Yoichi Kashikawa has been very depressed lately, and he was just about to negotiate a game on FC with Nintendo, but he didn't expect Nintendo to start a royalty system that made him have a toothache when he thought about it.

They are small companies, and the smaller the company, the less resistant they are to Nintendo's royalty system, because they are so small, and now they are not thinking about how to make a lot of profits from it, but how to survive themselves.

But the royalty system is too ugly.

They have been doing PC games for a few years, and the early games have not been very successful, even the "Battle of Kawanakajima", which created a precedent for SLG games, has not been cared for by many people, and it was not until last year's "Nobunaga's Ambition" that they have a little reputation, although the sales of more than 100,000 copies on the PC are very remarkable, but compared with Nintendo's "Mario Bros. Brothers" that sold more than a million copies in one go on FC, it is still a small thing.

Although I really want to make FC games, Nintendo's royalties are too hateful.

The more he thought about it, the more angry he became, he grabbed his hair hard, and then slammed his hands on the table, he had already contacted Nintendo before, and Nintendo was also very interested in them, and proposed that they could transplant "Nobunaga's Ambition" to FC, but for the royalty system, Nintendo still refused, and there was no room for negotiation at all.

Nintendo's words are categorical, and it is impossible for the six major software developers to enjoy the privileges in this regard.

At this time, his wife Keiko Kashikawa pushed the door with a cup of coffee, she put the steaming hot coffee in front of Yoichi Kashikawa, and then asked in a comforting tone, "Are you still worried about Nintendo's royalties?" In fact, we are a small company, and it is inevitable to give up a little at the beginning. ”

Hearing his wife's comforting words, Yoichi Kazukawa couldn't help but sigh, thinking that the vast majority of the profits from the games he had worked so hard to make would be taken away by Nintendo, he was a little unhappy, in his eyes, Nintendo was simply a robber and could not be forgiven.

When Yang Kashikawa sighed listlessly, Keiko Kashikawa, who had already walked to the door, suddenly stopped, she patted her head, revealing a look of chagrin, and scolded herself while saying: "Look at my memory, I forgot all the most important things, just now I received a call from Mars Entertainment Japan, and they told me that their president, Mr. Tamahideyoshiro, will come to visit us today and say that there is something important to discuss." ”

Hearing the name Mars Entertainment, Yoichi Kashikawa's face showed a puzzled look, the doubt was not because he hadn't heard of this name, because this name is too famous for their game development company, if the two most famous game companies in the past year, one is undoubtedly Nintendo, which relied on FC to sell miracles in Japan, and the other is Mars Entertainment, which is far away across the ocean, almost in a few months, it has dominated the arcade industry with a few very outstanding games.

But......

Yoichi Kashikawa thought about it carefully, it stands to reason that they are just a development company that makes PC games, and they shouldn't have anything to do with Mars Entertainment.

However, since it is a visit from the top management of a large company in the industry, it would be rude not to make some preparations.

So when Tamahideyoshiro rushed to the station of the Dark Ei Company in Kanagawa, Yoichi Kashikawa and Keiko Kashikawa, the founders of the two companies, plus a few employees, lined up outside the company to welcome him, which made Tamahide Yoshiro quite moved.

In the reception room, in fact, it is said to be a reception room, which is actually a separate room that is isolated.

Tamahide Yoshiro sat opposite Yoichi Ogawa, and Yoichi Okawa's wife went out to make coffee, so she wasn't here. The Japanese are famous for their love of coffee, in fact, they did not have a tradition of drinking coffee before World War II, but after the reconstruction of Japan, relying on the efforts of the Showa generation, the golden decade took off, and in order to squeeze out all the time to devote all their time to work, there are two things that quickly became popular in Japan, and even formed a culture after many years.

One is a coffee that allows you to continue to refresh your life when you are tired, and the other is ramen that can easily and quickly fill your stomach and continue to devote yourself to heavy work.

Therefore, after the golden decade, the Japanese developed the habit of drinking coffee, and the rise of Ueshima Coffee is precisely because of this, it is this small coffee shop that was not large at that time developed the world's first can of coffee that can be filled, and it has been able to develop and grow in a short period of time, and until now, almost all the Blue Mountain coffee fields in South America have been in their hands.

"What!" Hearing what Tamahide Yoshiro said just now, Yoichi Kazukawa grew his mouth in surprise, he really didn't expect that Mars Entertainment, which had been committed to arcade game development in the past, would also make home consoles.

In fact, Jester has confirmed this news many times in the United States, but now there is no network, and there must be a lag in the transmission of information, and Yoichi Kashikawa didn't know that Mars Entertainment had started the research and development of his own home console, and he didn't know that Mars Entertainment had even developed a PC game.

After being surprised, he quickly calmed down, the other party came to find himself who had nothing to do with them before, and he would definitely not simply tell himself such a news, there must be something else, but after thinking about it, he couldn't think of anything he was plotted by the other party.

My company is just too small.

