Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

After the first week of sales ended, Nagao Rain immediately invested more money in advertising, hoping to win word-of-mouth in this way.

However, the results were still very poor.

Surui Electronics also had high hopes for YOO's racing game, allocating more resources to it and even advertising it for free several times, but they never expected the game's sales to be so low.

This is a game that cost over $100 million to develop; these sales figures are simply not enough to show for it.

This is a terrible outcome for both Surui Electronics and YOO.

At this time, game review media also began to step forward, with the most authoritative one, Kazuo Murakami, publishing his article.

Everyone knows he is a staunch supporter of Yuxing Electronic Entertainment, but that doesn't affect his professional judgment.

He was among the first to play video games, and has experienced countless games since junior high school.

His assessment of this racing game was that it was a playable dessert game, but nothing more. Kazuo Murakami himself would give the game a three-and-a-half-star rating.

This is already quite good compared to the games on Suri Electronics' game consoles from a few years ago.

After all, the previous games didn't even have a passing grade.

It's already quite good if you can pass or get a passing grade now.

But gamers are a group of users who are never satisfied; they will endlessly crave even better games.

Moreover, once you experience better games, you'll start to get bored with some of the lower-quality games.

This situation worsened after the release of Need for Speed: Most Wanted by Yuxing Electronic Entertainment.

On the day of YOO's racing game release, not many players went to the store to buy the game; at least, you didn't have to wait in line for too long to buy it.

The release of Need for Speed ​​5 was completely different.

In regions like the United States and Japan, players continue the tradition of lining up in tents outside stores the night before the release, just like every year.

In Europe, as the number of GS1 consoles installed increases, the number of gamers at Yuxing Electronics Entertainment is also growing rapidly.

In Europe, players are also queuing up enthusiastically, which is quite evident in comparison to YOO's racing game.

Anyone who pays even a little attention to the gaming industry can tell which game is more popular just by looking at these live sales figures.

"I really want to know why Need for Speed ​​seems to be more popular. You guys were so confident before that you could express racing games in a different way and achieve overtaking on curves!"

Nagao Yu is an operator, not a creator, but he has a unique vision. At least he can think of creating his own media group and continuously expanding his influence.

However, as someone who wasn't the creator, he couldn't understand those game development issues.

Previously, his development team had presented him with their ideas for a racing game, which he found quite reasonable. At least he himself felt that he was more interested in a more realistic racing game.

Moreover, after the success of the football game, he felt even more strongly that obtaining professional licensing was very important.

However, all his efforts and investments yielded little result.

He didn't understand, he really didn't understand, why this was the outcome.

Now he can only question the game development manager who made such a bold promise to him.

I have provided you with the best development environment, but this is the result we have received, which is completely unacceptable.

"President, we didn't do a good enough job, we're very sorry."

The game manager being questioned didn't seem to be in particularly good spirits and appeared somewhat tired.

During this period, their game development pace was very fast. In order to keep up with the schedule, he worked almost non-stop. After the game was released, he thought he could finally breathe a sigh of relief, but he didn't expect to be constantly called back and forth by Nagaoyu. One moment it was a meeting, the next it was about how to increase sales. He really couldn't keep up.

Not only that, there were other reasons that made him really dispirited. One of them was that since the development of the racing game, the salary payments had always been delayed, and the salary had also been significantly reduced. Previously, Nagao Rain had promised to give each of them a bonus after the game was released, but it had not been mentioned again.

Another reason is that since the advent of the Internet age, single-player video games no longer end after the game is released. Now, games need continuous follow-up service support after their release.

Because the development schedule for this racing game was rushed, in order to release it ahead of Yuxing Electronics Entertainment's Need for Speed, it indirectly led to some underlying problems with the game itself. He was constantly being called in for meetings by Changweiyu, and his team was also busy fixing bugs every day.

All of this made the person in charge increasingly exhausted, so he seemed somewhat listless when answering questions.

Nagao Yu was clearly not satisfied with this answer. He said sternly, "I need to find a way to fix this right now. Can you launch more models? Can you launch more racetracks?"

"This... might be a bit difficult. The development team hasn't had much of a break yet, they've been working hard to fix game bugs. They haven't had a break since the game was released, and now they don't have much time to add game content."

"Just give me overtime."

Chapter 584 What's the reason?

Longtail Rain spoke very succinctly.

In fact, working overtime is very normal, especially in Japan, where it is commonplace.

In Japan, companies like Midway Star Electronics Entertainment, which don't require overtime, are actually the biggest anomalies.

In general, if you don't work overtime until 9 or 10 o'clock every day, you'd be embarrassed to admit it.

It seems that people subconsciously approve of the culture of working overtime.

But even in a country like Japan where overtime is a habit, there are limits.

YOO's game developers have already reached their limit.

If the game sells very well, there might be some buffs to give them a boost.

But now even sales have been halved, which means that despite working overtime for so long, there has been little reward, which inevitably makes people feel discouraged.

Especially after Changweiyu said that overtime was possible, the game manager felt a chill run down his spine.

How much more overtime is needed?

