Looking at the two reports in his hand, Robbie's face turned pale.

He raised the papers, his voice filled with anger, "You're going to let me take this pile of shit and report to the board?" Or do you think this achievement can make the board cheer and get out of the situation where people are threatened with guns in their heads, and can Microsoft's stock price stand above $50 again? ”

He slammed it on the table, and some of the paper fell off the sticky note folder and scattered to the ground like flying leaves under the air currents of Robbie's dancing sleeves.

Marketing Operations Officer Kevin Williams also has a bad face, he is in charge of marketing operations, and it is beyond all of their imagination that the sales of the most important product, Xbox, will reach such a sluggish state this year.

In fact, in mid-January, 20 days after the Xbox was launched, they had already seen some bad signs.

First of all, McCann-Erickson, the international McCann-Erickson agency responsible for the overall promotion of Xbox, said that the $380 million publicity money they received from Microsoft may not have the desired effect, Kevin said that he could not accept it, this is not the style of McCann advertising, and they would never say such things because McCann has the best advertising network in the world.

But that's the case, and according to market feedback, there may not be much interest in Xbox, and people will always ask when they are passively interviewed: "Isn't Microsoft making operating systems?" What are some of the classic games they've made? ”

McCann researcher gave an example: "Microsoft Flight Simulator! ”

"No, I'm not interested in simulation games, even if it's my friends who love sim driving. I've only heard them talk about Longteng's "Dakar Rally" and KTT's "Need for Speed", and there are really few people who like to fly airplanes! ”

Having little doesn't mean not having ...... The researcher muttered. Continuing to face with a smile, he introduced: "What about the real-time strategy game Age of Empires and its expansion Age of Empires: Roman Revival?" ”

"That's what Microsoft is the best fun to play. The best-selling game? Please, did you live in the last century? Now the most popular real-time strategy games in the world are "StarCraft" and "Warcraft 3"! Have you heard of the 2nd WCG? Have you heard about the 2nd CPL Fall League? You don't know anything, but you're embarrassed to recommend Age of Empires to me? ”

The researcher was asked rhetorically, and of course he knew that the Age of Empires series was indeed Microsoft's best-selling PC game, but at the second WCG, it lost to Warcraft 3: Reign of Mayhem as an exhibition match, and then missed the official program of the second CPL Fall League, the world's largest and second-largest esports tournament, due to poor performance. There is no Age of Empires series at all.

It is undeniable that Microsoft has no competitors in the operating system, but in the video game industry, Microsoft's foundation is very weak, and when people mention video games, the first thing that comes to mind is Dragon, not "no big game" Microsoft.

In such an environment, how can Xbox promotion be effective? As soon as people heard that it was a video game console, they opened their mouths and asked, "How much does an Xbox console sell?" How many games are there? What are they? ”

The propagandists were dumbfounded. It's hard for them to satisfy the audience, and that's the second problem that Xbox encounters.

The second question, Xbox's hardware is like this, Intel's custom CPU. 64M memory, 10G hard disk, and an NVIDIA graphics card. A DVD player, a custom network card for LAN connection. The hardware was a bit stronger than the average personal computer at the time, because it was requested by Bill Gates himself. He demanded that the Xbox's image performance be 3 times that of DC.

The console has no keyboard, no mouse, no Windows operating system, and uses Microsoft's additional mobile portable system, which carries 20 games when it goes on sale, and is priced at $298 a set.

When initially announcing the Xbox plan, Robbie, the president of the gaming division, said: "The cost of producing the Xbox will be much lower than the production cost of the Dragon console, because our parts are all off-the-shelf and purchased from third-party manufacturers." ”

But halfway through development, Robbie never said anything like that again, and was silent about the cost of the game, and he flew around the world for years, trying to find cheaper alternatives without sacrificing performance, but he failed.

This is the price paid by software giants after blindly confidently entering the hardware industry, high performance, low price, and a loss of $115 for every host sold, especially since they have to spend huge sums of money to buy high-performance graphics cards from Nvidia in order to pay for 3 times more than DC image performance.

