Game Development Giant

Such important industry news was immediately placed on Jester's desk as the marketing director of Sega's North American branch.

After he announced the release period of Dreambox 2, he was very concerned about Sega's response. He absolutely did not believe that Hayao Nakayama, in the world in his memory, was called Contra. They will just sit there and die without making any changes.

Everyone knows that Sega has not actually opened up the Japanese market now. It seems that the Japanese are far less accepting of 16-bit computers than Americans. Sega was able to achieve great success as soon as it was released in the United States, and even between Christmas and New Year's Day During the American shopping season, sales were firmly ahead of Mars Entertainment. However, the sales of their MD console in Japan can only be said to be average. The most popular console in Japan is still the Nintendo one. FC, which is obviously lagging behind the times, and even Dreambox of Mars Entertainment, their MD, needless to say in terms of share, is a newly released game console compared to an old machine that has been on sale for several years. In this regard, it is better It doesn't make any sense, but even compared to the monthly sales volume, it doesn't have much of an advantage.

Now Nintendo's new 16-bit console is about to be released, as well as Sony's new console, which is at the height of its popularity in Japan's electronics field, and Mars Entertainment's Dreambox 2. As far as the current situation in Japan is concerned, it is increasingly unfavorable for Sega. , and it’s not their fault. Their home console games have a strong arcade style, and this hard-core style has always been Sega’s characteristic.

But the biggest problem is that this style of game can be a great success in arcades, but in the eyes of Japanese home console gamers, they don't particularly like this style of game.

On the contrary, American players are extremely fond of this style of game.

But American players prefer Mars Entertainment games.

Jester looked at the information about Hisao Oguchi in his hand, but that was not what he was thinking about at all. There was not much available information that could be seen in this information. It can even be said that there is basically no one. His intelligence personnel have no idea why Nakayama Hayao would arrange for such a person to be the marketing director of Sega North America. Judging from the resume of this person named Hisao Oguchi, he was only the No. 3 person in the am3 development team. The second person in charge, and the am3 development team is the core of the Sega game development team. In addition to being the game development director, Suzuki Yu's most important position is that he also serves as the leader of the am3 development team.

Judging from Hisao Oguchi's resume, after graduating from college, he joined Sega in 1984 and immediately entered the game development department. And he has been working in the game development department since then. During this period, there is no information to show that he has any special talents in administrative management, but such a person who seems to be a complete R\u0026D talent actually works in In such a very special period, I was sent to the United States to take on such an important position.

This is completely unreasonable.

This was the comment of the investigator of the report that Jester was holding at this time, but Jester didn't care much about this comment because he was very familiar with the name Hisao Oguchi. It can even be said that as long as future generations know something about Sega, it is impossible not to have heard of this name.

Hayao Nakayama, the founder of Sega, is also the greatest in Sega's history. After the retirement of its most influential president, Sega has been suffering losses.

In fact, saying this is a loss of face for Nakayama Hayao. A big reason why Sega entered this situation was because it blindly developed new technologies in order to forcefully develop new consoles. Even after Sega later announced that it would withdraw from the game console market, Sega was still in trouble. From Hideki Okamura to Tetsu Koyama, Sega's top management changed like a revolving door, but the losses continued and tended to get worse. At the most, Sega's losses even reached more than 200 billion yen.

Under such huge losses, no person in charge of any company can stay for a long time, especially when Sega was still a listed company, they needed to be responsible to shareholders.

It was under such embarrassing and difficult circumstances that Hisao Oguchi took office.

Facts have proved that this pure scientific researcher who was born as an R\u0026D technician and has held technical positions for a long time unexpectedly took on the role of reviving Sega. Just one year after he became the president of Sega, Sega went from five consecutive years to From a huge annual loss of 200 billion yen, the company turned a profit, and its annual sales reached 190 billion yen.

Such a person, who is extremely keen on business information and extremely powerful, has served as Sega's North American marketing director. How could Jester not be worried?