When Tamahide Yoshiro said his purpose, Yoichi Kashikawa frowned.

"Don't you participate in Nintendo's royalty program?" Although Yoichi Kashikawa didn't have the determination to join before, it's impossible to say that he is not impressed by FC's huge market share, and if he can make a blockbuster game on FC, even if he only has 40% of the profit to be gained, it will be much more promising than always making PC games.

However, Tamahideyoshiro begged them not to join Nintendo's royalty, and assured them that they were developing a game console that surpassed Nintendo's FC in any aspect, and that with the game development capabilities that Mars Entertainment had previously expressed, it was also to be expected.

But here's the problem......

How can it be so easy to make a game console, and a good arcade game does not mean that it can also be a good console game, isn't Sega a living example, their previous arcade business has been in full swing in the United States, but now even the American branch is sold independently?

And Sega's new console also lost in front of Nintendo's FC, and the improved version that came out this summer is not happy, if not, let Nintendo feel that he is invincible in the world, then according to the character of the old fox in Yamauchi, how can it be such a domineering royalty policy, Sega is like this, and the console that Mars Entertainment said can surpass FC How strong can it be?

These are all questions in Yangyi's heart now.

Just when Yoichi Kazukawa hesitated, Tamahide Yoshiro said that Jester had told him before that he could agree to the other party's conditions, although in Tamahide Yoshiro's eyes, such conditions were too generous.

"Mr. Yoichi Kashikawa, we really value you very much, if you agree to become our host game developer of Mars Entertainment, then we can pay a good price to acquire 30% of your shares, and every game you make in the future, as long as it passes our company's internal audit, then we will guarantee at least 100,000 sets, that is, even if you can't sell 100,000 sets in the end, we Mars Entertainment will make up for the lack of quantity."

After Tamahide Yoshiro said this condition that surprised Yoichi Kazukawa, before the other party could speak, he continued: "Moreover, the number of guarantees is uncertain, the lowest is 100,000 sets, and the highest, what our boss said in the internal meeting before, is 1 million sets. ”

One million sets!

As soon as Yang Chuan heard this number, he suddenly became extremely excited.

Although he knows that Mars Entertainment dares to launch this plan, it will definitely have very high requirements for the quality of the game, and it is impossible to get this guarantee if it is not a very, very good game, but he does not ask for a guarantee of one million sets, even if it is 500,000, or even only 300,000, or 200,000 sets, for him, ** is also very big, after all, he himself doesn't know if his next game can sell the same sales as "Nobunaga's Ambition".

But Yoichi Xiangchuan still didn't dare to make a decision, but Mars Entertainment was willing to buy one-third of the shares of their small company, which obviously showed their trust in themselves, and they could still get the current scarce R&D funds, and one-third of the shares would not affect their control of the company, but what if Mars Entertainment failed in the research and development of the host?

I heard that the purchase of "American Cubes" discussed by Arakawa Minoru in the United States with Mars Entertainment was very unpleasant, and Mars Entertainment turned around and handed over the arcade agency of "American Cubes" to Sega after talking to Arakawa Minoru, and Sega and Nintendo are rivals, and Mars Entertainment undoubtedly refutes Nintendo's face by doing so.

For a good-faced person like Mr. Yamauchi, this is almost unforgivable. And now they are about to officially release the console, and Nintendo has long announced that they are going to enter the European and American markets, and this time, for Nintendo, they are almost like Sega's mortal enemies.

Although he was very tempted by Tamahide Yoshiro's conditions, and he did have a great opinion on Nintendo's royalty plan, but Yoichi Kashikawa still couldn't make such a rash decision, he pondered for a long time, and then sighed, bent down solemnly, and said in a humble tone: "President Yuxiu, I really can't make a decision in a short period of time, can you give me a little time, I need to discuss it with my wife, if there is a result, we will definitely inform you as soon as possible." ”

Yuxiu Yoshiro also knows the truth that if you want to hurry, you can't reach it, and he can also see that the other party is excited about his conditions, so he is not in a hurry, but he still urges him, he first helped Yoichi Kagawa up, and then said with some embarrassment.

"Mr. Xiangchuan, I know your difficulties, but the research and development of our Mars entertainment console has entered the final debugging stage, and the date of the first release is also set for the beginning of next year, and our chairman Mr. Jester Li will bring our console to participate in the CES exhibition in Las Vegas at the beginning of next year, so our time is also very urgent, before, Mr. Chairman has told me before I came, he hopes that your game can become the first product of our new console."

It was the first time that Yoichi Kashikawa knew from Yuxiu Yoshiro's mouth that his small company was so valued by the big boss of Mars Entertainment, and he couldn't help but be a little excited, after all, compared with a behemoth in the industry like Mars Entertainment, their dark glory was just an ant.

