Game Development Giant

Chapter 73: Illness comes like a mountain

After the party, Jester returned home to Costa Mesa. I don't know if it was because of the cold wind after drinking, but Jester suddenly fell ill.

He had been suffering from a high fever for several days. After his fever subsided, the Olympic Games had already opened for three days, and China finally won the first Olympic gold medal in history. He originally made an appointment to watch the opening ceremony with Qin Shuyao, but it turned out He was unable to make the trip because he was ill, so he asked someone to give the two tickets to the opening ceremony directly to Qin Shuyao.

During this period, Qin Shuyao also visited him once. Jester still felt a little regretful that he missed the historical moment of Xu Haifeng's first gold medal.

However, after he recovers from the illness, he will return to more intense work, and the Olympics will not be available.

First of all, the sample issue of "Game" is out.

The sample magazine made of full-color coated paper is very exquisite. On the cover is a handsome and elegant photo of Mark Saney wearing a pair of glasses, and there are two tanks in battle with the Soviet and American flags respectively painted on them. There is a line of large characters marked in red at the bottom.

"Mars Entertainment's first PC game, City of Fierce Battle!"

Jester took the sample magazine and flipped through it casually. He felt that it was quite good, and it was comparable to those of later generations.

Putting the sample issue to one side, Jester was still a little weak, and his voice was not very loud: "You did a good job, just print it according to this."

Adrian beside him nodded, indicating that he understood.

Then Jester continued: "From now on, you can make your own decisions about the magazine. If it's not an important matter, you don't need to come to me. I came to you to ask you to be the editor-in-chief of this magazine, not to me." Assistant’s.”

"Understood." A look of excitement flashed in Adrian's eyes. Although Jester's words were spoken rudely, as if he was scolding him, he could tell that it was Jester who had seen him. After designing the sample magazine, I was very satisfied with myself and ready to officially delegate the power to myself.

After all, no one wants to be a puppet.

"One hundred thousand copies of the floppy disk of the trial version of "City of Guild Wars" have been copied. We also need to print one hundred thousand copies of the first issue of the magazine?"

Although he is very confident in the first issue he produced and has great confidence in the quality of "City of Battle", one hundred thousand copies is still an unreachable number for a magazine that has just been released. You must know that he In the previous magazine called "Software", so far, the highest sales volume of a single issue has not exceeded 80,000.

"hehe."

Jester just smiled and waved his hand indifferently: "Don't worry, the price of a PC game now is more than thirty dollars. Although our game is a trial version, the content and quality are completely beyond How much does our first issue cost for other PC games? Because it comes with a trial version, the price is increased by 30%, which is only twenty dollars. This game alone is worth the price. I originally planned to go directly I printed 200,000 copies, but I thought about it again before giving a conservative number of 100,000 copies. You have to know that current players are eager to get through our game called "City of Battle". .”

"Okay." Since his boss spoke, Adrian nodded and agreed without saying anything.

In recent days, Jester has spread the news through various channels that Mars Entertainment is producing a PC game. Several employees of Mars Entertainment who did not want to be named were also very cryptic after being interviewed by the media. Said that this game does exist, and it was designed by their boss Jester himself.

Moreover, Mars Entertainment did not deny the news.

As soon as this news was broadcast, fans of Mars Entertainment and Jester Lee immediately became excited.

They can finally play Mars Entertainment games at home!

You have to know what kind of crazy phenomenon the three new games of Mars Entertainment have caused throughout the United States.

Recently, the first batch of "Bejeweled", "Bubble Bobble", and "Zuma" base boards shipped from Sega were assembled and shipped first. Previously, many people only heard from players who participated in the trial session and media reports. These new games from Mars Entertainment were so hyped that players who had no chance to try them out for themselves immediately flocked to the arcades that had just received the games.

Because players were so enthusiastic, some arcade store owners even directly raised the prices of these three games to a sky-high price of five dollars a game currency, but this could not stop the players' enthusiasm.

There is a long queue of at least twenty people gathered in front of every Mars Entertainment game arcade machine.

Some arcade store owners even made back all their investments in just one day.

Then, this once again ignited the enthusiasm of the arcade store owners who were still waiting to see. They quickly placed an order for Fengxing Distribution, and even did not hesitate to add an additional one thousand US dollars to the original price for each machine. There is only one condition, get the spot as quickly as possible.

In just a few days, "Bejeweled", "Bubble Bobble" and "Zuma" also received orders for a total of 15,000 units again.

Especially with the release of these three games by Mars Entertainment, the sales of "American Cube" have almost stagnated. So far, in nearly two months from its release in June to now, a total of two units of "American Cube" have been sold. Thirteen thousand units. Based on the price of six thousand US dollars each, the total sales volume is close to 140 million US dollars. According to Jester's estimation, the saturation volume of "American Cube" is almost reached, unless he is willing to significantly increase the sales volume. Reduce the price, otherwise it is unlikely that it will be shipped in large quantities.

