More than a month has passed in the blink of an eye, and it is already late April 1981.

After two rounds of defense reports, Gu is about to usher in his final thesis, and will end his first semester in the United States by the end of May, and then return to China for a year off.

Tiankun Entertainment's game console, because of the measures of TV shopping to attract franchisees, successfully extended the initial hot distribution time, and maintained more than 10,000 shipments every month, from January to May will not be broken, it is estimated that before Gu Biao returns to China, a total of 50,000 units can be sold, with sales of more than 60 million US dollars and gross profit of 18 million US dollars.

(It's just gross profit, that is, to deduct more than 5 million advertising fees for TV franchisees for half a year, as well as other marketing expenses.) ）

The movie "Terminator", which has been edited and produced with special effects for more than two months since it was shut down in February. In the film industry in 1981, there was no awesome computer post-production, and the visual effects were basically shot with props.

What's more, "Terminator" will use the part of the computer in the later stage, that is, the part of the scene where the metal robot is exposed after the Anold skin is burned, and even the part of the future war in Li Lianjie's memories, which only accounts for less than 20% of the entire film.

So Cameron reported the progress to Gu Biao, guaranteeing that it could be officially released before the end of May, catching up with the high-quality schedule of Children's Day, and then if it could cause social discussions, it would sell another wave in the summer vacation.

This schedule is better than Cameron's "Terminator" that was filmed in 84 years in history. Because videotapes are not even popular in the United States today, good quality movies have formed a wave of publicity among young people after forming a social reputation during Children's Day, which just contributed to the summer box office explosion.

Don't worry about videotapes or even DVDs and the Internet diverting curious viewers.

Nowadays, the distribution and publicity of the film has been carried out in full swing, and the publicity efforts have been gradually improved. After discussing with Cameron, Gu Biao invited the senior management of the directors' union to dinner, and finally asked someone to find a very small distributor that had just been established for two years, Miramax, to distribute it, instead of choosing any of the eight major film companies-

Don't think it's too hasty, because historically, Cameron's "The Terminator" was only released by an unknown small distributor, Orion-Pictures.

If this kind of "small and medium-sized production" with a total investment of less than $8 million is given to the eight major film companies, then the distributors will take a high percentage of the share, and even ask for a fixed advertising fee, which is not cost-effective. The producer will never get the industry practice of 433 shares.

It's a different story with Miramax, a small new company founded in 1979 that has only released two films that cost more than $5 million to make, and "The Terminator" is the company's No. 1 production ever to find them.

At the same time, the reputation of Harvey Weinstein, the founder of Miramax, is self-evident, and he is well known for his ability to hype up and promote films. Gu Biao thought of looking for him before the other party made a fortune, and he undoubtedly dug up a depression in value.

I won't go into detail about the specific negotiation process between the two sides, anyway, Gu Biao finally set a very harsh account sharing condition - Gu Biao wants 523 shares, that is, the producer wants to get 50% of the final box office share, the distributor can only get 20%, and 30% of the theater chain remains unchanged.

This is very rare in Hollywood, and Harvey Weinstein stiffened his neck at first and did not want to say yes.

But Gu Biao pointed out sharply: The film was supported by the directors and cinematographers' union in the preparation stage, and also wore the banner of "resisting the introduction of robots in the field of photography", and was even stood by President Li Gen before the general election vote.

All this can reduce Miramax's advertising expenditure when promoting, and there are more free topic materials to hype.

After saying this, the hype master Weinstein shut up and obediently accepted Gu Ao's 523 conditions.

He knew that this was the key to taking Miramax one step further, and that it was the hope that he would be run by other small-budget independent films in addition to the eight blockbusters.

It's not so worth caring about making more or less money from a movie.

……

While everything was going smoothly and in full swing on Gu's side, a grim accountability was about to unfold at the headquarters of Atari in Silicon Valley.

Tiankun Entertainment's "TV shopping" promotion channel has finally gradually shown its efficacy, and has been noticed and paid attention to by its main competitors.

The response period of more than a month is not slow, after all, this is not the age of the Internet. When the opponent's new marketing strategy was first launched, there were too many smoke bombs, and after more than a month, it was already fast to see the real effect.

Warner Bros. Entertainment's representative to Atari is meeting with vice presidents, including Dardanelle, to understand the reasons for the decline.

(Note: Although Atari was the leader of the video game console industry at that time, the total market size of the video game console industry was only two or three billion US dollars, which could not be compared with the traditional film and television media industry.) So Atari's largest shareholder is Warner Bros. Entertainment, which is the famous Hollywood blockbuster. ）

"The arcade division's sales fell last month, what the hell is going on?" a fifty-year-old man who is not angry and arrogant taps his knuckles on the table, asking word by word.

