Game Development Giant

The contract that Jester negotiated with Sega, in addition to the agency rights for the arcade versions of four of his company's games in Japan and Europe, also required him to design a game for Sega on the master-system, their new console to be launched next year. Of course, in addition to paying a total of 40 million U.S. dollars in licensing fees, 30% of game profits, and arcade manufacturing, Sega also agreed to help produce the small-sized PC that Mars Entertainment had just developed, which they called P Palm phone.

Nakayama Hayao also took a closer look at this extremely simple handheld phone and found it somewhat interesting. However, he just played with it casually and realized that this was a toy for children, so he didn't pay much attention to it.

The target group of Sega's games is different from that of Nintendo. Nintendo's target group is children, or furthermore, teenagers, while Sega is not.

It can be seen from the games of later generations of Sega that their target group is youth to adulthood. Otherwise, they would not produce so many 13+ and 18+ games.

Back then, the MD version of Mortal Kombat was so bloody that it was so bloody that children couldn’t control it...

Comparing it to the Nintendo SFC version, it is as pure as a small flower. People can't believe it is the same game...

But one thing is that Nintendo is indeed a model for some companies, especially when Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi was in power, Nintendo did not release even a single restricted game.

From this point of view, Nintendo is still a very socially responsible company. On this point, Jester still admires it.

Of course, Jester, the home console version of the three "Bejeweled" games, was not licensed to Sega because Hayao Nakayama had already rejected his first proposal at the beginning, and Sega also agreed to Jester sending a different person. A hardware R\u0026D team of more than 20 people went to Japan to participate in the development of the world's first immersive somatosensory game equipment.

In Jester's opinion, this is a leap forward in the hardware research and development of Mars Entertainment. You must know that even Sega, which has a profound foundation and technical reserves that far surpass Mars Entertainment, took ten months to develop "Hang-on" successfully. , the technological accumulation gained during the research and development process also allowed Sega to establish its dominance in the field of large arcade machines.

Moreover, the performance of arcade machines has always been ahead of home machines, because the space of arcade machines is much larger than that of home machines, and the internal redundant space far exceeds that of home machines, so designers have more room to play. Many game methods are It is now completed on arcade machines and then transplanted to home machines, such as motion sensing.

Therefore, the technology accumulated in arcade machines can also be used in home machines, and these technologies are advanced and precious.

This is why Jester did not hesitate to design a million-selling game for Sega, but also made sure to involve his own R\u0026D team. \u003conHandheld, after much thought, Jester decided to place the launch location in Japan, with the Japanese branch to be established taking charge.

The Japanese are relatively receptive to this kind of pet machine, which has been proven historically. He doesn't know much about the United States. He just knows that Nintendo's "Nintendo Dogs" sold very well back then, but he still doesn't dare to take the risk. Now he His cash flow is already very tight, and he is not allowed to make any mistakes. Once this handheld phone fails to be sold in the United States, it will be an abyss of no return for Jester, who has now established a corporate skeleton.

As Jester looks at the scenery now, in fact, only he knows that because he was ignorant of business at the beginning, his stall was too big, and now he is almost dancing on the tip of a knife, and his capital chain is like a stretch. Tight iron chains, if you are not careful, all your previous efforts will be wasted.

After Sega's US$40 million purchase license fee was divided between Fengxing Distribution and Mars Entertainment, all the US$24 million allocated to Fengxing Distribution was invested in establishing a nationwide direct sales network. This money was also used in the initial establishment process. It can only be said that it is barely enough, so that Carly can make a meal without rice without using a clever woman.

As for the US$16 million allocated to Mars Entertainment, in addition to the US$5 million deposit paid to Samsung for the first batch of memory chips, most of the rest also had to be paid to Sega's foundry contract.

Fortunately, Mars Entertainment and Sega are still cooperating, so Sega only accepted half of the deposit and agreed to produce, and the balance will be paid after the product is sold. Otherwise, Mars Entertainment would be faced with the embarrassing situation of having materials but no success.

This also gave Jester a temporary reprieve.

