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Since the 60s, with the take-off of Hong Kong's economy, the lives of Hong Kong people have begun to improve, and the demand for culture and sports has begun to increase.

In the 60s, Hong Kong films were the standout of the Shaw Brothers, and in the 70s, Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers competed for supremacy, and with the establishment of the third cinema chain in Hong Kong, Mr. Lui Juekun, the owner of KMB, the Golden Princess Cinema Line, the trend of a hundred flowers blooming has begun to emerge.

Hong Kong football has also entered its heyday since the 60s. In the early days, the "Namba War" between KMB and Nanhua could attract fans to queue up all night to buy tickets. After that, there were heroic brigades such as Sing Tao, Yu Yuan, Zhijie, and Donghua. In the past two years, every time there is a dispute between the two Huang brothers, Seiko and Bulova, it has attracted tens of thousands of fans to cheer on the scene.

It can be said that this era is the most prosperous era of Hong Kong football, and by the time Li Xuan watched the game in later generations, the Hong Kong team had already been reduced to the belly of a fish that was bullied, and it was even more miserable than the "Chinese pig team".

However, there are no hidden worries behind the trend of Hong Kong football being in full bloom, and the damage of politics to football is a problem that cannot be ignored. Due to its special status, Hong Kong has always been an important battlefield for fierce confrontations between the two sides in the Taiwan Strait. Hong Kong's newspapers include Ta Kung Pao, Wen Wei Po, and Hong Kong Commercial Daily, which have a clear leftist stance, as well as Industrial and Commercial Daily and Hong Kong Times, which are known as the mouthpieces of the Kuomintang, the Party, and countless propaganda wars over the past few decades.

This left-right battle is no less common in sports. In the first group league, the recognized leftist teams are Dongsheng, Yuyuan, and Haibee, and the right-wing teams are Dongfang, Zhijie, and Guanghua. Every time they meet, they are jokingly called the "Kuomintang-Communist War" by Hong Kong fans. But with Huang Chuanshan's investment in the formation of a Seiko team, and smashed millions of Hong Kong dollars to poach people. The landscape of the First Division is starting to change.

, the Seiko team recruited the former head coach of the Dutch team as the new head coach with a high salary, and recruited the players Nan Ganin and Lenigachev who were on the field in the World Cup finals in Argentina in seven or eight years, and finally won the championship by Shun Lì.

It is impossible for a leftist team to invest money on this scale, so some newspapers began to criticize this kind of strength built with money. As the only authoritative figure in Hong Kong who has served as the "vice chairman of the AFC", Mr. Fok Yingdong can be said to have a decisive influence on Hong Kong football.

He was persuaded by some people to believe that the gap between the rich and the poor among the teams in the first division is too large, and in the long run, the entire league may lose its competitiveness. His apprehension is not unfounded, but he is prepared to take a one-size-fits-all approach. It is definitely not appropriate to directly ban all teams from bringing in foreign players.

After all, Hong Kong's population is limited, and it is impossible for so many excellent local players to emerge. If all foreign players are kept out, it will only reduce the spectacle of the league and ultimately make fans lose interest in entering the stadium to watch the game.

Although Li Xuan, a pseudo-fan, did not know much about Hong Kong football in the 80s, he was also quite interested in listening to the two owners and a recently retired president of the Football Association talking about these industry secrets.

But Li Xuan has not let go of the matter of buying the team, Xu Jiankui persuaded him a few words and refused to answer, so he could only give up. He said he wanted to run for the next president of the South China Athletic Association. If the election is successful, we must revive the majesty of the Nanhua football team and have a good PK with Huo Dagongzi's Royal Forest Army.

"Xiao Li Sheng, please come today. Is it thinking that you are consulting about something?" Huang Chuanbao said suddenly.

Li Xuan nodded at him and said with a smile, "Da Huang Sheng, what can you tell me?"

"My brother and I. and Mr. Xu, who wants to set up a game company jointly. I'm going to produce the very popular arcade machines sold by your Oriental Company, so I take the liberty to ask you if this industry is good to enter?" Huang Chuanbao said with a smile on his face.

Li Xuan turned his head to look at Xu Jiankui. Xu Jiankui grinned at him: "Looking at you making a lot of money, we are also red-eyed!" But I think I have to say hello to you before starting a company, so that you don't have to complain about my old friend and you stealing food in the future!"

Li Xuan couldn't help but smile and said: "You think too highly of Dongfang Electronics, the total output value of the arcade market in the United States alone last year was as high as 3 billion US dollars, and our Dongfang Electronics accounted for less than 10% of the market share, so I don't worry about anyone grabbing food at all!"

Of course, what Li Xuan did not point out is that on the surface, Dongfang Electronics' share is not high, but this is mainly because Dongfang Company only launched three arcade machines: "Tank Wars", "Hong Kong Cubes" and "Pac-Man" in the whole of last year.

Other competitors, such as Sega, launched more than a hundred new consoles in 1980. Although the sales volume of each game is far less than that of Dongfang Electronics, it adds up to a lot, and its market share far exceeds that of Dongfang Electronics.

However, the development of new games is expensive, and most of the more than 100 new games listed by Sega have not been recognized by the market. Even if some of them are still best-sellers, they are far from being compared with the three arcade machines of Dongfang Electronics. Excluding R&D costs, Sega's actual profit is not as much as that of Dongfang Electronics.

Since Dongfang Electronics began to make a name for itself, new game companies have sprung up in Hong Kong. Many of them are like these three people who have no concept of the game industry, and Li Xuan is not optimistic about them.

