Reborn Tycoon Rise

In the summer of 1982, a children's science fiction movie started in Hollywood and swept the global market. In the United States alone, it received a box office of 435 million US dollars, and the global box office was as high as 800 million US dollars.

This movie, called E.T., tells the story of a group of children and an alien. Almost all children in the United States fell in love with this movie. In the hearts of many children, E.T. The popularity is no less than that of Star Wars 6 years ago.

Since the emergence of video games in the early 1970s, many well-known Hollywood movies have been adapted into video games every year, at a cost ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Game companies are willing to pay such a large amount of money because they are attracted by the movie's own reputation and the huge audience, which are very likely to become potential customers.

The movie ET is not only famous, but its main audience is children, and it has a lot of overlap with the game company's customers.

In order to deal with its competitors Midea and Sony on the other side of the ocean, Atari decided to spend US$25 million to buy the game development rights of ET Alien.

Originally, although this deal was expensive, with ET's huge influence, Atari could make huge profits from it as long as it developed a playable game, far exceeding the US$25 million in copyright fees.

But Atari made the most childish mistake. The company's executives only valued the fame of the game name, but did not care about the quality of the game. The original negotiation with Warner about acquiring the adaptation rights of the ET Alien game dragged on for too long. The adaptation rights were successfully obtained at the end of October.

In order to catch up with the Christmas carnival two months later, CEO Caesar ordered his technical engineers to develop a game within 6 weeks.

The game developers delivered a very poor answer due to a serious lack of time, and there were also problems with Atari's entire company's management structure. After a game was developed by the technical department, it did not even have a trial program. If there were none, we began to arrange factories for mass production.

The ending of the matter is very simple. "ET Alien" is the most rubbish of all game cartridges. In addition to its low playability, there are also a large number of game crashes, character cartridges, and blue screens. The root cause is That is, during the production process, because the time was too tight, serious mass quality problems occurred.

For several years, Atari has been trying to win through quantity, flooding the market with a large number of low-quality games, which has caused dissatisfaction among most people. Players finally waited for a well-known "fun game" that was promised by Atari. After buying it at a high price, they discovered that it was an even rubbish game.

So, after Christmas, the irritated buyer took his Atari game console and all the game cartridges at home to the Atari game store, smashed his game console and trampled the game cartridges.

This incident was published in local newspapers. In the next few days, some people joined in and went directly to the game store. They didn't even ask for a return and smashed their own game consoles.

Soon, like a virus spreading, the incident became bigger and bigger, more people joined in, and some TV stations even came to film. Eventually, smashing game consoles and burning game consoles became popular in front of many game stores across the United States. Game consoles, car press game consoles.

In later generations, many people believed that Atari's collapse was due to the slow sales of ET cartridges, but this was only one of the reasons. This group of crazy players scared all the game store owners, and they were no longer willing to represent any Atari products. , and even required large quantities of returns. Coupled with the media's fueling the flames, Atari's products were no longer interested in anyone. Under various attacks, Atari's entire sales industry chain and brand collapsed completely.

After the collapse of Atari, the vacant market left behind was naturally occupied by other brands. Today's game market is in full bloom. Because the entry threshold is not high, countless companies have entered the industry with the intention of taking advantage of this huge market. Get a piece of the pie.

January 20, 1983.

Xu Zhi once again set foot on the land of Los Angeles.

"Chairman, welcome to Los Angeles." Midea's headquarters in the United States is in Los Angeles. Knowing that the big boss was coming, several branch executives came to the airport early in the morning to greet him.

Xu Zhi smiled and shook hands with the people who came to pick up the plane, and said with a smile: "Thank you for your hard work, the plane was delayed a lot due to the weather."

Although you are flying on your own private plane, the airport is not your home, and you have to listen to the tower if you want to land. At this moment, it was snowing heavily in Los Angeles, and the plane hovered in the sky for more than an hour before finally landing.

"I have lived in Los Angeles for more than ten years, and this is the first time I have encountered such heavy snow. I didn't expect to be bumped into by you, the boss." A person who came to pick up the plane said with a smile. He is the executive of Midea Company in the United States. The president's name is Sloan.

When any large multinational company sets up branches overseas, the most likely problem is acclimatization. This is very common in the mainland of later generations. Countless top European and American companies have encountered such problems in China.

The United States is Midea's largest market. In order to develop more efficiently, He Guoyuan did not arrange for a Chinese to control the American branch. Instead, he selected Sloan from numerous American candidates.

The group of people went directly from the airport lobby to the underground parking lot. Soon, several cars left the airport and headed towards downtown Los Angeles.

Snowflakes were flying outside the window and the cold wind was biting, but the inside of the car was as warm as spring. Xu Zhi gently turned the glass lifting knob counterclockwise, and a cold wind blew in, which immediately made him wake up from the jet lag.

After a while, Xu Zhi turned the knob clockwise. After closing the window, he asked, "What's going on with Atari now?"