At this time, Jester also regretted his previous random investments. If he hadn't made random investments before, especially the eight million dollars he invested in Dell because of his enthusiasm, his cash flow would not be as tight as it is now. I can't spare any spare funds.

And there are still many things that I have to do. For example, after the ATI PPU is designed, the foundry contract agreed by Motorola will be a large amount of money, and the purchase of CPU will also be a large investment, not to mention investing in construction in mainland China. It's a factory problem.

This was a lesson for Jester.

It also made him understand that reborn people are not omnipotent and cannot be proficient in everything. Failures are needed to gain experience in anything they do.

This made him grow a lot, and also made him understand a truth, which is also a taboo in business: never be too greedy.

If investing in ATI can be said to be about controlling the future hegemon of the graphics chip industry and helping him make better PPUs and even more advanced GPUs, then investing in Dell is purely his greed.

If you put a reborn person in front of a company that will definitely grow into a billion-dollar giant in the future, but is still an infant now, it is impossible not to be greedy.

You can't learn to walk without falling. Fortunately, this time it wasn't a fall for Jester.

As for building factories in mainland China, it is not only due to insufficient production capacity. Although this is the main reason, it is not the most important. The most important thing is political investment.

This investment is truly priceless in Jester's eyes.

In the thirty years since the reform, as far as Jester knows, the mainland has never cheated any of their friends who have helped them. On this point, the mainland is trustworthy.

Jester has considered finding Hon Hai as an OEM, but he still has to make preparations. The current Hon Hai is still far behind the scale of later generations. Even Terry Gou has not established a branch in the United States. They have officially opened a branch in mainland China. It would have to wait until 1986 to invest in building a factory. At least until Taiwan's martial law is lifted, Hon Hai does not have the possibility of large-scale OEM production.

Jester also knew that what he earned from foundry work was just hard-earned money, so he had no intention of working in the mainland for a long time. His plan was actually very simple. When he laid a foundation in the mainland and Hon Hai officially started to enter the mainland, he Just persuade Terry Gou to form a partnership with him. It doesn't matter if you don't have a controlling stake. OEM is not your main business direction anyway. As long as you have the right to speak and the right to dividends, it's enough.

Investing on your own now is nothing more than a temporary measure.

As for the Minesweeper game installed on Dell computers, it is also very popular. Dell called and said that some people bought Dell computers just to play Minesweeper. This made Dell, who had just started his business, a little bit ecstatic, especially among some college students. A special mine-sweeping research association was formed to study the fastest method of mine-sweeping.

This also made the name of Mars Entertainment more widely known.

Although Mars Entertainment is already widely known due to some previous incidents.

However, this did not bring much profit to Jester. His agreement with Dell was that he would receive a licensing fee of five dollars for every computer sold. Dell's current family business is too small, although his direct sales method through telephone The business was booming, but he also faced the dilemma of insufficient production capacity.

Although Jester invested 8 million in shares, it will still take some time for the 8 million funds to be turned into production capacity.

Moreover, Jester also found that the structure of Mars Entertainment was a bit confusing, and he took it for granted at the beginning of its establishment. After all, he had basically zero experience in setting up a company at that time, and his only experience with this was what he had seen in his previous life. An unreliable novel.

In the next half month, Jester, with the help of Carly, reorganized the entire structure of Mars Entertainment, changing the previous chaos.

The software R\u0026D department was changed to the software R\u0026D headquarters, with Mark Saini as the director. There are three R\u0026D groups under it, namely 'the-king', led by Mark Saini himself, and Sean Dabbili as the team leader. 'Origin', and 'Scavenger' composed of other members who do not belong to these two core groups. Each of these three R\u0026D groups also has planning, programming, and art groups.

The Hardware R\u0026D Department was changed to the Hardware R\u0026D Headquarters. His father served as the director and Matthews served as the deputy director. Under it were the Arcade Division, Home Console Division and Handheld Division.

As for the formation plan of ‘Children of Mars’, Jester has been delayed again.

