Game Development Giant

The release of Dreambox 4 can be said to be a major event in the industry.

Just a month ago, Sony's PS3 made its grand debut, selling well all over the world. The sales in one month even exceeded the total sales of Sega's DC in the first three months.

When it came to the much-anticipated Dreambox 4, it naturally received even more attention.

Even Mars Entertainment knows that this will be the biggest challenge they will ever encounter. For Iwata, it is also the first thing he has faced after being selected by Jester to be the leader of Mars Entertainment. event.

Reputation is established by one's own deeds.

Jester has such authority in Mars Entertainment, not only because he is the founder of Mars Entertainment, not only because he has developed one outstanding game after another, but more importantly, he leads As Mars Entertainment defeated enemies one after another and won victory after victory, his prestige was at its peak.

But Satoru Iwata is different.

Before, he was actually just continuing the prestige Jester gave him.

If others are willing to listen, it is only because Jester is behind him. Jester has made it clear that he is a supporter of Satoru Iwata.

Not because of himself.

Therefore, now Satoru Iwata needs to lead Mars Entertainment to continue to win glory, so that the people of Mars Entertainment can focus on him. Otherwise, he may not be able to hold this position in Mars Entertainment.

But to make people sincerely convinced of themselves.

There is no better way than to make a career, and the competition between Dreambox 4 and PS3 is the best opportunity for him.

Of course, it is also quite big. After all, the Dreambox series has lasted for three generations and is now in its fourth generation.

From the initial war of the century with Nintendo to Sega's subsequent involvement in the chaos, it can be said that Mars Entertainment has experienced the entire history of video games since the impact of Atari. Even now, in the recent Dreambox 3 era, Dreambox 3's market share has still reached a frightening 51%. This is since Mars Entertainment was established in 1984.

Their market share is at its lowest ever.

More than 50% market share. In other words, in the entire video game market of the same generation, such a share basically represents a crushing of other brands.

Of course, even Mars Entertainment thinks so. It has become increasingly difficult to maintain such a terrible share in the next generation. Even on Dreambox 4, the result of their internal discussions was only to maintain the share at 5% in the first three years. 10. In the next two generations and the end of the console career of three years, maintaining 40% to 45% is considered a success.

This is a target divided into different time periods based on the active time of a host, which is approximately five to six years.

Being able to do this is already very difficult.

However, Satoru Iwata is not the kind of person who just does well. In his eyes, Dreambox4 has a great possibility of achieving greater results.

All of this is based on the somatosensory feeling that is only available on Dreambox 4. Iwata has experienced the somatosensory feeling himself. He knows how attractive this small additional accessory is. Although many people are saying that no one dares to make big claims before it is released, but Satoru Iwata always believes that even if it is not released, he can be sure. This small physical experience will definitely be like when Carmack made his first pure 3D game.

Completely changing the entire video game industry.

The acquisition of Dreambox 4 is hot, with pre-orders through sellers everywhere before its release. Just over one million units!

You know, this is not a pre-order just because you say pre-order, this is a pre-order that requires a deposit.

Of course, such results cannot mean anything. It can only explain the success of Dreambox3, but not the success of Dreambox4. As for how this console is, the outcome of the console war with Sony's PS3 will not be known in a short time. This time the console war is . A competition that will last for several years.

Jester returned to California on the fifteenth day after the release of Dreambox 4.

At this time, Dreambox 4’s half-month sales have caught up with PS3’s one-month sales at the beginning of its release.

But that doesn't mean anything.

You know, the advantage of Dreambox 3 over PS2 is very huge, and now it has just been extended to the new generation of consoles.

Fortunately, the motion sensing game that Dreambox 4 mainly promotes did not disappoint. It was well received as soon as it was released. Especially the motion sensing game that came with Dreambox 4 and was simply called Sports. People who play games love it so much that they can’t put it down.

Nowadays, many people come to buy Dreambox 4 out of admiration. Many of them heard the recommendation from their friends and people who don’t usually play games. It is because of this experience.

Of course, PS3 is not to be outdone.

Sony's sales method of adding DVD functions to game consoles has indeed led many people to buy game consoles that they would not normally buy. For example, some people who do not usually play games but like to watch DVDs will feel that It is also good to have a DVD player with the function of playing games. For those who like to play games, they think it is great to add a DVD player that can play DVDs.

Therefore, for a while, after the previous one or two months of sales, when the sales figures stabilized, they were almost the same.

Although Jester didn't pay attention to all this, he also knew it. In fact, being able to do this is already considered good. After all, in the original history, the current PS3 is also the PS2 in history, which is a generation of magic machines. .

The motion sensor is also the biggest reason why WIIW was able to crush Sony and Microsoft in the early generations despite lagging behind in terms of performance and third-party games.

It can be said that this time the console war is for Jester. It's very interesting.

The possibility of completely defeating Sony is not high, but the possibility of failure on our side is also not high. The worst is an invincible situation, so. Jester had nothing to be nervous about.

