Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

Dragon Quest III has now surpassed one million in sales, followed by Super Mario 3 and The Legend of Zelda.

Unexpectedly, these games reached one million copies faster than the original Contra and Tetris.

Clearly, highly replayable role-playing games are quite popular these days.

Other games can usually be completed in just a few hours, and it's easy to get bored with them.

But role-playing games are the most cost-effective, even though they are also the most expensive.

After reaching sales of over 900,000, Tetris stalled, and the exact reason is unknown, but it seems that players' interest in the game has indeed gradually waned.

It's probably because other games are just too appealing that relatively simple and casual games, without a suitable opportunity, will find it difficult to break through.

As for Contra, it has also reached over 900,000 sales, and both have the potential to break the million mark, but they still seem to be lacking something.

To Zhuyouxing's slight surprise, one of the games from a third-party independent development team had sold 800,000 copies.

It's that Ninja Project.

The first third-party game on the Famicom probably benefited a lot from the ninja identity.

After reviewing the sales figures of their own game, Zhuyou Xingxin had a general idea of ​​the situation.

The next more important step is to expand the game's reach. Tamagotchi has increased its female player audience, but it's not easy to make money from women in the game.

In the past, it was difficult for video games to make money from women.

Oh right, there were quite a few successful examples in China in my previous life.

Focus on games that feature male-oriented romance.

But this thing... Zhu Youxing isn't good at it; he's never dealt with it before.

However, it's worth trying if you have the chance.

Next, Takeyusei began to look at the latest news in the Nikkei newspaper.

He focused particularly on the section about video games.

The video game section of the Nikkei Asian Review has grown so large that it now occupies almost an entire page.

This is quite a high level of treatment, and the Nikkei Asian Review clearly has a very positive outlook on the future of video games.

This has also become a bellwether for many investors.

Now, other television stations have also started broadcasting content related to video games to varying degrees.

Seeing that the Nikkei newspaper seemed to have seen a slight increase in sales as a result, they, as Japan's largest newspaper group, couldn't afford to fall behind.

However, their subordinates, namely the television stations under the major newspaper groups, were not so happy.

While television stations no longer directly confront video games in such a blatant way, they absolutely will not touch anything related to video games.

This seems to have become a kind of political correctness on those TV stations.

I've heard that some temporary workers were ruthlessly fired by their superiors for chatting about games during their free time, which is quite absurd.

However, this is largely because television stations are not doing well these days, and even without the video game issue, they would find other reasons to lay off more employees.

The video game section of the Nikkei newspaper provides detailed information on the latest games and industry news.

Nowadays, almost every day a new company enters the video game industry.

They may be a large company or a newly established startup.

Any company even remotely related to video games has now become a hot commodity for investors.

These bamboo asteroides are ignored.

He can't remember all of these kinds of messages anymore.

It's obvious that most of these companies are simply trying to make money.

But video games are not as simple as they imagined.

In any case, if the games produced by these companies don't meet their standards, they shouldn't even think about being listed on their game platforms.

Time will eliminate most of them.

What Zhuyouxing really needs to focus on are its competitive peers.

The most competitive company right now is naturally Surui Electronics.

According to the Nikkei, it appears that Surui Electronics has already begun advertising in the United States and is trying to open up a small market share.

The video game has been very well received in some areas, and players really like the PN game console.

Zhu Youxing was very satisfied with what he saw.

Okay, you keep going and expand the market further, then I can just focus on reaping the rewards.

You'll know how troublesome it is to start an industry and then expand the market yourself after doing it once.

You need to first make people understand the fun of this product, and then gradually promote the market through various marketing methods.

If his small company wants to rapidly expand its video game business, it would probably have to empty its coffers.

Now that there is a vanguard, Zhu Youxing is not in a hurry.

First, firmly grasp the Japanese market and completely solidify your base.

As for the US market, let Surui Electronics play around with it for now.

Zhu Youxing was still reading the news in the newspaper when he heard a commotion outside the door.

This is quite rare. Zhu Youxing could vaguely hear some music... code... and words like "difficulty".

He immediately stood up and walked towards the door, wanting to see what had happened.

