His boss took the initiative to suggest that he transplant this game to a home console, and it was also a new console. He was originally very optimistic about the performance of his game, although he himself had previously felt that his game was indeed produced by himself. The most outstanding game produced in the past four or five years.

But there is a fundamental difference between what I think and what others think, not to mention that my boss is currently an authority in the field of Hunger Games development?

"In fact, from this game, I can clearly see that your abilities have not declined, and your ideas have not become outdated. The game is very interesting, the difficulty is appropriate, and it also has a very hardcore feeling, so , I think you can definitely make the kind of big productions you used to do.”

As he spoke, Jester had almost reached the door of the development room, but he still stopped and continued to say to Seve Dabowater, who had been following him: "I hope you won't make the same mistakes as before. Yeah, you have to treat games with the same pious attitude as you treat your own children... To be honest, after I saw the game you just made, my first thought was that you are still making console games, but I thought The style of this game seems to be very suitable for home consoles, so I’d like to ask if you want to port this game yourself.”

It does not take long to port the game. The arcade version of "Metal Slug" can be officially sold to the outside world in less than half a month. However, the volume of arcade games will not be too large. The overall sales volume of 100,000 substrates is considered good. Scored.

When converting arcade games to home consoles, many things need to be re-optimized, and even some content needs to be re-produced, because the performance of home consoles is definitely not as good as the basic arcade versions of the same era. A certain degree of castration is inevitable.

This kind of transplantation also depends very much on the experience and level of the designer. You must have an extreme understanding of the original game to be competent.

Just like when Capcom transplanted their highly successful "1942" in the arcade, they felt that transplanting the game had no technical content, so they just let others transplant it. The final result was a transplant, but The fc version of "1942" was riddled with bugs and was criticized by people. It could not be compared with the arcade version at all, which caused Capcom to lose its reputation on home consoles. I don't know how much effort and energy it took to regain it.

The company that does an outstanding job in this aspect is K Company. It is undeniable that Jester did like K Club very much before he was reborn. It may be because of his love for the house. He likes Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear" series very much, so it is inevitable that he also likes K Club. This company.

In fact, Jester has a friend who writes novels. This friend's biggest dream is his. I just want to tell stories like Hideo Kojima - Jester agrees with this, Hideo Kojima is indeed a genius in storytelling.

The history of this world has completely changed, and the famous top four of K Club no longer exist in this world.

However, in Jester's memory, K Club's famous top four were all arcade games in the beginning. And because K Company is a Japanese company, most of their arcade games are mainly marketed in Japanese flavor. The problem is that these games are not very successful in the Japanese market.

Later, they shifted the target of these games to the North American market.

They made the original production development team spend a lot of effort on porting to home consoles. The final result, although it is above the home machine version, no matter the system. In terms of gameplay and graphics, certain sacrifices had to be made due to the performance issues of the home machine, but basically the later players unanimously commented after playing it that the difference between the transplanted version and the original arcade version is so small that it is almost negligible. .

This allowed K Club to suddenly build its reputation.

Of course, if the performance of the home machine far exceeds that of the previous platform, then porting is a very simple matter. You only need to make an emulator of the original platform on the new platform. For example, Nintendo later This is what they did when porting FC games to GBA.

Although gba is only a handheld console rather than a home console, the principle is the same.

Well, there are also anecdotes about Nintendo’s transplantation. At that time, Nintendo only used two employees and spent a whole morning, that is, half a day, to solve the task of transplanting hundreds of FC games. They even did To the point where even the bugs are exactly the same.

Time passes very quickly, and a month also flies by.

During this period of more than a month, Mars Entertainment began a large-scale promotion in North America, Japan and Europe. The main body of the promotion was their new 16-bit console Dreambox 2, and announced that they would launch it in January. On the 30th, a media conference will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center to officially announce their console and answer all questions about the new console, including pricing and so on.

Sega was not to be outdone. Under the leadership of Hisao Oguchi, when Mars Entertainment just started their promotional activities, they also started MD promotions at the same time. At the beginning, he was not as popular as Jester expected. Start selling at reduced prices immediately.

But that's about it, they just went with the bundling sales strategy.

Several best-selling games with good reputation were selected and then bundled on the md console. The price after the bundling was only slightly increased. In this way, many people were originally interested in the md console and the games on the md console, but were still interested in it. Hesitant people are extremely attractive.

This is actually just a variant of price reduction, which is not very obvious now.

What Sega has lowered is the portion of royalties they want to draw from game manufacturers. Moreover, MD's most important games currently rely on their first-party players. Therefore, Sega is now using its own profits to win over players. heart of.

Jester analyzed Sega's strategy in North America and felt that if they really want to start selling at reduced prices, they may really have to wait until they announce the specific price of Dreambox 2 before they announce it to the public. Moreover, the other party announced This price will definitely make you extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed.

The current price of an MD host is two hundred and fifty US dollars. After deducting all the costs of materials, processing fees, transportation, sales, etc., especially now that production has just begun, the quantity is not large enough to effectively utilize large-scale industry. Due to the characteristics of production to dilute the cost, the money they can earn may not exceed fifty or sixty US dollars.

The cost and price of my own Dreambox 2 console is lower than that of Sega, and it is also very low.

The biggest possibility is that Sega will directly lower the price to above the two hundred US dollars. They will not make any profit, and the fifty US dollars price difference will be extremely attractive to those players who are hesitating between the two. Stronger.

Jester really didn't have a good idea for a while. Unless he directly lowered the price of Dreambox 2 to the level of two hundred dollars when it was first announced, otherwise, he would inevitably fall into passivity.

On the morning of the external press conference, media from all walks of life came to the Anaheim Convention and Exhibition Center.

Many game media are naturally very familiar with this place. Mars Entertainment is headquartered in Costa Mesa, very close to Anaheim, and whether it is Mars Entertainment holding large-scale media conferences or previous carnivals, , are all held here.

But this time it’s not just the media from the gaming industry, Mars Entertainment is not just a gaming company. Jester’s status among the younger generation in the United States is very high. Basically, even in the United States where college students start businesses very frequently, like It's someone like Jester who, after four years of starting a business, has a net worth of several billion dollars and has been in the top 50 on the world's billionaire list since 1985. That said, it's still extremely rare.

At least Bill Gates, who is ranked second among the nation's young entrepreneurial idols, only has assets in the top 50 on the Forbes list at the end of last year.

The main theme of this conference is very simple, that is Mars Entertainment’s new console.

The entire press conference process is to first demonstrate the performance of the new console, the first-release games, and some games that are under development and will be available to players soon, the price of the game console, and of course, answer questions to the interviewer. some questions.

Such a serious occasion naturally requires Jester to attend in person.

During the previous activities on the rostrum, Jester did not go to the chair by himself. His character was not as flamboyant as Jobs. In Silicon Valley, everyone knew that before Jobs left Apple, any new products that Apple had At that time, it was Steve Jobs who always stole the show on the console, even if the development of this product had little to do with Steve Jobs.

Except for Jester, who personally made a splash on the rostrum when Dreambox was first launched, he rarely did so after that.

This time, the person responsible for explaining on site was the chief hardware architect of dreambox2. (To be continued...)