Game Development Giant

When Jester said this, of course everyone in the audience was shocked.

They had previously seen why Claudia went against the norm for so many years and came to this meeting with Jester. It was a little strange, but when Jester said this, they suddenly understood.

She is Jester's wife. Jester wants to put down the company's clutter and concentrate on playing games, so leaving the company in her hands is the right thing to do.

Moreover, she single-handedly established the European branch in Europe and did an outstanding job. Everyone knew her ability, so there was no doubt about this appointment. Of course, even if she had opinions, it was useless, because Jess Te and Claudia plus his family members are enough to decide this matter. After all, the vast majority of voting rights are in their hands.

Although some people wanted to persuade Jester, judging from Jester's tone, he was determined.

I think clearly. I will officially retire after the development of WOW is completed. I estimate that this game will take four or even five years to develop. By that time, I will have been making games for almost twenty years. , it’s time to retire.”

Jester said it easily.

Everyone was silent and no one tried to persuade him, because they had tried to persuade him countless times before, but it had no effect at all.

They also all know that there is basically no way to change the decision made by Jester.

The second thing is also an appointment.

After Jester looked around everyone with a smile, he stopped at Satoru Iwata who was sitting in the corner, and then said: Mr. Satoru Iwata, I have decided to nominate you as the executive vice president of the company, mainly responsible for helping My wife handles some daily affairs in the company, I wonder what you think about it?

Hear what Jester said.

The people present suddenly looked at Satoru Iwata in surprise, because they were a little surprised as to why such an important position would be given to this unknown person.

certainly. It’s not that Satoru Iwata is not famous. He is the vice president of the Japanese branch, but he is only one of them and is responsible for part of the work. I have worked in game development before, and I have only made a few best-selling games, especially on handheld consoles.

He receives awards from the headquarters almost every year, and there was news that he was planned to take over the Japanese branch.

But unexpectedly, this time it was Jester who directly asked him to come to the headquarters to hold such an important position as executive vice president.

No wonder they are different.

Even Satoru Iwata himself was shocked. He knew that he would definitely be reused when Jester personally summoned him to the headquarters, but if he wanted to come, he would probably be given a ministerial-level position. For example, John from the development department recently resigned due to some personal matters. , the position of director of the development department has been vacant, so he originally thought that this position would be given to him.

But he never expected that the other party would directly offer him the position of executive vice president.

this……

It is impossible to say that Satoru Iwata is unhappy.

After experiencing a battle between heaven and man in his heart, he finally nodded, stood up, and bowed.

Thank you, President, for your respect.

He is Japanese. It was natural for Jester to address him as president.

Jester nodded and asked him to sit down first, and that was how the matter was decided.

There is of course a reason why he decided to promote Satoru Iwata. In the original world, Satoru Iwata has proven one thing from all aspects, that is, he is a very outstanding president of a game company. When he was in office, he was At Nintendo's most critical moment, this century-old store was in danger, but by the time of his death, Nintendo had already passed its most critical moment.

and. His love for the game is purely genuine.

There are many game designers, but there are not many people who can handle many things in the company well and are direct and keen on the game industry.

And people like Satoru Iwata are even rarer.

so. Letting Satoru Iwata serve as executive vice president is just the first step. Jester has already considered it. After he officially retires, Satoru Iwata will officially take over Mars Entertainment. This is also the best candidate.

The next thing is about Sony.

Jester smiled as he opened a file. He glanced down and then pondered.

He seemed to be thinking about something.

Everyone present had been prepared before. Of course they knew what Jester wanted to say. Sony is now paying more and more attention to the game market, and its investment in the research and development of game consoles is also very high. Moreover, Sony's own R\u0026D strength They are very strong. They are a long-established electrical appliance company, so it is natural for them to be strong in this regard.

Especially this time for PS3.

From the information they obtained from all aspects, they knew that the performance of this console would be very powerful. For this console, Sony even spared no expense and mobilized the best software and hardware developers.

A dedicated processing area and image processing chip were developed specifically for this game console.

It seems that even the system for reading discs has been specially optimized.

According to Kutaragi Ken's efforts to win over those third-party developers, they can guarantee that their console is definitely the most powerful in terms of 3D processing this time. Whether it is Sega's console or Mars Entertainment's console, in this regard, both There is no way to compete with them.

At the beginning, people from Mars Entertainment thought this was Ken Kutaragi's boasting.

But later, as more and more data about the PS3 was revealed, they could no longer think that this was Ken Kutaragi's boasting.

Because PS3 does have the capital to say so.

Of course Jester knows this. The PS3 is the original PS2, and even Sony now pays more attention to the game department than the original world. Who allowed Jester to make the current market of video games bigger than the original one in history? It's doubled in size.

In a market worth tens of billions, it’s impossible for Sony not to be jealous and not want to get as much of the pie as possible.

Moreover, the market share of Mars Entertainment is actually gradually declining. This can be seen in these generations. Players will definitely have more and more choices. It is estimated that by the next era, it will be able to maintain 5% A market share of ten is considered a success. In the next era, having a market share of 40% may be considered a great thing.