The only thing he cares about now is the development of WOW.

Time passed very quickly, and Jester's prediction about the console battle was very accurate. Although the Dreambox has motion sensing support, the PS3 also has DVD support. Therefore, within a year of the release of these two consoles, no one has a complete upper hand. However, in terms of total sales, Dreambox 4 still has a slight advantage, although it is not too big.

It's probably just an increase of 10% to 15% in terms of share.

Microsoft also developed its own first-generation game console after absorbing Sega's hardware department. This console was named XBOX. It was displayed at a previous E3 exhibition and attracted widespread attention in the industry.

Moreover, there are several games ready to be released at the same time as XBOX. It is also expected by players.

Sega, which has completed the integration of its Qiji branch, also announced that they will develop games for all console manufacturers, but they also explained that due to some agreements with Microsoft, the sequels of several IPs will only be released on Microsoft's Of course, this is a unique thing for series consoles. After all, Sony has also obtained the rights to the second to third games of Sega's Shenmue.

At that time, Mars Entertainment seemed to look down on Sega. During the opening hours of Sega Supermarket, they did not do anything to take advantage of others.

On the contrary, it was after the merger of Sega was completed that the people from Mars Entertainment formally discussed cooperation with Sega, and the talks were not even about exclusive rights to a certain game. Instead, I'm asking what Sega's recent development plans are, and if they encounter any technical problems, they will try their best to help.

This also makes Sega's boss very grateful.

After all, this time Sega not only lost the console market that it had been in for 20 years, but even their game developers took advantage of the opportunity to be robbed. Not optimistic about Sega's future, more people voluntarily resigned.

This time Sega was able to escape from death and stand up again, thanks to their late president Isao Okawa.

When Isao Okawa was dying, he decided to donate all his assets, totaling 1.2 billion US dollars, to Sega for free, hoping that Sega could survive this crisis.

And Sega has indeed lived up to his expectations. It has been brought back to life in the hands of its successors. Although it is not satisfied with its previous strength and glory, it still has a chance to come back again, and the previous strength and glory can always be regained. shaped.

Microsoft's XBOX has indeed caused a sensation in the industry.

Just when they thought that the future video game market would be a battle between Mars Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment for hegemony, Microsoft got involved again.

You know, although the game market is not small, it is definitely not big. It is a market of only 20 to 30 billion US dollars a year, which is far less big than Microsoft's business of hundreds of billions per year. However, if you want to gain a foothold in this industry , the cost required is also huge, and it may require billions of dollars of capital investment to gain a foothold.

Originally, Microsoft said that they would release their new console at the end of 2001.

In fact, Microsoft's new console has indeed been developed.

However, due to production capacity issues, production capacity could not keep up near the end of 2001, so the launch had to be postponed to March 2002.

Another major event in the industry at the end of 2001 was that Jester made a sudden appearance at the carnival at the end of 2001, and in an interview, he announced that he would launch WOW at the beginning of 2002. First test.

Jester said at the end of 2000 that they might conduct a test event in the near future.

But later the matter fell into disuse.

A player once asked about this on the forum, and Jester also expressed humility on the forum, saying that he didn't think too carefully at the time, so he planned to postpone the plan for a while.

However, after a period of time, I discovered that it would be better to test now than to wait until the game development is more complete and then test again.

The plan at that time was only to postpone it for about four months.

But for game development, no one can give an accurate date. A BUG needs to be resolved. I can only say that I expect it to be completed within a week, but can it be completed within a week? No one can say for sure, because it is very possible that the game originally had no problem with the program, but some code modifications were made to fix this BUG.

This BUG has been fixed.

But this new string of code may cause other bugs.

Things like this are rare, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

This time, Jester's development team encountered such a thing, so they spent a lot of time fixing these bugs that appeared due to accidents.

But in short, it is now possible to come up with a version suitable for testing.

This is also the first time this game has appeared in front of players other than Mars Entertainment.

Moreover, this time is not like Jester's previous games. Before conducting player testing, he will first conduct a media test, and first let the media who have played his game give him a buzz, creating Instead, they skipped the media link and directly invited players for testing.

Of course, the testing method is still closed testing.

All players can apply on the official forum of Mars Entertainment, and then Mars Entertainment will conduct a random selection. For the selected players, Mars Entertainment will be responsible for all the other party's food, accommodation, accommodation and travel expenses. They will go to the headquarters of Mars Entertainment. Let’s do this test.

On the Mars Entertainment forum, when Jester was asked why the testing methods of his games were different this time, Jester also gave an explanation.

In the previous tests, the media were actually invited to experience it first, just to build publicity for the game. That is because the game is almost completed and can be sold after building publicity. But now this game, according to the progress, is only Sixty percent of the content has been completed, and it is the easiest content to complete, and there is still a long way to go before it is officially released.”

Under such circumstances, there is no use in building momentum. It is better to invite some players to experience it and give us some opinions.

At this time, these opinions are much more precious. (~^~)