Sales of American Cubes were red-hot.

Even though the four sellers, led by the Schwell Group, set their retail prices at a terrifying $8,000 each, the merchants in arcade arcades across the country rushed to snatch up all the arcade machines equipped with American Cubes, despite their rage.

5,000 units seems like a lot of people, but in fact, on average in the country's 50 states, there are only 100 units in each state.

For the entire huge US market, it is just a drop in the bucket.

You must know that the "Donkey Kong" of that year was only 2,000 US dollars, but they sold more than 120 million US dollars worth of arcade machines a year.

The current "American Cubes" is far worse than them.

And these businessmen have come to California to see how popular the game is, and to see the miserable scene of arcade halls without American Cubes.

Isn't that 8,000 dollars? Ten days! You can earn it back in half a month at most!

In the eyes of these people, "American Cubes" has indeed become a hen that lays golden eggs.

It's going to get it anyway, at any cost.

Even Jester had to lament how crazy the Americans of this era were.

In fact, in the 80s, under the guidance of Reagan's mercantilism, the crazy Cheng dù was as good as, or even surpassed, the giants of 1900 and 1930.

It's simply the turbulent waves hidden behind this kind of market that seems to be full of flowers and brocade cooking oil.

This qiē will not come to an end until Black Monday, three years later.

But, this has nothing to do with Jester.

But a very real problem is also in front of Jester.

Insufficient capacity.

The capacity of Atari's factories in Orange alone could no longer feed the surging buying enthusiasm.

Even the 5,000-unit order signed with four sellers is now only a little over 2,000 units, and Atari, after seeing the popularity of "American Cubes", actually raised the price by 30% when Jester proposed to re-sign a larger OEM contract with them!

This made Jester furious.

Do you think you're the only Atari in the whole of America that can make arcade machines?

However, Jester pessimistically found that there are indeed many other factories in the United States that can meet his requirements.

But the problem is that either the scale is too small to meet his output requirements, and if he finds N companies at the same time, then it is difficult to coordinate.

Either the production line needs to be transformed, and I am afraid that it will not be of much use in a short time.

In the end, he was a little sad to find that in the whole of the United States, there were a large number of factories that did not need to be renovated and could immediately produce arcade machines, and only Atari was the only one.

In desperation, Jester could only pinch his nose and re-sign a 5,000 units with Atari, plus the previous OEM contract for a total of 10,000 units, for which Jester needed to pay a total of $4.6 million.

But Jester and his Mars Entertainment can get at least $60 million in revenue, plus 20% of all the profits of the four sales companies.

Despite this, Jester, who had just blackmailed those sellers, was still a little secret, and being blackmailed by Atari this time was as uncomfortable as eating a fly, and such blackmail was something he could not tolerate.

He can only blackmail others by taking advantage of the fire, and he must not let others take advantage of the fire to blackmail him.

He has decided that he must solve the problem of not being able to produce his own products, otherwise, this is equivalent to being choked by someone's neck, and it is still a trivial matter, and if he is used by others in the future, it will be too late to find a way for himself.

Also, Jester also thought that this time he offended the four sellers of the Schwell Group, they had fallen into a business predicament because of the collapse of Atari, and I am afraid that this time Guò's own "American Cubes" made them breathe a sigh of relief, and the next cooperation will not be so easy.

Looking for another seller?

Jester just sneered, how can these sellers be so simple, they are all the same, and besides, are there fewer software vendors that have been swallowed by publishers in history?

It is necessary to establish its own distribution and sales network, and a game company without its own distribution network can only be regarded as a larger studio, and it is far from being a giant.

The gaming industry is not a big circle, especially at a time when the game industry has shrunk and is not good, Mars Entertainment quickly caused a sensation in the entire video game industry.

A game makes $60 million in less than a month, which is not something that any game company can do, and even in Silicon Valley, there are not many new tech companies that can do it.

Not even apples back then.

Of course, it is the consensus of Americans that the game industry is dead, so even if Mars Entertainment makes the arcade market hot again, it has not attracted enough attention, and even some people think that it is just a return to the past.

Take, for example, Atari's new owner, Jack Trammell.

"What do I mean? What I mean by this is that consoles are worthless, the future belongs to the PC, and what consoles can do, PCs can do the same, and do better, and what PCs can do, consoles can never do, and that's what I mean, Atari Never, Never, Never will not go back to video games. ”

That's what Trammell said in an interview with ABC.

Jester was not only not angry after reading this report, but laughed happily: "You'd better never come back." ”

It's true that it's only $60 million in sales, which isn't even a drizzle compared to Atari's $2 billion annual profit two years ago, but the problem is that it's not two years ago.

Times have changed.

Now Atari's consoles don't sell at the mall, and the backlog of game cartridges in warehouses may not be much less than the ones they have in New Mexico.

The entire video game market is deserted right now.

Only Mars Entertainment's arcade machine, called "American Cubes", was sold out of stock in the market.

Moreover, when the easter egg hidden in "American Cubes" was exposed, it intensified the craze of "American Cubes", and I don't know how many children would rather skip class to practice their skills, hoping to be able to fill in their names on a machine, so that they can pretend to be their friends, classmates or admirers.

"Look! I'm the best player of American Cubes here! ”

Even some unconscionable profiteers, who doubled the price of American Cubes' in-game currency, could not stop the enthusiasm of these crazy players.

