Back to 1995

Chapter 578
No one at Microsoft opposed Bill Gates' decision. The hot sales of the "StarCraft" game and the Sega console proved that Bill Gates was still young and his investment vision was still top-notch, but Microsoft did not invest too much in the game industry. There are many, and Xuele Mountain has taken the lead.

Focusing on the game industry, not only Microsoft, but also Yahoo and AOL are about to move. These two are the two most active companies in the Internet and technology industries this year, social networking, search engines, e-mail, e-commerce, online education, etc. , there is almost no outlet that they are willing to miss.

On the second day after "StarCraft" went viral, Yahoo and AOL began to announce quietly that they wanted to enter the game industry, and Yahoo even directly announced the establishment of a game studio.

Other Internet manufacturers are even more cautious. Now the Internet is in a hype period, and one company is better than another. There are a bunch of Wall Street investment institutions behind these Internet companies. They all understand that what the Internet is playing now is not about performance, traffic, Users, revenue, technology, etc., but to be able to brag, whoever brags the most will be the darling of the market, sought after by the crowd, and bought stocks by countless investors!

Game concept stocks are so hot, how could they be willing to miss out? After Yahoo and AOL, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek and a large number of listed Internet companies have announced their entry into the game industry.

For any rookie game designer who has just entered the industry, his monthly salary has been fired to more than [-] to [-] US dollars. Just like this, the supply is still in short supply, and he is snapped up by major Internet manufacturers. It is like a "prosperous" scene in the game industry.

The sales volume of "StarCraft" on the second day dropped a bit compared to the first day, barely maintaining the record of one million sales in a single day, but in two days, more than 230 million sets of games were sold, which was still enough for " "StarCraft" has become the most sought-after game among game fans all over the world.

Major game magazines and forums have released their ratings for "StarCraft" one after another. Xueleshan online game platform, for its own game, must have raised the ratings to death, directly giving a score of 9.8 points!

"Wired Magazine" also gave StarCraft a high score of 9.7 points. Sierra Online and Double-Click Company spend more than one million dollars in advertising fees on "Wired Magazine" every year, which is obviously not in vain.

The editor of the IGN forum gave an evaluation of 9.3 points, "You can always trust Blizzard, believe in Xue Leshan, the playability of the StarCraft game is beyond doubt, but its operation difficulty and friendliness to players, compared with the previous one "Diablo" is indeed not as good as it is, but the e-sports introduced by "StarCraft", the concept of PvP, will be recorded in the history of games!"

IGN still gave a good score for "StarCraft", especially in "Team Battle", which is very praiseworthy. I think that StarCraft has really changed the history of stand-alone games in the past, and they are all played by one person. .

GameStop game network also gave a high score of 9.5 points, which is basically touting. Other Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft's new MSN portal game section, etc. have given Xueleshan some face, and the scores are quite good .

However, it is not without objections. Several conservative media and congressmen have fired on "StarCraft".

This is not the conservative media, deliberately targeting Xue Leshan. When they bombarded the gang of rap and rappers, they were much more ruthless. Previously, rap was banned in America, and they could not release records or sing in public. Can play the set of underground music.

Those rappers who are now famous in America were not even allowed to hold concerts a few years ago. Once a concert was held, people from the Federal Police Department went to smash the scene and arrest people directly.

It’s not unusual to fire at “StarCraft” this time. Last time around “Diablo”, some conservative media started to speak out, but it wasn’t obvious. Criticism.

"The practice of video games glorifying violence must be banned. Video games are becoming more and more realistic, allowing more people to imitate the actions in the games. It is creating monsters!"

The Mississippi state newspaper lashed out at Sierra, citing video games as one of the culprits in the "gang problem" and demanding that the release of "StarCraft" and several other shooters be halted.

In addition to the conservative media, there are also congressmen from several states and Capitol Hill who came out to show their presence and bombarded Sierra. Mountain representation.

This is a bit outrageous. It’s okay for the media to spray Xue Leshan, and people from the American Rifle Association dare to spray it. It was demolished eight hundred times!
Xue Leshan is not a vegetarian either. ICNC TV station and ICQ portal website immediately launched a counterattack. They also invited professors from Oxford, San Jose and other universities, and several famous American psychologists to jointly form a research project to study Those gangs have a problem with the street fire, whether it is related to the game, the result has not yet come out, but it is basically foreseeable.

Around the game issue, the media camp organized by Xue Leshan and the conservative media are full of criticism.

But these controversies, apart from increasing the popularity of "StarCraft", did not have much impact on sales.

After two consecutive days of game sales exceeding one million units, the sales of "StarCraft" finally began to decline like a movie box office.

However, the sales volume has fallen, and the sales volume of more than 50 sets in a single day is still maintained. In this case, game retail stores in America and all over the world have coincidentally "out of stock" phenomenon!
Sierra announced that it will increase the supply of game discs, but the out-of-stock phenomenon still exists. When Cameron poured water on the IGN forum, he found that some water friends complained about local game discs in New York. Some game retail stores had already put a " StarCraft" game discs sold for eighty dollars.

Compared with the official price, it was a full [-] dollars higher. After seeing the post on the forum, Cameron was secretly stunned. Those gangsters and scalpers who were stockpiling goods were so dark-hearted that they dared to increase the price so much. .

But seeing the "Collector's Edition" of StarCraft, Cameron couldn't help swallowing when he listed the price of $150 on eBay. When he pre-ordered it on the Sierra Online platform, it was only $99. Now eBay On the e-commerce platform, the price will be raised by half!
(End of this chapter)