After all, after the official release of the three latest games, players now have significantly more games to choose from.

However, in the contract that Jester signed with the Schwer Group before, he promised not to sell it at a lower price before Christmas, and Jester doesn't care. After all, even if he significantly reduces the price of the "American Cube" arcade machine, the sales volume will temporarily be reduced. A blowout, but not too much.

And as Jester's Mars Entertainment revitalized the arcade market, many other game companies that had not yet completely died in the previous Atari impact also aimed at the big cake of arcade machines and invested in them one after another.

However, it may be that the quality of their games is not high and the playability is not great. Originally, when players were a little tired of playing "American Cube", they were still somewhat interested in these ordinary games, but when Mars Entertainment As soon as these three new games were released, they were immediately swept away. These arcade games released by other manufacturers were immediately swept into the trash can by players.

Because Jester has lowered the price of these three new games a lot compared to "American Cube", the sales volume has been very stable after the initial boom. This time, after the official shipment, it once again caused a wave of elimination games. The trend also caused sales to soar again.

Although Fengxing Company has not compiled accurate sales figures, so far, these three games have sold at least 35,000 units in total.

As for "Snow Brothers", since it has not yet been officially produced, sales only exploded with the news of the trial event at the beginning. Apart from receiving an advance payment of nearly 20,000 units, subsequent sales have basically stagnated.

However, the arcade craze re-ignited by these three elimination games unexpectedly once again made the arcade owners focus on Mars Entertainment’s latest game, which has not yet been officially sold and is only available for pre-sale. Snow Brothers" on.

After all, the four games currently released by Mars Entertainment have not disappointed any of the players who support them, so some arcade owners were hesitant because the price of "Snowman Brothers" was too expensive and did not pre-order as soon as the trial session ended. They immediately made their bet, so with the popularity of "Bejeweled", "Zuma" and "Bubble Bobble", "Snow Brothers" also started a blowout sales growth, and the growth was The number is much higher than the other three elimination games that have triggered a frenzy among players in arcades.

After these three games only sold an average of 5,000 units each, the total sales of "Snow Brothers" are approaching the 30,000 unit mark!

This was a result that caught everyone's attention. When a statistical agency estimated the current possible sales of Mars Entertainment, the entire United States was shocked.

A full half a billion dollars!

Then almost everyone asked the media and experts who had been saying that video games were dead and that investing in video games was an investment behavior with no future, how do you explain the miracle created by Mars Entertainment.

Then, almost all the media that had previously said that video games were dead and Mars Entertainment would continue to sink deeper and deeper into it, and it would be difficult to escape from the quagmire, collectively lost their voices. However, some investors still firmly believed in their views because the home game console market In the past, Atari's game consoles were still at freezing point. In any shopping mall in the United States, anything remotely related to Atari could not be sold.

In more than two months and less than three months, Mars Entertainment has only produced five games, of which only four have been released. The fifth game, "Snowman Brothers", which is said to be the largest investment and production at present, has not even started official substrate production. , and even the orders for the other three games have been queued up to 1985.

Even so, the arcade owners, who were a little red-eyed because of the crazy players, almost didn't need to think about it and kept placing orders with Mars Entertainment. They didn't care about the price, they only wanted speed.

Even some arcade owners who have purchased these three games from Mars Entertainment in advance do not need to pick up the goods at all. They only need to take the delivery order and sell them directly at double the price to countless people waiting to get the goods. .

This is simply a huge profit.

Some media even created a special term for the crazy behavior of players triggered by Mars Entertainment's two game releases.

It’s called the Martian phenomenon.

As Mars Entertainment relies entirely on the quality of the game and the trust of players, and declares its status in a devastating way, it finally makes the already dead American video game market no longer just a pop-up. Make a wave.

And it created ripples in circles.

Atari officially announced that their home console vcs7200 will be officially released at the end of the year and will be compatible with all vcs2600 games.

This also caused an uproar in the industry.

After all, countless people still remember that when Trammell was interviewed after the success of "American Cube", he used that disdainful expression and said three words of "never" arrogance.

"Ha ha……"

Jester laughed loudly and threw the newspaper that published Atari's return to the home computer industry on the table. He saw the news that Trammell had read back what he had said. Jester was originally ill because of illness. I felt a lot better since I was a little depressed because I didn't see the opening ceremony of the Olympics and Xu Haifeng's first gold medal.

ps: I stayed up late and wrote another chapter, officially ending this plot that everyone didn’t like. I will not write this kind of plot in the future. Unless necessary, I will only write plots that revolve around the career development of the protagonist. Also, I I also personally disliked the section that just ended.

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