Among them, the company's finances are outsourced to a specialized accounting firm. His mother serves as the administrative and human resources director. The company's legal affairs are handled by the legal department of his Jester Holdings. He spent an annual salary of US$800,000 to hire barrister Howard. Garfield serves as legal director for Jester Holdings.

In addition, he also formally established a technical reserve department, with himself as the director. Throughout the company, whether it is software or hardware research and development, new technologies invented, new programs for special effects, new All engines are classified into the technical reserve department. If other R\u0026D teams need it, they can apply directly from the technical reserve department to use the technology reserved there.

Moreover, Jester also found that his company lacked a systematic R\u0026D plan. Sometimes he would make a new plan when his mind was hot, which prevented the entire company from being able to effectively exert its efficiency. In other words In other words, I just can't hold them together with my fists.

Therefore, Jester also formally proposed a research and development plan, which is discussed every month.

This month’s research and development plan has also postponed the research and development plan for “Super Balotelli”, and only selected two artists to draw some less important settings. The discussion of “Monopoly” will begin after the copyright is obtained. Project establishment time.

At the forefront of the research and development plan are undoubtedly "Snow Brothers", which is more than half completed, "Avengers", which has begun formal development, and the early settings of "Dawn".

The Origin R\u0026D team is responsible for "Snowman Brothers", the-king is responsible for "Avengers", and Scavenger is responsible for the early setting of "Dawn".

This also made the division of labor clear for the entire Mars Entertainment, changing the chaotic feeling in the front and almost doubling the efficiency.

During this period, the Japanese branch was also formally established, with Yoshiro Tamahide serving as president and director.

After this reorganization, the structure and purpose of the entire company became much clearer, allowing Jester to control the entire company with ease.

In order to prepare for the Chicago trial event at the end of the month, Jester did not have time to go to Japan in person when gw was launched, but in order to understand the sales of his first handheld console, he had more and more frequent calls with the Japanese.

After hearing that the first employee of his Japanese branch was actually the famous Yuji Naka in the future, Jester was quite surprised. He thought about the feats Yuji Naka would accomplish in the future, and an idea suddenly came to his mind. Then he directly ordered Tamahide Yoshiro to immediately ask Naka Yuji to come to the United States to participate in the research and development of the latest home machines.

This order is very strange for Tamahide Yoshiro. Although Yuji Naka studied electrical engineering in a higher vocational school, his best is software development, and he also sent several programming works of Yuji Naka to the headquarters. The headquarters did not Maybe I don’t know.

But despite his doubts, Tamahide Yoshiro told Yuji Naka that the headquarters wanted him to work in the United States.

Naka Yuji was also a little confused. Originally, he wanted to refuse. He didn't really want to leave Japan, but after hearing that the headquarters asked him to participate in hardware development, he had the idea of ​​​​going to see it.

Although he is best at programming, it is also a dream for someone like him who is capable of both software and hardware to personally participate in the production of a game console that can run games of his own design. Therefore, he did not refuse directly, but offered to Call the headquarters to find out the situation.

After Jester heard Tamahideyoshiro's return, he naturally agreed.

"I heard from President Yuxiu that you studied electrical engineering. Although you didn't study it in college, I looked at some of your programs that were sent to you and found that you are very talented in programming. I have one here who is writing programs. You are very good at it, and at the same time you need to understand hardware design, and even someone who is very familiar with Nintendo's FC console to complete a job, so I thought of you." Jester explained.

This answer still made Yuji Naka a little confused. He didn't understand why his company wanted to develop a home console and found him, a person who was good at programming. He also had to know a lot about Nintendo's FC game consoles, which made him a little baffled.

Seeing Yuji Naka, he still didn't understand, so Jester had no choice but to tell his purpose.

"I want you to participate in the research and development of our entire home console project, understand the performance of our home console, and then write a software that can simulate Nintendo FC games on our home console."

This was actually a feat accomplished by Yuji Naka a few years later. He completed the writing of the first game editor in history on Sega's md.

However, Sega's 16-bit version is much better, but there is no substantial improvement. He doesn't know whether it can simulate FC games.