His name was Ronald Warner, and his father was Jack Warner, one of the four brothers who founded Warner Bros.

However, after the first generation of the company has aged, the company's management has gradually broken away from the control of the Warner family, and now there are only a few second-generation people surnamed Warner as major shareholders to monitor the operation of various businesses.

In the face of the doubts of the major shareholders, Vice President Dardanelle, as the main responsible person, personally explained:

"Mr. Warner, as you can see, it was Tencoin-Entertainment that did not follow the routine, came up with a new marketing channel, and actually used TV shopping to win over franchisees, which caught us off guard and lost a group of customers whose depreciation period was about to expire.

However, at present, our side-scrolling refresh game has also been successfully imitated, with Atari's strong channel and cost advantages, brand inertia, we will soon regain the market! At most, we can recover the decline, and in two months, we can win the overtake!

In addition, we are also porting home game consoles at the same time, and in May, we will be able to transplant the side-scrolling game to the 2600 game consoles, and the retail price of the cassette is currently only $30 for the time being, which will definitely defeat Tencoin's market layout and bring most of the players who enter the arcade hall to try it back to their home consoles.

After all, 25 cents is not cheap to play a game, especially if you have bad technique and often die. If you can buy it out at a time of $30 and play at home for as long as you want, and lie down and play on the couch if you want, who would say no?"

Vice President Dardanelle's explanation is quite reasonable, so that the trust of the major shareholders has been temporarily restored, and he is willing to give the management an additional month or two to inspect the situation to verify the situation.

"Okay, then I'll take another look and hope your response will work as you advertise. Ronald Warner said, "As far as I can see, the other side has already relied on this trick to get 50 million dollars in sales from the American arcade market this year! This data must not be left alone!"

……

A few days later, Atari's copycat side-scrolling shooter and side-scrolling action-adventure arcade machines were launched, and the first batch of 5,000 units was shipped, relying on Atari's existing channels.

5,000 units were sold in just three days, a speed that absolutely terrifying all peers.

Even if Gu Biao uses the new media of TV shopping to attract franchisees, it will take at least ten days to do what Atari can do in three days.

Fierce hand-to-hand combat competition lasted two weeks. After 20 days of the Atari arcade model, a total of 30,000 units have been sold. Around the beginning of May, a rushed home version of the game cartridge began to hit the market.

The cartridge can be plugged directly into the Atari 2600 home console.

In May 1981, there were already 11 million Atari 2,600 home game consoles on the U.S. market, and more than 3 million could be added within a year, reaching 14 million by mid-'82.

So the effect of flooding is very terrifying.

Those conservative and self-proclaimed high-end game hall owners who believe in the Atari brand saw that this time Atari actually launched the home console version in such a short period of time after the arcade version was put on the market, and they also scolded the street violently, and they dared not speak out.

The reason is also easy to understand, because the arcade hall owners want the machine they buy most to not be able to run on their home machine for several years, so that players will obediently come to the game hall to spend money.

If Atari had sold a lot of arcade machines on the front foot, and the arcade hall had not yet returned its money, and had just left the home machine, then the game hall owners would be all in a trap.

It's not like Atari hasn't done this kind of thing before, but at least the arcade version will be released for three months to half a year before the home version is released, giving arcade hall owners more opportunities to return to their original costs.

Moreover, in previous years, the stock of Atari's game consoles was not so large, only a few million units, and the American people who had game consoles at home only accounted for about 10% of the total population, and the remaining 90% still had to go to the arcade if they wanted to play, and the arcade operators were not too afraid to grab business.

In mid-'81, the stock of 11 million units indicates that 20% of American households have home game consoles, which is still the 20% with relative wealth and consumption potential. This contradiction is highlighted.

Almost all arcade hall owners tried to see the porting performance jokes of the home console version, so as to discredit the Atari home console version and discourage consumers from buying cassette.

As is often the case, this expectation of smear is not unreasonable. Because the Atari 2600 was, after all, a game console finalized in 1977, the performance constraints of electronic devices and chips at that time led to Atari's inability to port the latest games and cut performance. If you want to go dark, you can always find black dots.

It's just that this time the black spots seem to be particularly noticeable.

Because Atari was so aggressive that he took 2600 to engage in a side-scrolling clearance game, the refresh rate of the screen processing couldn't keep up at all.

An undercurrent of Atari's performance is brewing behind the booming sales.