Game Development Giant

Sega's new console Saturn did not have such outstanding sales at the beginning as Sony's PS2, but they have many fans.

Therefore, sales volume has not been reduced too much.

Of course, this is in North America.

If we talk about Japan, their sales have been completely suppressed by Sony.

About a third of Sony's.

The most important reason for the poor sales in North America at the beginning was that Sega did not widely publicize 3D effects and their 3D games. In fact, it cannot be said that there was no publicity, because Sega's theory is different from Sony's. They believe that instead of developing this slightly rough 3D game now, it is better to concentrate on this machine that can fully realize the ideas under countless 2D templates and develop truly perfect 2D games.

That's what Sega thought and did.

In fact, it’s not that they can’t see that the arrival of the 3D era is overwhelming. In fact, they believe that it will take time for 3D to develop to the point where it can beat 2D games. This time, in Sega’s eyes, is A gaming generation.

Originally Suzuki Yu also agreed with this point of view, but after he returned from Mars Entertainment's participation in the 'Era' project, he discovered that their company's previous ideas were simply wrong.

He thought he knew how great the ‘Times’ project was.

Although he has also doubted whether the 3D performance of Mars Entertainment's last console Dreambox 3 is as good as it is, because as a participant in the 'Era' project, he is very aware of the impact this project will have on the entire gaming world once it is launched. How big, because in Suzuki Yu's eyes, this is the game he dreams of, it is the perfect and ultimate game form.

Of course, although it is only a prototype.

But this is enough.

From what I know recently, the development of Dreambox 3 has restarted halfway. He knew that Jester's ambition for the 'Era' project was that he would rather give up the first-mover advantage of the console and develop a console that could fulfill his game vision.

It is impossible to say that I am not envious. But he also knew that this was something he couldn't envy.

Because Sega is not his, and Sega cannot be dedicated to one game. Just develop a console that can run this game.

It's not realistic and it doesn't clean up.

Because doing this will definitely lose money. Although analyzing the sales of this game, Mars Entertainment may be able to balance investment and income, but don’t forget that this is a project with a final investment of up to 300 million U.S. dollars. It is in the figures. In a year's time, the balance between investment and profit is already a very big loss, not to mention the development of new consoles. The money wasted by starting the project again.

This amount is difficult to compensate for.

Relying on the publicity effect of 3D, PS2 did have an advantage at the beginning of this next era.

Many players are very interested in 3D games.

But here's Sony's problem too.

3D games, as an emerging game category, are completely different from the development of 2D games, and even thinking does not have much reference value.

In the long and wide space, after adding an extra height, for game designers. It’s not just as simple as being high. In terms of the complexity of the game design and the complexity of the level design, it’s almost twice as difficult.

This takes a lot of getting used to.

or. Someone needs to teach them how to play a game like this.

In the original history, it was FF7, Mario 64 and Zelda who took on this task. But in this world, it is unclear who will take on this task.

After two months, the shortcomings of the 3D game's rough production and boring gameplay came to light. Although I was very surprised when I first saw it, I only had a temporary interest in playing it, and it was far less fun than the 2D games carefully produced by Sega. , no matter how fancy the game is, as time goes by, it still needs to return to the essence of the game.

That's whether it's fun or not.

For example, in the later PS4 era, "The Order 1886", the graphics of this game can be said to have reached the CG level to a certain extent, and the modeling of the characters has reached more than 100,000 deformations. It was what Square Enix did back then. After going bankrupt and merging with Enix, allowing FF's father Hironobu Sakaguchi to take responsibility and resign, Advent Children only had 70,000 polygonal models for the characters.

As we all know, the number of polygons is related to the precision of modeling.

Although the graphics of this game are amazing, the gameplay is monotonous and the plot is simple, so the reviews are not very high.

The current PS2 games are almost the same. At the beginning, they were studied by multiple people, but in fact, the 2D games from Sega are still more fun.

Therefore, two months later, Sega's console sales quickly began to counterattack, not only in the North American market, but even in the Japanese market, Sony felt a little unable to hold on.

Especially when Sega got "Donkey Kong", this game had a very wide audience in Japan. For them, this game even represented, to a certain extent, Nintendo, which was forced to withdraw from the gaming industry.

Sony is also having a hard time.

Even Kutaragi Ken has received a lot of internal attacks. If it weren't for Norio Ohga's protection, he might have resigned.

After all, he had promised back then that 3D would replace 2D as the mainstream game in the future.

This will become an unstoppable trend.

This was indeed the case when the console was first released, but as time went by, it seemed that their 3D game strategy was somewhat unable to hold up in the face of Sega's 2D game strategy. The voices attacking him within the group would naturally rang.

Kutaragi Ken's explanation is also very accurate. He believes that the most important reason why Sega is able to suppress their consoles is because they do not have a game that can set a benchmark for 3D games and cannot let the current Players think, oh my god, 3D games can actually be so awesome.

As long as they can do it.

Then the 3D era will naturally come. In fact, Kutaragi Ken is more eager than anyone else now.

Because he knows. There is not much time left for him. From the time of his release, there is only about one year, and he must be within one year. Make such a game so that players who support 3D games will accept them.

