Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

With the development of video games, the old model of small workshops with a few or a dozen people can no longer be used for development.

Even now, 16-bit game consoles can still barely support a dozen or so people developing games together.

However, once we enter the era of 3D games, the number of developers needed for a single game can easily reach hundreds or even thousands.

Surui Electronics and several other companies do not seem to realize this yet.

They simply used the most basic programming methods to write 3D graphics games.

The workload is incomparable to that of 2D games in the past, but now they are only thinking about speeding up the game development as much as possible, and the recruitment of employees has been put on a secondary position. It seems that Hayakawa Ueto has some foresight, and has been keeping recruitment announcements in the United States and constantly recruiting employees, but the recruitment frequency is also not high.

Meanwhile, Zhu Youxing's company's number of employees almost doubles every month.

Zhu Youxing must start planning for the future.

If we wait until the 3D era truly arrives before trying to recruit a sufficient number of employees, not to mention the training costs, it will also greatly slow down the progress of our game development.

Time is far more important than money.

From the first to the tenth game development teams, each team has new employees joining every day, and then senior employees will teach and guide them to develop games, so that they can become as proficient as possible in the game development process.

The two groups that specialized in developing game hardware have expanded to four, with each group now having more than fifty members.

However, all four groups are led by the same person, Airi Hayazawa. She can most faithfully convey Takeyusei's will and ensure that the development of the game hardware does not go astray. Takeyusei does not trust anyone else, and only Airi Hayazawa is capable of such a job.

Chapter 228 Superficial Calm

First, it's necessary to mention the sales performance of the FC game console.

When Bamboo Star went to the United States in January, its sales were already close to breaking ten million.

Later, in March, sales officially reached tens of millions.

In just about two years, a game console product achieved sales of tens of millions in Japan, which has proven the success of Takeyusei.

He will inevitably become an unavoidable figure in the history of video games worldwide.

On the day the sales reached ten million, Zhuyouxing made a big fuss by spending a lot of money to invite the hottest singers of the moment to compose a theme song to celebrate the ten million sales. He also took the opportunity to connect with people in the pop music circle and prepare for the creation of future video game theme songs.

In addition to the theme song, there was also a company-wide celebration at a grand theater, where over a hundred lucky players were invited to join in this special event.

TV Tokyo even dedicated time slots to broadcasting it live, which significantly boosted the ratings.

The sales figure of tens of millions also reached the ears of several other companies. While they praised the smooth development of Youxing Electronic Entertainment, they also stepped up their efforts to enter the video game market.

Suddenly, any company even remotely related to video games saw its stock market valuation skyrocket, making it seem like a money-making frenzy.

However, this is also a good thing. The investment of capital in this industry means that the industry can continue to diversify. Zhu Youxing alone cannot support the entire industry.

After celebrating, let's return to the present moment. Before we knew it, it was already July, the beginning of the height of summer.

Children's holidays boosted video game sales again, and Yusei Electronics Entertainment had been quietly building its strength. During this period, various games were released, such as Final Fantasy V and Dragon Quest IV.

Final Fantasy V has perfected the job change system to its current level, offering as many as 24 different jobs, and it also features a rich storyline.

Even the SFC cartridges struggled to handle such a large and complex amount of content.

Final Fantasy V is also a rare Final Fantasy game in Yusei's memory where there are only good endings. There are 15 endings in total, each with a different number of Warriors of Light surviving. The different deaths of the four Warriors of Light also bring different endings, but in the end, they all save the world and restore peace. Even if the four Warriors of Light die, they will return to the world in different ways. Overall, it is a very satisfying ending.

The storylines of the first, third, and fourth Final Fantasy games were so heart-wrenching that players were completely overwhelmed. In contrast, the fifth game, with its happy ending, actually led to a surge in sales for this installment.

The first three games, 1, 3, and 4, generally maintained sales of around one to two million copies in Japan, which can be considered as best-selling games, but they are still far behind Dragon Quest. However, Final Fantasy V sold over 700,000 copies in its first week and 500,000 copies in its second week, which is quite astonishing. It is clear that players really yearn for a happy ending.

Of course, in addition to sales in Japan, Final Fantasy V also sold over 5 units in the United States because the Super Famicom (SFC) sold over two million units in just a few months.

With the US and Japan combined, the number is already close to two million, so the core base of Final Fantasy is pretty much secured.

The small department stores in the United States were overjoyed, making a lot of money by following Zhu Youxing's lead.

Before the appearance of Zhuyouxing, they probably never imagined in their lives that an entertainment product could sell so quickly and become so popular.

As for Dragon Quest IV, as the first installment of the Sky Trilogy, coupled with the experienced First Development team, they also created a lot of groundbreaking content, adding more jobs, more in-game mini-games, and character development, among other things. Its first-week sales were far more impressive than Final Fantasy's.

Furthermore, since Dragon Quest IV was released simultaneously on both the FC and SFC consoles, the FC version only had slightly lower graphics quality, but almost no reduction in content.

With the FC having sold tens of millions of game consoles as a foundation, Final Fantasy achieved a staggering million-level sales in its first week, boasting a huge number of die-hard fans. It's certain that Final Fantasy will not be able to surpass Dragon Quest's status in the short term.

Besides these two flagship titles, there's another adventure game focused on the US market, called Indiana Jones.

In its previous life, this name referred to a very famous film series.

However, this name doesn't exist in this world, so Zhuyouxing simply took it and developed a side-scrolling ruin exploration game. This game was entirely developed by a studio in the United States, which was meant to give them some game development experience. As for the game's sales, they didn't have high hopes.

