"Lesser, do you think the American game industry has reached a time worth investing in?" Lin Qi asked routinely, wanting to see the progress of Lesser.

"I guess so. Now that the U.S. gaming industry has recovered from the winter caused by the collapse of Atari. After the '83 recession, it was a resurgence, redefining the rules of the game and getting developers and consumers back on track. ”

As a leader in the video game industry around the world, Atari has single-handedly established the business model of arcade and home game consoles.

Even the Pangu computer of the new venture electronics group, which was first sold as a game console, was modeled after Atari.

Basically, Atari was almost synonymous with video games, especially in the U.S. market, where the vast majority of third-party game production companies started from the Atari platform.

However, Atari had no control over it, and it didn't take into account the quality of the game at first. It's not just third-party games that are rubbish, it's Atari games that invest in their own money, such as ET, which can be called a fighter in the garbage.

In the glory days of the gaming industry, it was the publishers who prepaid the console and game software in advance, so that the game development company had already recouped the funds before the product was actually sold to consumers. And because of the monopoly of the Atari platform at the beginning, consumers had no choice, so they didn't worry about not being able to sell any garbage game.

Driven by the money-making effect, thousands of games across the United States have been successfully developed and established in just a few years. The number of games developed every year, tens of thousands. The quality of many games is poor and worrying, and even a large number of games are just previous games with different names and packaging, and they are re-sold in the market.

This repeated overdraft of the gamer's trust eventually led to the Atari model being institutionalized by all players for several months. In fact, according to Atari's estimates, players should continue to play in a few months.

However, Atari miscalculated the fragility of the industrial chain, and the capital of the entire industrial chain was financed in large quantities from banks and other channels, and it was naturally no problem to make money. After several months of unsalable, a huge crisis broke out.

At first, the sales company was able to return the unsold games to the manufacturer, but this led to the bankruptcy of many game manufacturing companies. After the bankruptcy of the game production company, the sales channel naturally found no one to return the goods. In order to recoup the cost, game manufacturers do not sell games that cost $30 for $3. This rush to sell has caused the U.S. game market to drop to the bottom. It is also difficult for new games to sell at normal prices, which eventually leads to the continuous bankruptcy of production companies and channels.

Originally, the game industry was a glamorous profession, but in the depression, the developers of game companies, embarrassed to say that they developed video games, but vaguely introduced their IT company employees.

The depression of 83 years slowly subsided in 87.

However, the landscape of the global gaming industry has completely changed. It is no longer the American company Atari that dominates the development of the world's game industry.

On the contrary, China's new venture electronics group has seized the opportunity to become a leader in the game industry. Its influence and market size in the global game industry today are far more than four times that of Atari at its peak!

Of course, after the Atari crisis, the platform for American games was not completely finished. Some game production companies are actually in the process of transformation.

Some game production companies have started to make games for PC, and some game companies have developed games for the Pangu platform.

Basically, the mainstream platform for games is no longer a home game console, but a computer console platform!

The United States is still the world's leader in terms of the number and quality of programmers. Therefore, after the computer platform became the main battlefield of the game, the game production companies in the United States naturally recovered rapidly.

After all, the hardware terminal platform for games has not actually decreased, but has expanded. Previously, Atari had only 20 million users.

However, in the computer era, the combined number of users of Pangu and PC is estimated to be 400 million. Such a huge market is a huge space for development for all types of software companies.

Naturally, game production companies are also rapidly becoming active.

"Less, you're right!" Lin Qi said with a smile, "There are quite a few game production companies in the United States now. Moreover, there are not many high-end programmers in the United States, and the North American market should be the region that will be rich in high-quality games in the future. So, I'm going to invest in some game production companies in North America!"

And Lin Qi's goal this time is to target EA, which can be called the rich goose in the North American game industry. Although, due to historical limitations, EA can't do it to the same extent as the rich goose. However, investing in EA is definitely going to give you access to a large number of high-quality game production teams in the United States. For example, the game "Red Alert" on the current Lin Qipangu platform was the work of Ximutou Studio, a subsidiary of EA Company, in its original history.

Hawkins, the founder of EA, is also considered the lucky one in Silicon Valley, joined Apple as soon as he graduated in 1978, and Apple went public at the age of 26, becoming a millionaire because of Apple's original shares.

By '82, Hawkins officially left Apple and cashed out Apple's shares to establish EA. Because, when he graduated in 1978, Hawkins joined Apple, where he witnessed Apple's growth from a small company with 50 employees to a Fortune 500 company with nearly 4,000 employees and an annual revenue of $1 billion in four years.

His heart quietly fluctuated, if Apple can do this, why can't he?

After accumulating enough capital, Apple left Apple in April 1982 and began to plan his own "gaming empire". On May 28 of the same year, Hawkins established his own company, and for the first six months, Hawkins personally invested money to keep the company running.

It was always a rough start, and at first Hawkins worked alone, and in August of the same year, Hawkins got an office and began to recruit his first employees.

The company's name was originally called Amazin' Softare, but Hawkins had a different idea, he felt that even software had a soul, and there should be a more artistic name and wanted to change the name to SoftArt, but Softare Arts intervened on the grounds of alleged infringement and had to rethink the new name.

In October 1982, Hawkins convened a meeting of the company's first 12 employees, as well as marketing staff, but none of the employees' proposals were in line with Hawkins' intentions. Later, I finally found the English word "Electronic Arts", which was finally adopted by Hawkins and named the company.