Game Development Giant

The end of July happens to be the hottest time of the year, and the development team of Final Fantasy has been preparing for release at the flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo since early morning on the first day of release.

Moreover, Mars Entertainment is more considerate than Nintendo and will provide free cold drinks to all players who come.

Like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy is extremely confident in its quality. It generously prepared 200 Dreamboxes on site for the players who came to try it out. In fact, Dreambox had to cooperate with FC due to game problems. The intersection of players is not serious, and the games on Dreambox are more for older people. It is not that Dreambox does not pay attention to children, but that including Jester, it is not as successful as Nintendo in the children's game market.

Moreover, many heavy-duty games like those on Dreambox are not supported by some parents, and they would not approve of letting their children play such games.

The melancholic painting style and plot of Final Fantasy are still very attractive, and the technology accumulated in Mars Entertainment's technology library is not comparable to that of the original Square. Let's take a look at the transformation that was only perfected in the third generation of Final Fantasy. The setting of the summoned beasts was also revealed during Jester's detailed discussion with Hironobu Sakaguchi. Therefore, the current Final Fantasy is not much inferior to the original Final Fantasy 3 in history. game. During the trial, many players cheered loudly. Some of them had purchased Dragon Quest before, but they still praised this Final Fantasy, which is similar to Final Fantasy in style. Dragon Quest is a completely different game, but an equally great game.

The game has been well received by the players during the pre-release trial period. Naturally, the game will also be supported by players.

However, Dreambox's market share in the Japanese market is only a little over 20%, which is far from comparable to Nintendo's FC, so its sales volume is also far behind.

But when the occupancy is only a quarter of fc. On the first day, sales of Final Fantasy still reached an unexpected 80,000 copies.

This is an extremely exciting result for Hironobu Sakaguchi. You must know that even Fire Emblem, whose cumulative sales have almost reached 6 million, did not sell 80,000 copies on the first day of release in Japan. , of course, the market share of Dreambox at that time was not as high as it is now. At that time, it was only a dozen percent.

But that’s not until Hironobu Sakaguchi celebrates. Nintendo couldn't wait to announce their sales data on the fifth day.

Then, Hironobu Sakaguchi gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and hit the wall. Just as Jester expected, on this day, the purchasing power of Dragon Quest that had been accumulated through word-of-mouth exploded. In one day, it sold an insane 300,000 copies!

Five days, just in the Japanese market. Dragon Quest sold a total of 1.04 million copies.

Of course, even if the sales in North America are included, they are only slightly more than 1.05 million copies. Faced with such results. Jester had no choice but to do so. It wasn't that Final Fantasy wasn't good enough, but that he still underestimated the power of what would later be called a national RPG, especially after having his own Fire Emblem Chapter asked Yuji Tsui to understand some of the tips and experiences of developing games that he would only be able to understand many years later.

in the history he knew well. The game Dragon Quest was released in early 1986, and its final sales reached close to 1.3 million copies, which Jester originally thought. Even if their version of Dragon Quest does even better, the final sales volume will only be 1.5 million copies.

But I didn’t expect that the RPG trend led by my own “Fire Emblem”, “Metro Max” and Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda” would explode like this after more than a year of brewing. strength.

This is a bit like the phenomenon when the second part of DQ was released.

DQ is the pioneer of Japanese-style RPGs. This is true in Jester's mind, and calling them Japanese national RPGs started from the second part of DQ.

It's useless to say this now. It's simply the same as the original history. Dragon Quest, which places too much emphasis on the Japanese style, is very unpopular in markets outside Japan, and its sales volume is even higher than the original historical sales. Much lower. In Jester's opinion, this may be because nes's market share is too low.

But Jester thought about it and called the Japanese branch.

Jester said into the phone: Let Hironobu Sakaguchi listen to the call.

boss.

It can be heard that Sakaguchi Hironobu's tone is very dull. After all, it is impossible for him to get excited when facing the monster sales of Dragon Quest in the Japanese market.

