Game Development Giant

Okawa Isao felt that he had to talk to his old friend.

I am not in good health either, but it is time for Sega to reform.

The previous internal rectification of Mars Entertainment was also very effective. In fact, the situation of Sega and Mars Entertainment is similar, but its own aspect is more serious.

But Mars Entertainment has sufficient capital flow. They can solve these problems with just some minor twists and turns, but they can't do it themselves.

Capital flow is the most important thing. As long as there are sufficient funds in the company, any danger can be overcome.

Okawa Isao knows how difficult this matter is, but his feelings for Sega are very deep. He does not want to see this company fall in his hands. Moreover, the current situation is really like As Zhuge Liang said in his apprenticeship, this is a critical moment for life and death.

At the end of the meeting, Okawa Isao and Nakayama Hayao exchanged a look, and Nakayama Hayao also nodded. He understood the meaning of his old friend's eyes.

No results were discussed at this meeting.

There are endless disputes, and it seems that everyone is avoiding the topic of integrating Sega's secondary development department. Of course, there is actually another, more serious topic that no one has mentioned, and that is, whether Sega still has a strong presence in the field of game hardware. How long will it take?

In an elegantly furnished lounge.

Isao Okawa and Hayao Nakayama sat opposite each other, their eyes looking at each other. For these two old friends, their tacit understanding was needless to say.

My condition may not keep me going much longer.

The first sentence of the conversation between the two started with Okawa Isao's words introducing his physical condition. However, there was no hint of fear in his voice. After hearing this, Nakayama Hayao just nodded silently. He knew that his old friend's physical condition was indeed not as good as before.

Actually, when I was young, I suffered from severe tuberculosis. If God hadn't been so kind at that time, I might not be where I am now.

Okawa Isao's tone did not suggest that he was an old man who was seriously ill. On the contrary, there is some feeling of recalling the past years in it: Actually, when I attended this meeting, my family members disagreed, and so did my doctors. They suggested that I had better stay in the hospital to recuperate. My physical condition no longer allows me to deal with these mind-consuming things.

Nakayama Hayao nodded without saying a word. He knew about the other party's past. Isao Okawa suffered from severe tuberculosis when he was young. After more than eight years of fighting the disease, he finally recovered.

He knew about his old friend and his old boss. He really had feelings for Sega. Although Sega was a big company, compared to Okawa Isao's career, this was only a part of him. Is the president of CSK Group, and Sega is a subsidiary of CSK Group.

As soon as our report comes out this year, there may be problems with our stock price. If something happens that we don't want to see, I planned to spend 50 billion yen at that time to maintain Sega's The stock price, I don’t want to see an accident happen to Sega, the company I have devoted my life to...

Okawa Gong's tone was very calm when he said it, but there was no doubt about it.

Nakayama Hayao has a deep understanding of his old friend's character and philosophy. He is the kind of person who implements and abides by the philosophy that career is only a career for one generation, and what you get from the career must be reinvested in the career. People also say that the island can do it.

Many years ago, several of their old friends had chatted about their heritage while having dinner together. Most people would say they would donate part of it, but Okawa Isao said at the time that he would donate all his inheritance to the places that need it most, because he just believed that what he got from his career should be fed back into his career. Career is a matter of one generation, and what kind of career the next generation can achieve is a matter of the next generation.

At that time, these old friends thought Okawa Isao was joking.

However, only Nakayama Hayao knew that his old friend was not joking, he said it was his true thoughts.

I established a foundation. It is to deal with my inheritance... Hearing his old friend say such depressing words about the inheritance, Nakayama Hayao wanted to interrupt him, but Okawa Isao waved his hand, indicating that he should continue. Go on.

I'm worried about Sega.

When Isao Okawa talked about his body, his tone was optimistic, as if he had seen through life, but when he talked about Sega, his tone became sad.

Sega's current physical condition is actually similar to mine, but he is better and can still be saved. I know my body well and may not be able to last much longer, so I want to talk to you today, Regarding the future of Sega, how should we go about it. Okawa Isao was already a little tired after a morning of meetings.

After all, he is old and has serious health problems.

Nakayama Hayao wanted to propose that we stay here for now and talk about it tomorrow, but Okawa Isao rejected his proposal.

Now Sega can no longer delay. Today's meeting explained a lot of things. Everyone knows the current situation of Sega, but they always think about him. Suzuki Yu is a very pure game developer. I can understand that he doesn’t know Sega’s situation, but what about the others? Old friend, if I continue to sit back and watch like this, then Sega will really be destroyed in my hands.”

Okawa Gong's words were very touching.

Nakayama Hayao was also speechless. He was also very aware of Sega's current financial situation and internal chaos. It was really on the verge of breaking or standing. If it didn't break, Sega would really fall.

This is not only Okawa Isao’s life-long effort, but also his life-long effort.

But he just can't be as selfless as Okawa Gong.

One thing I've been thinking about is, is it a mistake for us to do DC? Our dilemma was obvious when we were on the Sega Saturn. At the time, we thought this was just happening when we were predicting the future development pattern of games. We believe that although 3D games will replace 2D games sooner or later, early 3D games still cannot compete with 2D games due to their rough graphics.