Before the game was even developed, they were already working 15 or 16 hours a day at a high frequency. Now, they are spending even more time fixing game bugs. This is really the most they could do.

However, Nagao Amane is the company president, and this is Japan, where class relations are very strict. The idea of ​​a subordinate overthrowing their superior is just a plot in wish-fulfillment stories.

"I see."

The person in charge opened his mouth, but swallowed back many of the things he wanted to say.

"Make me at least two maps within a week, along with more vehicle models. You guys probably have a lot of scrapped game development ideas from before, right? Bring them all out and use them. These resources can't be wasted!"

"..."

The person in charge simply nodded and silently stood up, but then he remembered something: "President, about the salary..."

"You can rest assured, the money will definitely be plentiful, but I need you to produce results first!"

……

YOO's racing game suffered a major setback, leaving many industry insiders puzzled. Logically, a large investment should yield better returns. Many previous games, despite heavy investment, had received corresponding returns, or at least broke even.

But YOO failed miserably, and everyone immediately began frantically trying to figure out what had happened.

Most people who played the game felt there was nothing wrong with it, but it was just not popular.

Besides these people, Zhu Youxing also tried out several games recently launched by YOO for the purpose of studying competitors.

For games like FIFA, YOO has invested heavily and achieved the best results. While the game quality isn't perfect, it's above average for a football game, probably around three and a half stars.

Of course, this is viewed from the discerning perspective of the future Zhuyouxing. For players in this world, it is already a very good game. It can only be said that money can buy anything. Game development is exactly the kind of entertainment product that costs a lot of money, on the same level as movie production. Money can indeed make it easier to make better works.

However, the "bug" that comes from later generations, Bamboo Star, is different.

He could have created a game that completely outclassed others by using the development direction and successful experience of later generations. So even if the development cost is lower than that of other manufacturers, the games of Yuxing Electronic Entertainment will be more fun.

As for YOO's first-person shooter game, the quality of this game is also very good. However, Zhuyouxing has a very intuitive feeling that this game is obviously not as valued as FIFA football game. It can only be ranked second, and the investment in money is also slightly lower.

However, thanks to the positive word-of-mouth effect of the previous football games, it also achieved sales of over 800,000 units in its first week, which is quite good.

This game combines the strengths of other games while making up for their weaknesses, enhancing the exhilarating feeling of shooting. Playing Bamboo Star is quite enjoyable, and even with my own discerning eye, it's passable.

However, once you finish playing this game, that's it; I have no urge to play it again.

If I had played a game like this in my past life, I probably would have finished it, closed the disc, and then sold it secondhand.

Then, there's YOO's racing game.

In order to avoid direct competition with Yuxing Electronic Entertainment, they chose to focus on a more professional track racing genre. However, they licensed very few car models, and most of them were modified versions of their own cars. While circumventing copyright, they also lacked real data as a basis.

However, these are not major problems. Players in this world do not yet have a judgment on whether racing games are good or bad; they only judge them based on whether they can have fun playing them.

As for whether this game is fun to play, Zhuyouxing thinks it is quite fun.

However, he also had some very obvious feelings that the game was rushed out of production.

Moreover, given that the investment has already exceeded 100 million US dollars, it seems that many parts are still somewhat rough.

If there are no licensing costs, racing games shouldn't cost too much money. If they cost too much, it's either because they have too much money to burn or they have bigger ambitions.

But this game is not at the level of having a development cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Zhu Youxing's first thought was that YOO might be engaging in false advertising.

There is still some possibility of that.

However, given Nagao Amane's temperament, he wasn't the type to boast about such things. He loved to show off how much he had invested and what achievements he had made. If he were to make false claims about these things, all his boasting would become a joke.

If you give Zhu Youxing a hundred million dollars, he can do five or six times better than this.

It's worth noting that even his Need for Speed ​​game, including all the licenses, only cost a little over 70 million US dollars to develop, making it the second most cost-effective of the three games: shooting, racing, and sports.

The most cost-effective game was Counter-Strike, because it didn't require any licensing fees. The game's competitive nature meant it focused more on balanced gameplay, so lower graphics quality was acceptable. As a result, Counter-Strike's development cost less than 30 million US dollars.

Of the 30 million, more than 70% is labor costs, because Zhuyouxing does not like to put pressure on employees to work overtime, so the number of employees is much larger.

This also increases labor costs significantly.

So why does YOO's racing game not seem worth a hundred million dollars?

Did the game take many detours during its development?

Game development actually involves many problems; sometimes, game development faces more challenges than many film productions.

Even a slight conflict in ideas can lead to a lot of money being wasted on trivial matters during game development.

In my past life, many games kept adjusting their development direction, and in the end, the game's progress was not much, but the money had already been spent.

Chapter 585 The Long-Tailed Rain That Brings Disaster

Whatever the reason, YOO's racing game ultimately wasn't particularly satisfactory.

Especially during this period, game production is extremely high, and every game company is desperately trying to come up with interesting ideas to develop games. During this time, if you don't have anything outstanding, you will easily be ignored by players, and games that are just passable will not be able to catch their eye.