"Da Huang Sheng, Jian Kui and I are friends, since you are going to enter the arcade industry with him, I have to make the risks clear first!" Li Xuan looked around at the three of them before he said seriously, "Many people only see the huge profits of the arcade industry from the success of Dongfang Electronics, but ignore the cruelty of competition in this industry. It's a winner-takes-all industry, where most of the profits are eaten up by just a few companies!

In the United States, the cost of developing a new arcade game is about $50 to $1 million! For example, Sega, Dongfang Electronics' main competitor, released 127 new arcade games of various types last year, and the total R&D investment will not be less than $80 million. And the vast majority of these newly launched game consoles do not even sell 1,000 units.

East just today . Our company launched its newest arcade game, Mario Bros., at the dealer conference held at the Mandarin Oriental. In order to make this game better, we have assembled a R&D team of more than 20 people. It took nearly a year, and the total cost including the purchase of various R&D equipment was as high as 6 million Hong Kong dollars!"

The three of them couldn't help but smack their tongues a little when they heard it. When they look at each other, they can read the shock in each other's eyes.

Li Xuan smiled again and said, "Of course, it's not that every game has such a big investment. But if you want to form a decent company, an investment of 1 million is definitely indispensable. Among them, 500,000 yuan is used for the purchase of equipment, 300,000 yuan is used for the company's operating expenses, and the remaining 200,000 yuan is used for the cost of later product production.

This way, you can probably assemble a game development team of 10 people, which can run for half a year. If a successful arcade game can be developed in half a year, the company may be able to survive, otherwise it will be almost a situation where it runs out of money and has to close its doors!"

"Xiao Li Sheng, I was taken aback by you just now. The three of us were originally only going to contribute 500,000 yuan each, with a total share capital of 1.5 million Hong Kong dollars. Xu Jiankui asked with a smile, "How is your company's new game?"

Li Xuan smiled but didn't say anything, but he sighed slightly in his heart. They clearly didn't listen to their own risk warnings. Making arcade machines is by no means as easy as everyone thinks, at least these newly established game companies in Hong Kong have not been able to come up with any games that can make Li Xuan look at them twice.

Xu Jiankui is not a bad person, and Li Xuan has had a lot of exchanges with him recently, before the acquisition of Jiahua Bank. The other party also deliberately pulled the line between him and Lin Xinyi. Although the loss of 500,000 investment will not have a great impact on Xu Jiankui, as a friend, Li Xuan is still willing to mention a few more words.

So Li Xuan asked again: "Have you recruited game developers?"

Hong Kong's game industry is already short of talents, and the current core backbone of Oriental Games is almost entirely cultivated by itself. When the company was first established, it was almost supported by Li Xuan's golden finger.

He taught him some of the things he knew about game development. Then, the two games "Hong Kong Cube" and "Tank Wars", which are not too difficult to develop, can be regarded as allowing the current batch of R&D backbones of Oriental Games to accumulate some experience.

However, after developing Mario, a more difficult scrolling game, the R&D team still encountered huge problems. Until Mario was successfully developed. Li Xuan has the confidence to say that Dongfang Games has become a large company with real independent development capabilities.

"I found a couple of HKU graduates and two who came back from Japan. I've worked as a developer for game development!" Huang Chuanshan explained.

In order to stabilize the morale of the backbone personnel, Oriental Games has allowed members of the game project team to be successful in the new regulations after the launch of the new game. Earn a certain amount of income dividends.

For example, according to the company's internal potential rating of "Mario Bros.", it was agreed with the project team that if the sales volume exceeded 100,000 units this year, the project team could receive 0.5% of the sales profit as an internal dividend. The distribution ratio is then determined according to the participation of each member in each workshop and the record of their contribution during the research and development process.

Therefore, after the pre-sale results of "Mario Bros. " came out, the entire arcade division was thunderous, because the pre-sale year of 62,500 units is almost certain that this year's sales will exceed 100,000 units, and the 20 or so people in the "Mario" project team can share at least 500,000 US dollars in profit sharing. With such high earnings, only fools are willing to jump ship to other companies.

Li Xuan thought for a while, and then said: "That's it, in a few days, you will call those developers to Dongfang Game Company, and I will let people test their level!"

The three games launched by Oriental Games last year, "Tank Wars", "Hong Kong Cubes" and "Pac-Man", while earning a lot of dollars on their own, also raised the threshold for entering the arcade industry in disguise. In the summer of '79, when Li Xuan's eyes first set his sights on the arcade industry, the market was popular with shooting games with simple graphics such as "Space Invaders" and "Little Bee".

However, after the launch of "Tank Wars" of Oriental Games, the aesthetic vision of players has improved rapidly, and they can no longer look down on a slightly rough game like "Space Invaders". "Space Invaders", which originally swept the whole world, has almost disappeared by eighty-one years.

Soon after, after the release of Oriental Games' "Mario Bros.", players' aesthetic taste will be further improved, forcing other companies to follow the pace of Oriental Electronics and produce games with almost beautiful graphics. And that's not good news for companies new to the industry.

The three of them couldn't help but feel a little more happy on their faces, Xu Jiankui naturally knew that Li Xuan was willing to say this, it must be for his own face.

"Thank you in advance!" Xu Jiankui said with a happy face.

"Friends should help each other, why thank you!"

"I'm in for a treat tonight, rich man, don't get drunk and don't go home!"

Xu Jiankui immediately lost his integrity after talking about business, and as soon as the three of them were full of food and drink, he mentioned yì to find some fun. Li Xuan originally wanted to shirk it, but he was forced into a corner by a few words from him, so he had to go to a nightclub to have fun together. (The novel "Rebirth Electronic Empire" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lottery gift for everyone!Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner "Add Friends", search for the official account "dd" and follow, hurry up!) (To be continued......)

ps: I'm sorry, it's a little late to update today, and I still owe three chapters of monthly passes, and I will do my best to make up for the arrears!