Therefore, he wanted to let Naka Yuji, the first simulator in history, to try it.

Naka Yuji's eyes couldn't help but light up after hearing Jester's reply. He thought this was a great idea. Playing games on one game console on another is exciting just thinking about it.

Then, he agreed to Jester's request almost without hesitation and rushed to the United States immediately. It was very simple to participate in the production of ON. After all, it was only the technology of GW four years ago. Needless to say, big companies like Sega Factory, some small factories that can only produce electronic watches have no difficulty in production after upgrading their equipment.

Therefore, Sega did not take it to heart. After agreeing to deliver 100,000 units to the Japanese branch of Mars Entertainment in half a month, Sega assigned these production tasks to some small peripheral factories that relied on Sega's OEM.

As for Sega itself, it is fully preparing for the localization production of four Mars Entertainment games such as "American Cube", as well as "Bejeweled", "Zuma", and "Bubble Bobble" with 15,000 units each. For OEM production, according to the signed agreement, they cannot produce for themselves before completing the order from Mars Entertainment.

This also makes Sega eager to complete the OEM task as soon as possible. After all, they can only earn some hard-earned money from OEM.

The task of selling GW is very arduous for the Japanese branch. It has been established less than ten days ago and has a total of twelve employees. One of them has to be transferred to North America. Tamahide Yoshiro only has Jester in his hands. It was very difficult to extract three million US dollars of funds from Mars Entertainment's capital chain, of which one million still needed to pay the advance payment for these handheld consoles.

Jester was very cautious and bold when launching his first handheld console. He was afraid of the failure of the handheld console when it was launched, but once it was officially launched, he shipped large quantities of it without hesitation.

Quite a bit unsuccessful, then become a benevolent posture.

He was betting that this handheld console would be as successful as Bandai's Tamagotchi in history, even though that was ten years later. \u003con carried out overwhelming publicity, contacted merchants in Akihabara to discuss sales issues, and discussed leasing counters in large shopping malls in Tokyo and Osaka. Moreover, he also referred to the way Arakawa Minoru promoted "Donkey Kong" in the United States, boldly Jester suggested that there is no charge for the first batch of goods, and the store will collect payment after the goods are sold out. If our handheld console sells well, then we don’t need to continue to sell it diligently, and those stores will take the initiative to purchase the goods. If the machine is unsaleable, Even if we ship the goods at a loss, we still won't be able to sell them.

Jester fully agreed with his plan.

What is the most successful aspect of Mars Entertainment’s first handheld console design?

Basically everyone will answer, appearance.

Jester designed this with reference to the style of the later Bandai version of Tamagotchi. The appearance is characterized by cuteness, regardless of any other characteristics. The colors are also selected from several girls' favorite colors, white, Yellow, pink, the first three pets are also the three cute Pokemon from the first generation Yusanjia. There is only one purpose in doing this, which is to make girls unable to resist at the first sight. Raise the passion for purchasing.

Women's purchasing decisions are basically only related to appearance. As for what's inside, who cares?

Some little girls just saw this compact and exquisite game console in a TV commercial. It is also a pet that can grow up slowly from an early age. They can feed, bathe, go to school, and shop for this pet. For growth and gaming, you can even connect with good friends through communication lines, give each other gifts, and even compete in battles!

Moreover, if you ignore your pet for a long time, the goodwill between you and her will quickly drop, your command may fail, and your pet will also ignore you, requiring you to constantly Only by pleasing your pet can the lost favorability be restored.

The pattern developed in this way simply makes the latent maternal genes that these little girls are born with explode instantly.

This is also the reason why Jester completely chose young, even low-collared women as the design style this time.

It's because such a woman's sanity is basically zero after her purchasing desire breaks out, while a man's sanity rises straight after his purchasing desire explodes. You have to find out.

Of course, there is also the fact that Tamagotchi is indeed a female-oriented handheld console.

Finally, on July 25th, the Pokemon version of the electronic pet machine was officially released in Japan!

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