After a slight pause, Jester thought for a moment and then said: This has nothing to do with you. Your greatest achievement in Final Fantasy is far beyond my expectation, and aren't they Wu Tian One Hundred and Zero? Total sales of 50,000 copies? I haven’t paid much attention to it yet. When it officially goes on sale in the North American market in a few hours, you will know that the players we have are not comparable to Nintendo.”

Hearing Jester's gentle voice, Hiroshi Sakaguchi felt a lot better, but he also knew that this was Jester comforting him, and for Jester, the sales volume of a game no longer meant anything to him. The most important thing is that what he values ​​most is the share of his game platform. Every time the share of the platform increases by one percentage point, then this percentage will be equally divided among all the games sold on this platform, and the profits will be far greater than the share of the game platform. Far from being comparable to a game with millions of copies.

Selling well in the North American market has little significance to the current Mars Entertainment. Dreambox's share in the North American market is now close to a monopoly. What Jester values ​​most is the counterattack in the Japanese market.

Unfortunately, this time, it may be difficult to rely on Final Fantasy.

The direct competition between Mars Entertainment and Nintendo, the two giants in the field of video games, has always attracted the most attention from the media. Mars Entertainment, which has just offended Famitsu, is concerned about Mars Entertainment and Final Fantasy. The report did not use any good words, and even used them implicitly before. This will be the beginning of Mars Entertainment's decline from prosperity.

Originally, their wording was relatively vague, but when the results of Dragon Quest's total global sales of 1.05 million copies in five days compared to Final Fantasy's first day of 80,000 copies came out, it was previously reported by Mars Entertainment Famitsu, which was severely humiliated by holding a press conference, finally found an opportunity this time. They published a special issue specifically for the sales of Dragon Quest to exceed one million.

In this special issue, in addition to praising Dragon Quest as usual, it also unscrupulously mocks Mars Entertainment and Final Fantasy.

Moreover, not only Famitsu, but also most other personal media reported this.

The Japanese are also world-famous for their conservatism and xenophobia.

The next day, Final Fantasy was officially released in North America and Europe. Relying on Jester's unparalleled influence, it was released simultaneously in flagship stores in more than 30 large cities across the United States on the first day. Every flagship store was overcrowded. , and even many large cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, have experienced certain traffic jams.

However, this is already common sense for the release of games involving Jester. The police at the time were also experienced, and for them, this was not a big scene. When Fire Emblem was released nationwide a year ago, That scene is truly terrifying.

Some old police officers who had participated in maintaining order at the Fire Emblem scene proudly recounted the spectacular scene to the new police officers who had just joined the police force and were sent here to maintain order. The current scene is simply a witch. See the great witch.

Moreover, in the United States, Jester's efforts and energy are much greater than in Japan. Not only has it set up trial machines in flagship stores, but it has also booked huge exhibitions in major cities. Often, they are all used as trial venues, filled with game consoles with Final Fantasy cartridges. Every player who is interested in this game can enter and experience it.

And, with or without purchase, cold drinks are provided for free.

Under such treatment, the popularity of Final Fantasy on the first day of its release in the United States was comparable to the national sensation when Fire Emblem was released.

There is not much difference in Europe. It is said that it will be released at the same time in Europe. In fact, it will only be launched in the UK, Germany and France first. Other countries will need to slowly distribute the goods in the next time, and Europe adopts promotional methods. It is not much different from that in North America. This was originally the result of Jester and Claudia's discussion.

The reason for doing this is to rely on the first day's sales to restore Japan's negative voice about Mars Entertainment.

And when the sales data came out on the first day of release in North America and Europe, the whole United States was even more shocked.

North America and Europe, a total of 600,000 copies!

This news spread back to Japan, even causing the entire Japanese media that had previously collectively denounced Mars Entertainment to lose their voices.