Nvidia on the grounds that the universal graphics card is not suitable for Xbox, proposed that the graphics card must be customized, and specially made a special special graphics card for Microsoft that is unique in the world and will never be sold to other companies, and it does exceed the graphics card used by DC in terms of video memory and computing speed, and the effect is first-class, and the price is also first-class, and a graphics card charges Microsoft $128, which is the same as Intel chips, becoming the culprit who increases the cost of Xbox the most.

Bill Gates does not agree to lower his standards, they are the world's largest software company by market capitalization, and it is impossible to lower their own value for a small few hundred million dollars, he once said: "For game promotion, I have raised 36 billion US dollars, and the first promotion cost for you is 500 million US dollars, Microsoft must take this step, and it is inevitable to burn money!" ”

During the Christmas season, Microsoft's low-cost, high-performance consoles once generated interest and queues of enquirers, but game buyers gradually lost interest in buying Xbox after digging deeper, and $300 or even $200 did not motivate them to buy, because it came to the third important issue, the uneven quality of the supporting games.

The third bad sign is that almost all buyers who are interested in consoles shake their heads and leave one by one when they hear the introduction of the game, and many people sneer and say, "These are the 20 games that Microsoft has carefully prepared?" ”

Or "Do I look like a mentally retarded person who doesn't use my brain?" ”

Or ...... Some of the harder things to hear.

20 games really don't have any good works,Only a few companies such as EA have joined the Microsoft Xbox camp before,And EA's main business is PC games,I don't have a lot of experience in TV game programming,Especially Xbox, which is not a mature game platform,It's not stable,The sound game toolkit has created a lot of trouble for EA game designers,Frequently updated versions make EA programmers tired of modifying code,Many times they will deliberately stop coding, Wait for Microsoft's stable toolkit to be released before writing the program.

A year ago, Longteng did not show this aggressive momentum at all, and the Microsoft Xbox Alliance did not raise its vigilance to the current level, so this time Xbox was released, and their products suddenly became a joke, and they were out of stock at all!

The 20 garbage games, perhaps a little better than garbage, are not enough to attract players who have already enjoyed the quality of Longteng's games.

The combination of these factors made McCann advertising feel like it was struggling, and it was easy to promote, but it would be a mess of poor results, and it was also a shame for McCann advertising, who kept in touch with the marketing department of Microsoft's gaming department to feed back the reality to Microsoft's top management, but it was already too late, and they had to bite the bullet through the first month after Christmas.

Robbie pressed his head and asked, "In one month, 430,000 units sold worldwide?" Do you know how I felt when I first saw this number jù? Are you kidding me? ”

"Don't dare! But that's the reality, and that also includes the number of orders from dealers at all levels, and probably in the next month or two, the number of orders from these dealers will slow down......"

Kevin was sweating on his forehead, and he himself felt that the number was miserable, 430,000 Xbox, at least 200,000 were stockpiled by dealers, and the total turnover had just exceeded $100 million, and he hadn't even earned back the $500 million publicity cost of the first phase, which made it difficult for each of them to think.

"Is there any worse news?"

"And ...... There are two weeks to go to the Chinese New Year event, the Dragon Game Battle Platform announced a 20% discount on the purchase of DC, the purchase of $320 DC game console can also choose any game gift package, according to our warranty regulations for electronic consumer goods, we must agree to the customer's request for return and exchange within three months......"

"Shet!"

Luo Zhong slammed it on the table, this news is really bad and can't be worse, as soon as Longteng lowers the price, their sales will decrease, and it may also cause a wave of returns!

"There's another piece of bad news...... Kevin's legs trembled, but he definitely didn't dare hide the news.

"Say!"

Kevin gritted his teeth: "Japan's NewSonic has just announced that they will launch their new PS2 console in three months, in April 2000!" ”

Robbie stood up violently, stared at Kevin with wide eyes, and asked for a long time, "P...... PS2？ It's only been 5 months since they acquired Sony Games that they can launch PS2? ”

Kevin had nothing to say, because this news Hayabusa Nakayama just said a plan, and did not disclose the details at all, and the whole country was overjoyed, and Hayabusa Nakayama was almost offered as a national hero, and all the media were saying good things, praising NewSonic for saving the Japanese game industry, and many players with a strong patriotic heart took to the streets to swear in support of domestic products.

This is a good thing for the Japanese gaming industry, but for Microsoft's Xbox, it is simply worse! (To be continued......)