Moreover, Jester knows better than anyone how the PS2 functioned historically.

He became a Sony advocate. It started from this host.

A generation of magic machines.

In the entire history of game consoles, there are only two and a half that can be called this name. One is naturally FC. This one saved the entire video game. And the console that started the video game craze will certainly be among them.

The other half was Nintendo's later WII.

Although this game has revealed a new game type to players and shocked the entire gaming world, this is mainly due to the contribution of the game. Returning to the WII console is really a good thing.

And the other one is PS2.

This is the most powerful console of its generation, carrying Sony's most powerful research and development capabilities.

I know everyone is a little stressed about Sony's consoles, but there are still almost two years until the next console generation, and although we will be a little behind PS3 in terms of performance, it won't be too different. , at least in terms of game development, I think it’s still on the same level, and the most important thing is our body feel.”

I firmly believe that somatosensory will help us win this console war. I have never doubted that game companies will ultimately rely on games to speak for themselves. Although powerful consoles can allow developers to develop better games, it is still important to develop the best games. Good games. You don’t necessarily need the most powerful console.”

Regarding what Jester said, everyone present nodded.

They also knew that what Jester said was true.

In the middle, a logistics staff came to change the coffee, and everyone in the conference room also took a short break. The things about Sony were not finished yet.

Actually. Now Mars Entertainment has basically reached a consensus that in the next generation, their main opponent will be Sony. As for Sega, although it seems that they are still the three giants of consoles, they have strong R\u0026D capabilities. There are endless classic games emerging, but those who have a keen insight into the game market have long seen it.

Sega now is actually in deep trouble.

It just hasn't exploded yet.

Sega's game development capabilities are indeed strong. Many Mars Entertainment designers are fans of Sega. Sega likes to develop hard-core games. In other words, their games are really designed for players who are willing to study the game in depth. .

For those light players, Sega's games are not so friendly.

In the original history, Sega and Yuji Naka, a master figure of the generation, developed Sonic to attract many light players, and then slowly transformed these light players into hardcore players.

But in this history, Sega did not have Yuji Naka.

Developers like Yuji Naka are rare.

Although Sega has discovered this problem long ago, they have also developed some light games to attract players, but none of them can match Yuji Naka's Sonic.

Therefore, in this aspect, Sega was very unsuccessful in this life. Of course, Suzuki Yu's development capabilities and game knowledge are still strong. When Sega started to have some difficulties, he developed the epoch-making VR Fighter. It completely redefines fighting games and breaks the dominance of Mars Entertainment's Street Fighter in the arcade fighting game market.

Even when VR Fighter was at its most popular, no one cared about Street Fighter.

Even though Tekken developed by Itagaki Tomonobu is said to be able to compete with VR Fighter, it only has this qualification.

In terms of share, there is still a big gap with VR Warrior.

Relying on the hot sales of VR Fighter, Sega survived the first crisis of shrinking of their home console market. Of course, this had a lot to do with Sega's lack of attention, because at that time Sega actually only felt that the home console market was The game was mainly used for arcade porting and making second money. In addition, the arcade market was booming at the time, so they were not too worried about the failure of the home console market.

Because their core is in the arcade market.

However, in recent years, the share of the arcade market has begun to shrink. Mars Entertainment began to gradually withdraw from the arcade market a few years ago, leaving only the most profitable large-scale motion-sensing arcade machines. Sega did not think that the arcade market would It became obscene so quickly, so after Mars Entertainment gave up this part of the market share, they launched a bloody market hand-to-hand battle with companies like Namco that also cared about the arcade market.

The success is so strong that it has a lot of shares.

But now, the arcade market is shrinking year by year, and Sega itself has discovered this situation.

It is also obvious that the focus of the game market is increasingly shifting to home consoles.

In the past few years, Sega has obviously increased its investment in the development of home console games. It can be seen that they are also a little anxious. .

Whether it is releasing the console in advance or releasing Shenmue, they are actually trying to compete in the home console market.

However, Sega's biggest shortcoming is very fatal.

That is that their R\u0026D power is too scattered. Although Mars Entertainment also has many independent development studios, Sega exists in the form of a branch. In their branches, they can develop any aspect of games, and Mars It is owned by Entertainment, but it is a studio model. If you want to develop any games, you need to report to the headquarters.

The headquarters will not interfere with your development, and will not let you develop games at will.

For example, the company already has two studios developing racing games, and another studio wants to develop racing games. At this time, it needs to be blocked.

But that's not the case with Sega.

Their seven development companies are all powerful and can develop any type of game without any constraints.

This often results in a waste of resources and even internal competition.

Another one is the lack of third parties.

Mars Entertainment is backed by European and American third parties. Sony has recruited almost all Japanese third parties it can recruit in the past few years.

Sega missed the best opportunity and the gap was too big among third parties.

Therefore, everyone is not very optimistic about Sega's future prospects.

So what if Shenmue is a huge success?

Now, unlike more than ten years ago, one game alone cannot save a platform that wants to dominate the world. (~^~)