So, in the development of SS, we adhered to the development strategy of focusing on 2D graphics.

But reality has taught us a good lesson.

President Li of Mars Entertainment has a miraculous vision for the game industry that no one else can find. His eyes are astonishing as if he can see through the future. He even would rather delay the release of the console a year for better 3D effects. We all do. Anyone who has been immersed in this industry for many years knows what this decision means.

This is a bet. A bet with very high stakes.

President Li believes that 3D games will definitely replace the mainstream of 2D games in a short period of time, but we are on the contrary. Even Sony's Ken Kutaragi may not have as much confidence in 3D games as President Li.

In the end, the winner of this bet was President Li. Mars Entertainment still dominated the entire industry in the last console generation.

But the situation is different now. Sony has a new console with extremely powerful functions and DVD functions, and President Li obviously saw the pressure that Sony brought to him, so he took out the secret somatosensory system, and what about us? There is nothing, just a console that is more powerful than the previous generation, with some subtle changes.

Indeed, the sales of game consoles are more important than games, and our R\u0026D strength is not weak, but how about comparing it to Mars Entertainment? Their first-party capabilities are several times that of ours, and Sony has gone through ten years of first-party construction. Also It has achieved great results and has considerable development capabilities. What about third parties? The number of third parties from Sony in Japan and the number of third parties from Mars Entertainment in Europe and the United States are simply not something we can compete with. We are both the first and third parties. There is no advantage over the host and we have a clear disadvantage.

We're still out of DC.

What we can do is to release DC in advance, hoping to use the time advantage to complete a low-level accumulation of sales first.

Does this really work?

Have you forgotten what we did on Saturn? We have already manufactured and sold the console one year before Mars Entertainment, and we have already formed a very large sales advantage in this year. But what happens next?

Having said this, Okawa Gong's expression became a little sad.

The war between the three consoles in the previous generation was originally thought to be an earth-shattering battle of the century, just like the original Mars Entertainment and Nintendo's Mars colliding with the earth. But unfortunately, Mars Entertainment proved it with their unparalleled strength. . At least in this field, they have no rivals.

We made Shenmue and hoped that it would become The Hero, but as Yu Suzuki told us at the beginning, the success of Dreambox 3 depends on more than just The Hero. Let's not talk about The Hero. Can Shenmue reach the height of The Hero? Even if it reaches the height of The Hero, do we have our own Hideo Kojima, our own Hironobu Sakaguchi, our own Yuji Naka, and our own Shigeru Miyamoto?

Do we have Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Sonic, Super Balotelli, Zelda and countless other phenomenal games? We have so many Does it have the funds to attract as many third-party development companies as Sony does?

We don't have any of these, and we don't have any advantages.

To be precise, we are at a disadvantage, a very big disadvantage.

Just in the meeting just now, I sorted everything out and found that it is not a wise move for us to develop DC. We don't have much time left. There is still about a year to go before the new deal between Sony and Mars Entertainment. The release date of the console has basically been determined, Kutaragi said at Sony Computer Entertainment’s internal meeting that they will officially release their PS3 at the end of this year.”

The new president of Mars Entertainment, Satoru Iwata, also mentioned that we are fully prepared for the release of Dreambox 4 at the end of the year.

Although we are one year ahead of schedule, I am not so optimistic about our future situation now. If one year later we still end up like the last Saturn, then Sega...

Okawa Isao didn't say the last few words, but he didn't need to say them for Nakayama Hayao to understand what he meant.

If we want to carry out internal reforms now, the turmoil will be very serious, and the time left for us is very tight. In one year, we need to capture as much market share as possible. This is our only window period. To capture market share, we need a large number of games to support it. We have no advantage as a third party. Although Capcom promised to develop a Resident Evil for us, we don't know when they will be able to complete the development.

Our first party is the most important right now. If we carry out rectification now, then almost all of our strength may be wasted on internal reforms, and it will be difficult to develop many games. This is a one-year window period. It was wasted by us.”

After Nakayama Hayao finished speaking, Okawa Isao also fell into a long silence.

This was the reason why neither of them were willing to mention this matter in the previous meeting. If this matter was forced to proceed, there would be no need for the seven subsidiaries to do anything this year.

If, after one year, the situation is not optimistic, what's the point of continuing this kind of integration?

Okawa Isao's voice was deep.

Nakayama Hayao shook his head: Old friend, do you think it will be of any use if we make rectifications now? This rhetorical question was so sharp that it immediately made Okawa Isumi speechless.

Do you really want to take that step?

After being silent for a long time, Isao Okawa asked back, but his tone was hesitant, as if it was difficult to make a decision.

But Nakayama Hayao nodded.

It's a very difficult decision. We have been making game consoles for more than ten years, and it's time to quit.

Okawa Isao silently thought about these words of Nakayama Hayao.

The two of them didn't say a word for half an hour, until Okawa Gong's voice sounded again, his tone full of exhaustion.

Let's wait for another year. Anyway, it's not far behind this year. If we can still persist after one year, then we will persist in DC and finish this generation. If we can't persist...

It can only be this way.

Nakayama Hayao also said in a low tone. (~^~)