In some places, there have even been cases of theft and robbery by teenagers in order to be able to play "American Cubes", and some NC media are still shouting for fear that the world will not be chaotic and that "American Cubes" should be banned from sale.

Of course, this can only be a joke.

In short, American Cubes became a phenomenon.

There are two sides to the story.

Although American Cubes has become a phenomenon, the future of video games is still not favored by mainstream society, and the mainstream media is optimistic.

Atari's mainframe is still being disposed of as garbage, and there are still very few people who ask about it.

"American Cubes" is like a stone that surrenders to a pool of stagnant water, and despite the waves that stir up layers of waves, the backwater is still stagnant.

But for those who truly love video games, Mars Entertainment is like a glimmer of light, adding a glimmer of light to this dark environment.

That's where the hope lies.

When Mars Entertainment recruited employees who really love video games to work in this seemingly unpromising industry under the slogan of 'making the best games', it received a very enthusiastic response.

These echoes, in addition to the game designers who have left Atari and are confused, there are also a large number of real game lovers.

Some of them are on the East Coast, some are in Florida, and some are on the Great Lakes...... All of these people came all the way to California.

They want to join Mars Entertainment and make the best game.

They want to prove to everyone that video games aren't dead.

Mars Entertainment's recruitment process was set up by Jester with reference to the recruitment process of Blizzard in the later world.

Blizzard's philosophy is very similar to Jester's, there are many excellent technicians in the world, but a person who doesn't love games, no matter how skilled he is, can't make a good game.

A game company isn't a place to show off your skills, it's a place to design games.

The only right thing for the people here to do is to make a good game that is loved by the players.

Even if it's just a simple pixel block, as long as the player likes it, that's right.

Therefore, the first principle of Mars Entertainment recruitment is, first of all, no matter how good your skills are and how highly educated you are, you must be an avid gamer.

Of course, this is only a recruitment standard for software development, and as for hardware development, Jester doesn't know a lot, so he puts his father in charge of it, and his father has been engaged in arcade hardware research and development for ten years, and is also very famous among Atari hardware engineers.

The recruitment of Mars Entertainment is still very smooth, coupled with the relationship between Jester's father and Mark Seney, a large number of software and hardware designers who have left Atari before and have not found a new job have joined Mars Entertainment.

The recruitment of the hardware R&D department is particularly smooth.

Especially when Jester asked his father to contact the previous Atari VCS7200 R&D team under the banner of 'Trammell's revenge and prove him wrong', those of Atari's best hardware R&D personnel, when they knew that Mars Entertainment was going to prepare to make an 8-bit console that was better than VCS7200, they left Atari and joined Mars Entertainment almost without hesitation.

This almost made Trammell furious, but he couldn't help it.

This is a clash of ideas, an irreconcilable contradiction.

Mars Entertainment, the first day of recruitment for new employees.

In a meeting carved out of a warehouse, more than 30 young people who had just entered Mars entertainment sat together.

They were informed that their boss, who was also the designer of American Cubes, wanted to brainstorm them before they could officially get to work.

I'd like to talk to them about what game we're going to do next.

Almost all of these people are big fans of American Cubes, and their love for the game is so great that they're all excited about what's coming next.

But now that their boss hadn't arrived, the young designers were bored looking at the one in the house.

Some of these people are recent college graduates, designers with previous experience in game development, and some are just pure video game enthusiasts before.

The only thing they have in common is that they share the deepest love for video games and all sorts of whimsical ideas.

There are no neat rows of chairs like other company conference rooms, just sofas scattered around, snacks and toys, Lego bricks, and even Transformers, which just went on sale this year.

There are even two color TVs, these two color TVs are connected to one VCS2600 and one have not yet been sold in the United States, and the vast majority of people here have only heard the name of FC.

Of course, game cartridges are also indispensable.

These young people find this a novelty, is it possible that the company also allows employees to play games during meetings?

This makes these young people a little nervous.

But none of the young people, who had yet to figure out the situation, dared to touch the two game consoles, at most they just took some of the mountains of snacks to satisfy their cravings.

It was at this time that two young men walked into the conference room.

Both of them were young, one with blonde hair, a shy look, and a pair of eyes, and the other turned out to be an Asian, with black hair and yellow skin, but he was tall and strong.

But this only made these thirty or so young people look twice, and did not cause much of a sensation.

There are more Asians in the United States, and there are tens of millions of them on the entire West Coast.

They thought that these two were also like them, employees who had just come to Mars Entertainment.

Jester and Maxeni glanced at each other, and a mischievous smile appeared in their eyes.

Jester shrugged, while Maxeni lifted his chin and pointed at the FC that no one had dared to touch.

Then Maxeni came to the side of the FC and turned on the TV.

Jester also skillfully pulled out a game card from a box full of various game cartridges and skillfully inserted it into the slot of FC.

Then start FC, accompanied by a nice electronic sound, the image of the beginning of the game appears on the screen of the TV that was originally a snowflake, but because it is Japanese, most of them can't understand what it means.

But they don't care about any of that.

They looked at the two young men who had just walked into the conference room with incredible eyes.

OH，MY－GOD！

How dare they touch these things casually?

Aren't they afraid of being fired?