Therefore, he nodded very seriously and said sincerely: "Thank you so much President Li for your attention." ”

After leaving the dark glory, Yuxiu Yoshiro rushed to Yokohama non-stop, originally according to Yuxiu Yoshiro's idea, for such a small electrical appliance company as the Electric Friends Society, there is really no need for him to run by himself, just send someone casually.

But Jester still asked him to come in person if he could, because the president of a branch came to visit him as a lobbyist, especially in the eyes of these people who did not have the slightest fame, the feeling was completely different, and he was afraid that Yuxiu Jiro would not understand, and Jester also took the initiative to tell him the story of Liu Bei's three visits to the thatched house.

Unexpectedly, it was just exchanged for a ridicule from Yuxiu Yoshiro: "When I watched "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", I guess you were still leaving. ”

However, it is precisely because of this story that Yuxiu Yoshiro is even more surprised, he can't connect the person named Hironobu Sakaguchi in this small game development department of the Electric Friends Club with Zhuge Kongming in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

The current denyusha has only a small game development department, and it's not even a formal department, and the core members of this department are not only Masashi Miyamoto, who inherited his father's denyusha at a young age, but also a part-time job as a college student, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and a handyman who had only worked as a handyman at a record rental shop that Yoichi Kashikawa had opened before he started making games.

Masashi Miyamoto thought of establishing a game development department under the banner of Denyusha because he saw the huge profits contained in video games, and although the Yomiuri Shimbun also published an article in '83 that video games would become history after the Atari shock, Miyamoto Masashi still believed that video games, which rely purely on technology and brains, definitely have the potential to be profitable.

Especially in this era of video game Harmony, when he saw that all kinds of game companies could rise in an instant and earn money that he couldn't even think of before relying on a popular game, whether it was Namco building dozens of floors of office buildings with a "Teppanyaki", or Hudson's Kudo brothers led the entire company to charter a plane to Hawaii for a month-long luxury vacation, or Kobe's Konami (KONAMI) increased dozens of times in the first year of joining FC.

These reports have made Miyamoto's brain congested, and his idea that he must do a good job in this game development department is also getting stronger.

But the reality is cruel, although Hironobu Sakaguchi is a young man with an unparalleled talent for games in his eyes, but the first few games they made were always big failures, and they spent all their efforts to carefully produce a game that ran on Nippon Electric's PC88 "Death Trap" is very clumsy in every aspect, both in sales and word of mouth are very mediocre, almost not worth mentioning, This even made the confident Hironobu Sakaguchi lose his confidence in making games.

And the failure of several games in a row hit Hironobu Sakaguchi even harder.

Jester asked Tamahide Yoshiro to first come to Hironobu Sakaguchi, who was still studying in Yokohama, instead of going to Masashi Miyamoto, because Jester knew that in the future, the game research and development department of the Denyu Club would be independent from the parent company Denyusha to establish Square Enix, and Square Enix's ability to develop into a giant in the video game industry was completely inseparable from Hironobu Sakaguchi's talent.

As for Masashi Miyamoto, he is just a company owner who never interferes with how Hironobu Sakaguchi makes games, and constantly provides research and development funds.

As long as he can convince Hironobu Sakaguchi to join his branch of Mars Entertainment, then what is the future of this game development department of the electronic friend club, it is not something Jester needs to care about, because Square Enix, who lacks a soul, can not survive again and create a miracle by relying only on Masashi Miyamoto, an outsider.

To be honest, he is still very confident in convincing Hironobu Sakaguchi Jester, because like Mark Saini, is the kind of person who really wants to make the best game, not just make money from games, he can make a game that moves him, and then the game sells well and makes money, but he will never make a game that only sells well, but he can't even move himself.

But it may be that the members of the game development department of the newly established electronic friends club lack the necessary game development experience, so that the efficiency of research and development has been very low, compared to the speed at which other game companies only need one month to two months to complete a game, now they need eight to nine months to make a game, the time is slow, the problem is that the game that took eight or nine months to make is not as good as the game that others make in one or two months.

Jester recalled Square Enix's embarrassment in the initial stage when he thought of asking Tamahide Yoshiro to persuade Hironobu Sakaguchi to join Mars Entertainment, and he also remembered an anecdote about Square Enix's poor game, although this incident has not happened yet, but it can also be used as a reference.

At that time, Square Enix was not selling his own games, and he was often stopped selling them because the sales were too poor in a short period of time after the release, so he often did some outsourcing work, and they once developed the FC version of "Dragon Slayer" for FALCOM, and one of FALCOM's game producers rushed to the business department directly after the trial, pointing at the nose of the colleague in charge of signing the contract.

"How did you find such a company?!"

It can be seen that Hironobu Sakaguchi is now in a state of confusion about how to make a good game.

In this case, Tamahideyoshiro took the instructions given to him by Jester and met Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had just returned from outside, in the student apartment of Yokohama National University.

To Tamahideyoshiro's surprise, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had just returned from outside, still had an English version in his hand, which had only been released in the United States for a short time, and the second issue of "GAME" magazine had not even opened the plastic bag outside to protect the magazine.

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