Jester was thinking about the methods Hisao Oguchi used during the revival of Sega. However, at that time, Sega had already launched a competition for the home console market and focused on game development. At that time, during the period of Hayao Nakayama, Sega had no control over their internal The R\u0026D team’s strategy is also very similar to Jester’s independent studio strategy.

Hayao Nakayama also used an independent company to manage Sega's development team on a self-financing basis. In the later years of Nakayama Hayao's administration, Sega had seven large game development subsidiaries. Even these seven game development companies were not the most popular in Sega's history. The racing games that they are good at actually have an independent brand, resulting in an extreme waste of research and development resources.

Originally, this was not a problem when you had a platform, but if you continue to do this when you no longer have the advantage of the platform, you are asking for death.

Therefore, Hisao Oguchi made a very surprising decision, that is, to cancel all seven subsidiaries, and then gather all the R\u0026D personnel into the headquarters, and then regroup them according to their R\u0026D expertise to concentrate on game development. Hisao Oguchi also believes that Sega is the most valuable resource after it no longer has the game console platform.

Not to mention, in the amusement arcades that accounted for more than one-third of Sega's revenue at the time, Hisao Oguchi used the determination of a strong man to cut off his wrist and directly cut down hundreds of poorly managed arcades that caused losses.

Although this move caused Sega's annual revenue to drop significantly, it allowed Sega to turn a profit.

From these cases, Jester analyzed Hisao Oguchi's character, characteristics and style in dealing with people, and thus predicted what measures the other party might take in the next sales war. Jester didn't think about it for a long time. Long, he actually thought of various countermeasures and brought him into them. If he were in Sega's position now, how would he deal with the thunderstorm that was about to come?

There is only one conclusion in the end.

That is to cut the price of game consoles. Jester believes that Nintendo will not do this kind of thing, because Nintendo has never done this even in the most difficult things in history, except when they first entered the game industry. , but Sega, in its original history, in order to compete with Nintendo for market share, this is what they did.

However, their price reduction is still relatively low. Even if they sell at a loss, it will not last long. They just use it as a promotional tool rather than treating it as the norm.

It is Sony that really implements this policy of selling hardware at a loss.

In order to counter Sony's policy, Sega had to do this, which also caused Sega's losses in the later years of Hayao Nakayama.

In addition, Sony's amazing machine P2 at that time almost unified the world with a sweeping trend, leaving no chance for Sega to make back its money. Later, after Nakayama Hayao retired, the situation worsened.

Selling the console at a lower price than itself is their only way and the best way.

Jester made his own judgment.

But how far can Sega lower the console? Reduce it to a very small profit or reduce it to buying a host at a direct loss? These Jesters haven't made a judgment yet, but this incident did remind him that Sony relied on selling hardware at a loss to promote consoles. Now Sony will definitely use this method again. They are originally engaged in electrical appliances. , of course he is extremely familiar with this method.

The problem is that this plan looks extremely vulgar, but it has no shortcomings at all.

Because this plan is for oneself, as long as one can have enough funds to support it, others will have no power to fight back against their plan. The only way is to use the same method to fight back, and the market Cutting the throat and bleeding is to see who can't hold on first. This is not about comparing who is stronger, but about who is richer.

At that time, Sega fell into Sony's plan like this. They didn't think about it at the time. How could their family wealth be as good as Sony's, which was rich and powerful?

But then again, if you don't do this, you will just watch your market being cannibalized.

What a dilemma.

Jester sighed. Although he roughly guessed what Sega would do next, it was the same for him - a dilemma. Now there were two roads in front of him. One was to be killed by Sega. Leading the way, they sell at a loss, and they must also sell at a loss. The second one is my favorite Nintendo's attitude towards game console hardware.

I will never sell the console at a loss.

But if we continue to maintain the original set price and never sell the console at a loss, it will be equivalent to giving up part of the market.

How can I do? (To be continued...)