However, Americans seem quite interested in games that involve exploring ruins, and sales have reached 300,000 copies, which is quite good. This has greatly encouraged the game development team established in the United States.

Apart from these, there seems to be no activity from Gaming Entertainment regarding gaming hardware.

Judging from the past development rate of Youxing Electronic Entertainment, things have been quite calm recently.

But this is only the surface-level dynamic.

Since Zhuyouxing has expanded to four engineering development teams, and each team has increased to fifty people, how could they possibly be left idle?

However, apart from a few high-ranking executives from game companies who are closest to Yuxing Electronic Entertainment, almost no outsiders know the specific movements of the four engineering teams.

At this moment, four engineering development teams are working together to tackle two projects: the GB game console upgrade version GBA, and a brand new game console series: the GS series.

The GBA needs no introduction; it was one of the most classic handheld consoles in its time.

With 32-bit performance, it's not impossible to create 3D games on it, but because the plan is to achieve 32-bit performance on a handheld console while maintaining a long battery life, the process of continuous experimentation and design has been quite lengthy. So far, we've only roughly completed most of the research, and there's still a lot of testing and finishing work left. The possibility of releasing it before Christmas is almost nonexistent, so we might as well wait until next year's International Consumer Electronics Show to announce it.

The GS series is the console that Takeyusei plans to emulate in its previous generation, the PS series.

Focusing on high performance while also making the medium for video games cheaper, replacing cartridges with optical discs, greatly reducing the cost of physical games.

Chapter 229's name is "Timer Switch".

Using CDs as a medium does not mean that Takeyusei will give up using cartridges.

His future plan is to pursue two paths simultaneously.

One of these approaches is to follow the path taken by Nintendo in its previous life and focus on developing fun and innovative electronic entertainment products.

The other option is to take a more industrialized and large-scale production route.

A pioneering path represents laying the foundation for the future development of video games and continuously creating new growth points.

Industrialization represents the path to maturity for an industry. Red Dead Redemption 2, Final Fantasy VII Remake, The Witcher 3, Call of Duty, the entire Assassin's Creed series, and so on are all products of mature industrialized games.

Both industrialization and creativity have their own advantages, and Zhu Youxing intends to have them all.

North America is more suitable for industrial development, while Japan is more suitable for pioneering; we can proceed on two fronts simultaneously.

A normal company wouldn't dare to do that; they would usually focus more on developing one specific area.

Only investment companies dare to do this, because they are not responsible for the product; they only need to provide the money and supervise the results.

However, with his past life experience, Zhu Youxing felt he should do more.

Money is secondary; he wants to accelerate the development of the video game industry in this world so he can play the fun games created in this world sooner.

For example, the 3D racing game recently produced by Surui Electronics is quite good and deserves a three-and-a-half-star rating.

In the future, GS1 will focus more on industrialization, minimizing the physical production costs of the video games themselves, and using the extra money to develop the video games. This is the more appropriate choice.

In any case, the medium is not important for video games; what matters is the game itself.

The development of the GS1 is now about 40% complete. Zhuyouxing has sent the first prototype of the game console to North America so that the game development team there can adapt to the console as soon as possible.

Up to now, these are all internal company secrets. If even a tiny bit is leaked, Zhu Youxing will definitely pursue the matter relentlessly.

The advantage of not being listed and having almost no redundant shareholders is that you don't have to be accountable to anyone, nor do you have to disclose the company's internal data and information. You can do whatever you want, and no one can interfere.

However, in order to facilitate his development in Japan, Takeyusei negotiated terms with the Japanese government. The Japanese government would invest a small portion of the shares, and Takeyusei could leverage the government's connections to obtain certain benefits and ensure preferential policies so that minor issues would not hinder his development.

One evening in August, a banquet was being held in what appeared to be a high-end hotel.

This banquet was jointly hosted by the American Department Store Association and the labor union.

Executives from department stores and supermarkets of all sizes within the association were invited to the banquet.

These are the good times for these department stores to connect and share their feelings.

They are usually competitors, but under the control of the association and the labor union, they will cooperate when necessary to fight for greater benefits for their industry.

David was naturally among those invited, after all, he was the business manager of Woodson Department Stores, a senior executive of one of the largest department stores in the country.

He drove his luxury car and entered the banquet hall with his female companion.

He received a lot of attention as soon as he entered, with many people taking the initiative to come up and greet him warmly.

Someone of his stature is on par with the chairman of a small department store, so he naturally attracts a lot of attention.

He also politely returned the greetings one by one.

However, he noticed that at these kinds of banquets, there were usually more people trying to get close to him, and executives from some small department stores would also take the initiative to come over and say hello.

However, the people who came this time were mostly people in insignificant positions, as well as some industry associations and labor unions.

However, he was only a little curious, but didn't take it too seriously.

Small and medium-sized department stores are incomparable to him, and it's no big deal if the other party doesn't take the initiative to contact him.

Soon, the banquet moved on to the routine charity fundraising session.

Such banquets are usually held to cultivate a better reputation, and cannot be merely for indulging in pleasure.

As is customary, executives of large companies like David would donate around $100,000.

It's quite normal for someone from a small department store to donate tens or thousands of dollars.

David had already prepared the checks, but after thinking for a moment, he felt that $50,000 was about right. Donating that much would be meaningless and a waste of money.

$50,000 is enough to maintain your car for six months.

After writing the check, he casually handed it to the person receiving the donation.

Just then, he vaguely heard several voices discussing something heatedly not far away.

"How about we each donate 100,000 this time?"

"Hmm, I think it's a good idea. We've made a lot of money lately, all thanks to Youxing Electronic Entertainment."

"You guys must have made a lot of money through Youxing Electronic Entertainment, right? We have too."