Video Game Empire

Chapter 165: Yokoi Junpei and Miyamoto Shigeru

Li Xuan had never heard of the name of Qijun Games, and the company did not have any major masterpieces for sale. Naturally, they did not have enough bottom line when negotiating with Dongfang Games. [First Release] If a well-known company like Namco and Konami request to become a third-party software supplier of Dongfang Games, Li Xuan's conditions may be more favorable.

Don't look at the monthly sales of game handhelds has exceeded 2 million units, but because Li Xuan's original price was relatively low, Dongfang Game Company's profit margin on the whole machine is relatively low, and a handheld is less than $1. In contrast, the profit on the game card is much higher.

At the beginning, Li Xuan lowered the price of game, on the one hand, to combat the game handheld that Nintendo had just launched at the time, and on the other hand, to quickly dominate the market.

As long as the game handheld can be recognized by consumers, the company can completely give up the profit of the first game console, and slowly make up the profit from the subsequent game cards. And third-party companies want to publish their own games on the game platform, and naturally they have to give Dongfang Game Company a hard hit.

Dongfang Game Company's game sales are hot, and the hardest hit is naturally Nintendo. Nintendo's game handheld was only less than half a month earlier than game, but it was defeated by game, resulting in serious slow sales.

Nintendo designer Junpei Yokoi was on the way to Tokyo by Shinkansen when he happened to see a young man sitting next to him playing a simple graphic game with an electronic calculator. He thought that if he could develop an ultra-low-cost portable game console the size of a calculator, it would be a huge hit in the market.

After Yokoi Junpei returned to the company. He immediately submitted this new idea to his supervisor, but it was rejected by his immediate boss, Hirohito Imaishi and others. He didn't give up. He went directly to the president of Nintendo, Yamauchi, and finally persuaded Yamauchi to agree to develop this portable game console.

But at that time within Nintendo. Except for Yamauchi Pu, they are not optimistic about this project, and the voices of opposition are very loud. And Nintendo's financial situation was not good at that time. In order to support the game project, Yamauchi took out another 1 billion yen from the bank.

Yokoi Junpei did not live up to the expectations of the president, and soon developed the first handheld game game;ball, which is a simple catch game. After Yamauchi tried the prototype, he felt that the game was very promising. So through Nintendo's original intention to vigorously promote this portable game console, I personally persuaded many toy store owners to place orders.

Chuxinhui is a dealer conference established by Nintendo when it was producing toys in the early years. Every toy store owner who sells Nintendo products. All will be invited to participate in the initial heart meeting, and Nintendo will regularly hold promotion meetings to introduce new products of its own company to all distributors.

The sales performance of the game console was very good at the beginning, which reassured many toy store owners who still had doubts and began to place orders. But the good times didn't last long, and soon Oriental Game Company's game was also listed in Japan.

The price of the game handheld is only 5,000 yen, which is 800 yen cheaper than Nintendo's game. More importantly, the game implements a machine-card separation design. In addition to the "Hong Kong Cube" game that comes with the game console, Dongfang Games has also launched a number of games such as "Tank Wars", "Snake", "Gobang", etc., which are far more playable than the game's one. The catch game is much more fun.

Comparing the two, the high and low judgments are made. Buyers will naturally choose game handhelds with good quality and low price, so the games that game store owners have just placed their orders have become slow-selling products that cannot be sold, so they have asked Nintendo to return them.

It took Nintendo decades to get started. established distribution channels. However, the new products that the company pushed hard at the initial meeting have experienced serious slow sales. If these toy store owners are allowed to bear the losses themselves, their original intentions will definitely be destroyed immediately.

Therefore, Yamauchi can only make a decisive decision. Agree to the dealer's return request. But in this way, Nintendo must suffer huge losses. And the game project. The voice of opposition within the company was already very loud. Now this handheld project is as expected, causing heavy losses to the company. The voices of doubt that had been suppressed by Yamauchi Puhu resurfaced again.

Because of Yamauchi's single-minded support for Yokoi Junpei, even his prestige as the president was greatly shaken. Yamauchi had no choice but to give up the car and keep the coach, and reluctantly asked Junpei Yokoi, who he thought was very talented, to resign, in order to quell the dissatisfaction within the company.

"Lisheng, I have already communicated with the Yokoi Junpei you recommended, and he is indeed a very thoughtful person! I want him to be independently responsible for a handheld game project team in the Japanese R&D department, and continue to work for game to develop new games!" Du Wenqiang said.

"I heard that a group of people from the Japanese R&D department came to Hong Kong to study and exchange in the past few days?" Li Xuan asked with a smile.

Du Wenqiang nodded: "Yes, there are 15 people in total, and they have been in Hong Kong for a week. Although our R&D department in Hong Kong has made a lot of achievements in the past year, but in all fairness, most of the credit should be considered. On your head, Xiao Lisheng. Without your excellent ideas, it is impossible for the people in the R&D department to achieve such brilliant results.