Sloan replied: "Atari basically lost completely this time. A large number of suppliers are asking for returns, all the media are adding insult to injury, and the entire company's operations are completely at a standstill."

"Atari has made many mistakes, but since it has been able to become the largest game company in the United States for several consecutive years, it makes sense. Their internal technical personnel and some elite people in the marketing department are also needed by our company. Yes." Xu Zhi reminded.

Sloan smiled and said: "Boss, don't worry, I have already arranged two headhunting companies to recruit people from Atari."

"Okay." Xu Zhi nodded with a smile and asked, "Is Sony doing the same thing?"

One of the main purposes of coming to the United States this time is to see the large number of game design talents within Atari. This company has been established for more than ten years and is also the first video game company in human business history. The internal professionals are very Many of them have graduated from the top Ivy League schools in Europe and the United States, and have received systematic training from Atari. In terms of game design, they are among the best in the world.

Although Atari has not produced any classic games over the years, this is not a problem of technical staff, but the result of the entire management only focusing on quantity and ignoring quality.

Sloan replied: "Yes, Sony is also trying its best to recruit people during this period. Now many Atari engineers who have been in contact with us are also targeted by Sony or other game companies, which makes our recruitment more difficult. It was difficult before.”

Xu Zhi thought for a while and said, "It doesn't matter. Forget about ordinary technicians. For some people with experience in game development project management, you can agree to give them a ladder-sharing agreement for game development. As long as they come over, it won't be a problem."

Midea provides very high treatment to its internal engineers who can develop their own games. The most advanced one is the profit ladder sharing. As long as the minimum sales volume is reached, the company will give the developers a certain amount of the remaining profits. of shares.

This kind of contract naturally accounts for the majority of the company's profits, but for employees, if a good game is developed, even a small share of the profits is a huge amount of income. Compared with other companies in the current environment, Within game companies, most people are much better off with dead wages.

Although employees have to be divided into shares, this also stimulates employees' enthusiasm, and the company also obtains higher profits.

In the past two years, Xu Zhi has rarely released later games, and Midea has also relied on this strategy to develop many new games, preventing the company from relying too much on those simple games.

Sloan nodded in agreement: "OK, boss, many people within Atari have a lot of experience in developing games, and our company's policy is obviously more suitable for them."

Xu Zhi smiled and said: "Then please work harder on this matter. At present, the arcade market has begun to shrink. The focus of our company's game business has become computer games and home console games. These two are different from arcade machines. A large number of new games are needed to stabilize the current market."

Although the sales volume of arcade machines is very limited, the profits are high enough. This area has always been Midea's largest profit business. However, the limitations of the market are inevitable. If you spend money to play a game every time, it will not be as comfortable as playing it on a home game console or computer.

With the development of semiconductor technology, the gaming experience of home game consoles is no longer much weaker than that of arcade machines. If it were not for some fighting games, the arcade market would probably shrink at a faster rate.

The market size of home game consoles is actually much larger than that of arcade machines, but the problem that comes with it is that after buying game consoles and cartridges, users will suffer from visual fatigue after playing a free game for a long time. Therefore, in order to maintain the market , the only way is to provide more games.

Atari's management actually understood this, but they placed too much emphasis on quantity, which eventually led to the company's bankruptcy.

Midea's large-scale takeover of Atari this time is to use these people to develop more games to stabilize the dominant market position of game consoles. At the same time, in the personal computer field, a good game can also make huge profits.

Sloan said: "Don't worry, boss, the sales volume of Atari's game consoles was actually surpassed by ours at the end of last year. Even if the ET Games incident doesn't happen, we, Midea, can gradually monopolize the entire game console market." ."

Xu Zhi asked: "What about Sony's game consoles? How are the quality and sales?"

Sloan said: "In terms of product quality, Sony's console hardware configuration is indeed very good, but the quality of games is poor. In recent years, although many games have been released, some of which have sold well, but a real No classic game has ever been created.”

"Without classic games, we can develop to the third place in the world in a few years. This cannot be underestimated." Xu Zhi sighed inwardly. At present, the market share of Sony's game consoles is not as good as that of Midea, but Sony has absorbed the Nintendo team. , always a formidable opponent.

Although Midea has begun to focus on the development of personal computers and terminal sales, the gaming industry is the foundation of all expansion.

After a while, Xu Zhi asked: "Has Corey from Goldman Sachs arrived in Los Angeles?"

Sloan said: "He has arrived and is currently staying at the Intercontinental Hotel. Do you want to go see him tonight?"

"No, I need to take a day off. You can make an appointment with him for me. I will personally pick him up at the Intercontinental Hotel tomorrow." Xu Zhi waved his hand and refused. Although he has his own private jet, no matter how comfortable the configuration is, it can only alleviate the situation. But the physical fatigue cannot be completely eliminated. Coming to the United States from Asia has crossed 13 time zones. Days and nights have been reversed, and people are still a little uncomfortable.

Sloan took out his mobile phone and promised, "Okay, I'll notify him immediately."

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