Because it can be seen from what Mars Entertainment has announced and some clips that Mars Entertainment has displayed at some exhibitions, that person is very interested in the video game industry. Someone who seems to have a pair of eyes that can see into the future must have gone further and further in 3D game development. After all, "Quake", which opened the window of 3D games to everyone, was his masterpiece.

It is necessary to make a game that can represent the future of 3D games before the launch of Mars Entertainment’s console. Otherwise, if I spend so much energy on 3D games and promote the arrival of the 3D era, I will really be giving Mars Entertainment Entertainment made the wedding dress.

Kutaragi Ken would not doubt it. Does Mars Entertainment or Jester have this ability?

Because Jester has never failed in the field of video games.

Sony has now acquired many first-party studios, and its investment is very large. It pays high salaries to poach outstanding game designers from famous third-party studios.

Even Mars Entertainment Japan and North America have many people who resigned and joined Sony's first-party companies.

Although many people in the company say these people are ungrateful, Jester feels that this flow of talent is a good thing for the entire game industry because of the flow of talent. Only then can the entire industry prosper.

The video game industry is too huge. Even if it is not big enough now, one day it will grow to be big enough. It's too big to be dominated by one company.

In the following months, Sony also released a brand new 3D game one after another, but there were no fundamental changes. Players seemed to have lost their original enthusiasm for this simple, sub-level 3D game. Interest and expectation, on the contrary, the 2D games developed by some of their third-party studios have been well received.

Gradually, it can be regarded as relying on the support of the Japanese market. It can compete with Sega.

Sony had Naughty Dog at the beginning, and they made the masterpiece of a generation of 3D action games, "Crash Bandicoot", but now they don't have Naughty Dog, a legendary game studio, so their 3D games are still slow. Slowly dormant, maybe a secret project has been started in one of their studios, which is unknown.

Jester has been under increasing pressure recently.

Because as time goes by, the sales of Sega's Saturn and Sony's PS2 are also rising. By the middle of 1995, the sales of these two major consoles exceeded three million, and by the end of the year they both reached five million. , even six million is not a strange thing.

It is indeed very stressful to be five million units behind others from the very beginning.

In fact, some internal games that are ready to be launched have been produced. The rest is more systematic optimization. The prototype of the console is basically completed, and the appearance design plan has also been finalized.

On the handle selection.

Jester proposed a dual-joystick controller specially developed for 3D games. However, Jester has thought carefully about the layout of the dual-rocker controller for a long time, and within the company, whether in North America or Japan, The final decision was made after closed testing by staff.

Jester decided to give up. The original history in his memory was the PS series console controller with its classic symmetrical joystick design.

Instead, it uses the XBOX's asymmetric rocker design.

According to the feedback obtained from a large number of internal tests, this asymmetric joystick design is indeed more user-friendly, and the gaming feel is smoother and better.

Indeed, in the original history, Microsoft's asymmetric design is indeed an extremely genius design solution. It completely breaks through the symmetrical design ideas pioneered by Sony, and in terms of user feedback, it is also completely superior to Sony DS controller.

Although Jester was once a Suo Qing, he would never hide his illness even when he was not as good as Microsoft.

Mars Entertainment also announced that they will announce their console to the public for the first time at this year's Cologne Show, and will announce the release date of their console at the Cologne Show - in fact, the original most suitable release time It was at E3, but we encountered some problems in console development before E3, and there was no way to finally come up with a specific product.

So I kept putting it off.

Cologne is not as famous as E3 and Tokyo.

This is organized by several European game companies and some game industry associations.

The purpose is to create a game exhibition that belongs to Europe. Because currently, there are two major game exhibitions, one is E3 in the United States and the other is Tokyo Exhibition in Japan. Therefore, European companies should also have a large-scale exhibition of their own. The exhibition, of course, the European branch of Mars Entertainment is also participating.

The time of Cologne exhibition is relatively close to that of E3.

We were in the middle of E3 and the Tokyo Show. When we were deciding on the name of the show, Jester was also involved. Someone originally proposed that it be called the Leipzig Electronics Industry Show.

However, this name was directly rejected by Jester.

Jester’s meaning is very simple. The game show is a game show, not an electronics industry show. If you want to do it, it should be a professional exhibition, not an exhibition that does everything. Moreover, many game companies, facing this There are also strong opinions on such a hodgepodge of exhibitions. After all, the reason why there was an E3 exhibition in the first place was because of the unfair treatment and exclusion they received at the GES exhibition.

Therefore, Jester's proposal quickly received suggestions from all levels present at the meeting.

The venue was also decided to be Cologne, Germany, and the name was simply called Gamescom.

The format of the exhibition is the Tokyo Show, rather than the internal exhibition format of E3, which focuses on the player experience.

However, because it is a new exhibition, some game companies rarely publish their important information at Cologne. European and American manufacturers are still used to announcing it at E3, and Japanese manufacturers still like to exhibit in Tokyo.

This time Mars Entertainment decided to release their new console at the Cologne Show, which is also the first time for them.

Of course, this is not what Mars Entertainment wants.

If they have time to announce it at E3, it will definitely not be postponed to Cologne. (~^~)