In contrast, many of the staff recruited by our Japanese R&D department are true talents! For example, Junpei Yokoi and Shigeru Miyamoto, whom I mentioned before, are both active and thoughtful people. I hope that the developers on both sides can collide with new creative sparks through mutual exchanges. Such mutual visits and exchanges will be held regularly in the future! "

Li Xuan nodded, as a reborn person. He knows how successful Nintendo has been in later generations. Therefore, when Li Xuan entered the Japanese market, he listed it as his primary competitor, which would allow game to follow Nintendo's game in the market. The purpose is to block the opponent with all their strength.

Without the butterfly Li Xuan, Nintendo's game handhelds would have sold more than 30 million units in two or three years. Not only did Nintendo pay off the debt that had been lingering for many years, but also accumulated 4 billion yen in cash.

But now because of his interference, Nintendo has not only failed to repay the old debt, but owed new debts, and its development is even more difficult. Li Xuan also specially sent someone to contact Yamauchi not long ago to ask about the possibility of acquiring Nintendo. It's a pity that the old man refused. Nintendo is a family business of the Yamauchi family.

In fact, what Li Xuan valued more was the talents in Nintendo, such as Junping Yokoi. If it is said that the game creativity of Dongfang Game Company relies on Li Xuan's rebirth of the golden finger. Then the advent of Nintendo game is completely the whimsy of Yokoi Junpei.

The reason why Dongfang Game Company was able to beat Nintendo on a handheld console was not only because of Li Xuan's golden finger, but also because of his mental arithmetic. Therefore, after Li Xuan learned that Junping Yokoi was used as a scapegoat for the failure of the game handheld project and had resigned from Nintendo, he immediately asked the Japanese R&D department of Dongfang Games to offer favorable conditions to recruit him.

As for the other Lord Shigeru Miyamoto, he is another genius in Nintendo, and the Mario Brothers, which was just stolen by Li Xuan, is his masterpiece. In addition, world-renowned games such as "The Legend of Zelda" and "Metroid Warrior" are also his works. It can be said that Nintendo's future generations can dominate the game industry for many years. He absolutely deserves the credit.

And because of Li Xuan's influence, Shigeru Miyamoto's situation within Nintendo is not much better than that of Jun Yokoi. His first arcade game "Donkey Kong" independently developed last year failed miserably in the Japanese market. In fact, this work had a chance to turn around. It was a great success after it was brought to the United States this year by Yamauchi's son-in-law, Arakawa, and sold more than 60,000 units in one go. For Nintendo grabbed more than 100 million US dollars in profits.

But now Dongfang Game Company's "Mario Brothers" has swept the entire American market, and "Donkey Kong" has not even turned up a wave. The reason why Shigeru Miyamoto was able to enter the Nintendo company at first was because his father was friends with President Yamauchi. But now the game developed by Shigeru Miyamoto has failed miserably.

And Yamauchi Pu was also devastated by the loss of the game, and naturally did not have the energy to take into account the situation of his friend's son in the company. Shigeru Miyamoto was constantly ostracized and ridiculed by his colleagues. Not long ago, he also chose to resign from Nintendo. Soon, he was also under the instructions of Li Xuan. It was acquired by the Japanese R&D Department of Oriental Games.

Several talents who could make him look at him were recruited by Dongfang Game Company, and Li Xuan was much less interested in acquiring Nintendo. Japan's game industry foundation is far stronger than Hong Kong's~www.readwn.com~ The talent pool is also richer than Hong Kong's. Oriental Game Company's R&D department in Japan has been expanding, attracting many outstanding talents with rich experience in the game industry.

While Li Xuan and Du Wenqiang were discussing, in a Japanese restaurant in Central, Yokoi Junpei and Miyamoto Shigeru ordered each of them to order udon noodles. Hong Kong's food is all-encompassing. In addition to major Chinese cuisines, various Western restaurants, Japanese restaurants, and Thai restaurants are also available. Especially in recent years, more and more Japanese tourists come to Hong Kong for shopping, and there are more and more Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong.

"Yoki-kun, what did you gain from coming to Hong Kong this time?" Shigeru Miyamoto asked after finding a good seat and sitting down.

Both he and Yokoi Junpei are one of the staff of the Japanese R&D department who came to Hong Kong to exchange this time. The two used to be superiors and subordinates of the same department at Nintendo, and they are now closer than others.

Yokoi Junpei smiled, with a hint of loneliness in his smile: "The gains are not small, and I have not been wronged before! The company's colleagues in Hong Kong are indeed better than Nintendo!" (To be continued..)

ps: Sorry for the late update today, sorry to everyone!

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