Hollywood Hunter

As the most watched rising star in Hollywood, Daenerys Entertainment's attempt to enter the field of video games has become the focus of many media from the very beginning. Forbes magazine’s September’s US 400 richest list of the United States’ notes on Simon’s personal assets, Blizzard Studio was also specifically listed.

Blizzard Studio’s testing project "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has been popular since its birth in 1984. After the game was announced in February this year, it was rated as one of the most anticipated video games this year by some magazines.

However, Blizzard Studios developed the ARPG (Action Role Playing) version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for 8 months, far exceeding the average 3 to 5 months video game development cycle of this era.

When the outside world had almost forgotten about this incident, Nancy finally officially started the promotion of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" video game in October.

Because there have been too many miracles in recent years, the projects produced by Daenerys Entertainment almost naturally have a halo attribute that can attract the attention of the media and the public, which has created a great for the announcement of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game. convenient.

With a large number of media spontaneous follow-up reports, the "Teenage Ninja Turtles" game only relied on a comprehensive announcement budget of 1 million US dollars to create an effect that other game companies would not necessarily achieve 5 million US dollars.

As of November 3, it was officially released. The game "Teenage Ninja Turtles" is almost well-known in the player circles of the two major video game markets in Japan and the United States.

"The New York Times" commented that "Teenage Ninja Turtles" was like "Atari's "Alien ET" to Blizzard Studio before the game was released.

The poor quality of "Alien ET" caused the famous "Atari Crash", but it still sold 1.5 million boxes of the best-selling level that year. Strong popularity.

As for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the "New York Times" concluded that this game relies on the attention of Daenerys Entertainment's own reputation, and there is almost no possibility of business failure. The result is just a matter of earning more and less. However, if "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cannot be recognized by the players, or even encounters a bad review like "Alien ET", after this game, the halo recedes, Daenerys Entertainment will have a strong foothold in the field of video games. difficult.

Simon and Nancy actually understand the truth of the "New York Times", otherwise, Blizzard Studio's first game would not be so demanding that it took eight months to polish.

In the attention of all parties, the ARPG version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was launched on November 3 in the United States and Japan.

The first batch of 100,000 cassettes will be sold at US$60 in the United States and 7000 yen in Japan.

In order to achieve the greatest momentum effect, with Simon's indiscriminate contact through Australia, the "Teenage Ninja Turtles" game also landed on the cover of Nintendo's official game magazine "Nintendo Power" in November.

In the next few days, along with media discussions about the private car of Simon Westeros Boeing 767, reviews of the game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" were also released.

"Nintendo Power" gave "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" a good score of 8 points on a 10-point scale. Of course, there is Daenerys Entertainment's public relations effect, but Nintendo's official attitude towards this game is beyond doubt. .

The ratings given by other professional game magazines are basically excellent.

Of course, criticism is definitely indispensable.

Japanese game magazine "Famitsu" accused "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" for imitating Nintendo's "Legend of Sedar 2" and Konami's "Moonwind Demon" in many details.

Both "Legend of Cedar 2" and "Moonwind Demon" are horizontal ARPG games produced a few years ago, and the first "Teenage Ninja Turtles" is also a horizontal ARPG.

After writing a rough game plan based on the Konami version in his memory, Simon did let the game design team try out several famous horizontal ARPG games such as "Legend of Cydar 2" and "Moonwind Demon", but it was also basic The above is for reference only.

Even if the Blizzard studio team wanted to copy directly, Nancy, who had been watching the project, could not allow it. In addition, horizontal version games have been flooded in recent years, and phenomenal games such as "Contra" and "Super Mario" are also horizontal versions. The accusations of "Famitsu" are irrelevant.

The statistics of game sales data are not as timely as movie box office, especially when the US and Japan are on the shelves at the same time.

However, during the week from November 3 to November 9, the original first batch of 100,000 boxes of game cassettes quickly sold out, and Daenerys Entertainment urgently added 200,000 cassettes to Nintendo.

On November 13, the first week of sales of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was officially released. The two major markets in North America and Japan had a combined sales of 263,000 boxes and sales of up to $15.7 million.

Compared with the box office of movies, the sales curve of video games is more like music records, with strong vitality.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sold 263,000 boxes in the first week. Although it failed to break the sales record of 500,000 boxes in many games in the industry on the first Thursday, it shocked a large number of people. Because the previous games with the top sales records are basically the second and third generation sequels, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is the first generation.

In the first week of 263,000 boxes, considering the excellent quality and reputation of this game, there is no problem with the overall sales volume reaching 4 to 5 million in the next year. It is estimated that the total sales volume of 5 million boxes of games, although not reaching the tens of millions of "Super Mario" series against the sky, is definitely a phenomenon.

Game sales actually means market recognition. Daenerys Entertainment immediately invested in the second wave of large-scale publicity, which further increased its attention, inevitably driving the sales of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game again.

Popular phenomenon-level video games usually have a long life cycle.

Therefore, only the success of the game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", through the development of the next sequel, will allow Blizzard Studios to eat at least five years, which undoubtedly means that Daenerys Entertainment is in the field of video games in one fell swoop. Stand firm.

Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters.

The time is Wednesday, November 15.

Conference room.

With the success of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game, Nancy began to figure out the next expansion plan of Blizzard Studio.

"A game cassette priced at $60 has a gross profit of up to 50% compared to Capcom's several manufacturers that can produce cassettes on their own and have royalty discounts. Our studio's gross profit margin is only about 30%. However, only this This game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the sales of 263,000 boxes in the first week have allowed us to recover all the investment of Blizzard Studios in the past half year and achieve a net profit of 2 million US dollars. The next year, this game is expected to The profit scale will reach 100 million U.S. dollars. My next plan is to expand into the PC game field. Starting from scratch is too slow. Now that I already know the game industry, I hope to expand directly through acquisitions."

Simon hadn't spoken yet, and Amy, who had done a lot of work recently, asked: "Nintendo is very exclusive. Nancy, how do you solve this problem?"

Nintendo is now almost unifying the console game market. Red and white consoles have more than 90% market shares in Japan and the United States. This company is therefore at the strongest stage, even if it is the closest to it. The six major manufacturers also say that they will be blocked, not to mention the second and third line game production companies.

Nancy has obviously considered this issue too, saying: "We can keep the PC game department operating separately and not overlap with Blizzard Studios. Moreover, we will not cooperate with Nintendo’s competitors such as Sega and Atari. After PC game manufacturers, they can also choose to port some excellent PC games to the Nintendo console platform, so as to minimize Nintendo’s hostility."

Amy obviously didn't think so, and turned to look at Simon.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sales performance is so good, she does not feel the need to expand to PC games.

The scale of the PC game market in this era is far from comparable to console games. If Nintendo is offended by expanding into the PC field and Blizzard Studio is targeted, it will not be worth the loss.

Simon also doesn't think that the bossy Nintendo will let Daenerys Entertainment'double-hearted'. However, he also did not intend to tie Blizzard Studios to Nintendo’s declining ship, so he asked: "Do you have the right target?"

Nancy nodded and handed the two documents to Simon and Amy respectively, saying: "ElectronicArts, a San Francisco-based video game manufacturer, was established in 1982 and originally developed games for Atari consoles. After Atari's decline, EA began to focus on PC game development and has accumulated a number of very popular sports game brands over the years."

Simon flipped through the information in his hand and had to admire the eyes of his own little child executive again.

EA.

Despite the notoriety of the ‘studio terminator’, EA is undoubtedly one of the largest game production publishers in Simon’s memory, with a market value of nearly $50 billion at its peak.

Nancy noticed a flash of weirdness in Simon’s expression, but just continued: “EA just went through an IPO a month ago, and then suffered the stock market crash on October 13th. The company’s current market value is only 170 million. U.S. dollars, a price-earnings ratio of 13 times. If we issue a goodwill acquisition invitation and get a response, 300 million dollars should be able to win. EA's performance in recent years has been very good, and acquisitions at a price-to-earnings ratio within 25 times are acceptable. "

Simon asked: "What if there is no response to the bona fide acquisition invitation, or other competitors suddenly appear?"

Nancy said: "In this case, our bargaining chips can be raised by another $50 million."

"That's it. Give you a budget of 350 million US dollars to take down this company." Simon looked at Amy and said, "You can discuss this by yourself, and you can also ask Jim to cooperate. I and Jenny are on the weekend. Going to Europe, we will try our best to let go of the company’s business for a long time to come, don’t let me down

Both Amy and Nancy already knew about Simon's plan, and they almost unanimously believed that their boss could not ignore company affairs for a long time.

It's hard to change your nature.

You are a control freak saying that you don't intend to control the company.

Who believes it!

Therefore, there is no objection to Simon's plan to take a ‘long vacation’.

At the end of the meeting, Amy and Nancy went busy by themselves, and Simon also rushed to participate in the audition for the actor in "Ten Days of Crisis".

In the original version of "Ten Days in Crisis," the leading actors and actresses were James Kane and Kathy Bates. Kathy Bates also won the Oscar for Best Actress for this role.

However, Simon did not plan to use the original team this time.

Simon has seen the original film, and Casey Bates’ performance is indeed not bad, but Simon believes that the reason why the other party can get the actress is more of a role and public relations light.

It is well known that Oscar favors various mental illnesses.

Oscar was once ridiculed as a mental hospital because too many "patients" such as mental illness, homicide, mania, etc. have won the gold medal.

At the same time, Casey Bates is an artist under CAA. Without the appearance of Simon, CAA is definitely the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood in recent years. This is still Das under the attack of Daenerys Entertainment at the beginning of this year. It can be seen that Tin Hoffman won the second statuette.

However, compared to the original version of Anne Wilkes played by Casey Bates, which only makes the audience feel nervous, sick and manic, Simon also hopes that the new version of the heroine can bring the audience some strong dangers of taking the role of the abused writer. sense.

I thought I met Aventure, but went to hell.

If you want to achieve this result, you definitely need to consider the appearance.

Based on appearance, acting skills, and some inevitable considerations of favor, Simon finally chose Susan Sarandon.

Susan Sarandon is 43 years old this year, about the same age as Kathy Bates, and also in line with Stephen King’s general heroine setting.

Moreover, Susan Sarandon won the first Oscar nomination for best actress in 1981, and her acting skills are beyond doubt.

Although over forty, Susan Sarandon is very well maintained. In the "Witch of East Town" two years ago, the actress's style is not inferior to Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher. .

Susan Sarandon also co-starred with Kevin Costner last year in a sports-themed romance film "Millions of Golden Arms" with a very good box office. In the film, Sarandon is ten years older than Costner, but the two seem to be very good match, there is no sense of age difference.

Speaking of which, Simon was very impressed with the "Biography of Yan Baby" in which Susan Sarandon played.

Most people only think that Brooke Shields is the core of "The Legend of Yan Baby", but Simon has no feeling for Brooke Shields’ flat figure in the film, but Su, who plays Brooke Shields’ mother. The scene when Shan Sarandon was lying on the sofa naked and taking pictures is like a beautiful classical oil painting, which is endless aftertaste.

Upon receiving Simon's invitation, although Susan Sarandon hesitated to play a manic and perverted extreme book fan, she quickly agreed to play after considering it.

The actress obviously can also see the breakthrough that this role may bring her.

As for the actor, Simon's requirements for this role are not high, so it is inevitable to usher in a lot of favoritism.