Chapter 136 The Strikeing Composers

"what happened?"

As soon as Zhu Youxing stepped out of the office, he saw several employees from the game development team arguing heatedly.

"President, we're sorry, we didn't mean to bother you," an employee said, sounding slightly nervous.

"Tell me what happened first, and why you started arguing?"

"Well...we might be in a bit of trouble."

"Tell me more about it."

"The composer we hired some time ago... ran away."

Zhu Youxing was taken aback: "They ran away?"

The employee nodded: "Yes, it just means 'ran away' literally..."

"what happened?"

"Because he felt his job was being insulted, but we didn't disrespect him at all. We just wanted him to learn some assembly language so that he could add music to games. But after studying for a while, he felt that it was humiliating him and then resigned."

Next to these employees was Minoru Matsuhashi, who was in charge of personnel management. After the others finished speaking, she said, "President, it's not just one composer who wants to leave; it's three or four composers we just hired who want to go."

Zhu Youxing pondered for a moment, then immediately realized something and said, "Is it also because of programming and music composition?"

"Yes, they had never written music for game consoles before. At first, they just thought that as long as they could create music, our game consoles could play it. But later they found out that they needed to learn a programming language before they could compose music, so they all backed down."

Zhu Youxing shook his head: "It was my oversight that I didn't consider this. Now, several composers want to leave?"

Matsuhashi replied, "We currently have a total of five composers, one for each game development team, but now, apart from the one in the fifth game development team, the others all want to leave."

The one from the fifth game development team... right, that's the one Matsuhashi Minoru recommended, the somewhat down-on-his-luck composer.

Even if he really wanted to leave, he probably couldn't. At least here he could still earn money by composing music, whereas elsewhere he would have to do odd jobs to make a living.

The other composers were not exactly short of money, but they came to test the waters because I offered them a lot of money and out of curiosity about the new industry.

It seems quite normal for these people to choose to leave after encountering difficulties.

In the early days of Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System), games were made using a programming language called assembly language, which was a fairly early form of programming language.

Creating music on the Famicom, specifically the iconic 8-bit music, isn't as simple as just adding sheet music.

You have to write code like a programmer, treating the code like a musical score so that the machine can recognize these things.

The kind of sheet music used in human society is completely unrecognizable to the Famicom.

In the SFC game console, performance saw a qualitative leap, and sound effects also soared, making music sound much more pleasant than 8-bit music.

However, even in 16-bit chips, assembly language is still required to create music.

Creating music in assembly language on a 16-bit console is also more complex than on a Famicom, since the music quality is significantly improved.

These are some inherent defects of this type of chip. It's not impossible to improve them, but it's very difficult and requires huge investments in research and development, specifically to develop a machine that can assist in music production.

In the era of the Super Famicom (SFC), Nintendo did indeed develop a device that could quickly create game music.

But it's unclear exactly how much the research cost was; Zhu Youxing only knew that it was very expensive.

Only large game companies like Capcom, Konami, and EA can afford it.

It's not cost-effective for smaller game companies and studios to buy this.

Therefore, Zhuyouxing did not consider this matter at first, thinking that 16-bit game consoles were also a transition, and that a better-performing game console would be released again in three or four years at the latest, or one or two years at the earliest, so there was no need to invest too much money in it.

But now we've run into trouble.

Those composers had no desire to learn assembly language.

In their eyes, programming languages ​​are like heavenly books. They are composers, not mathematicians. They could create countless pieces of music with that time if they spent learning assembly language. Why waste their time here?

Composers are very important; in 16-bit game consoles, the improvements in graphics and sound quality are the most significant.

He can help compose the main music for some games, like the Crystal Overture, no problem. But he can't possibly do all the background music himself, can he? He'd never be able to manage that.

After the advent of 16-bit game consoles, the gaming industry began to have a clear division of labor.

Those who make music should focus on making music, those who make animation should focus on making animation, and those who write programs should focus on writing programs.

It seems I've moved too fast. I accelerated the development of video games, leaving the world with little period of stable development. This might be a hidden danger, and I need to be more vigilant.

"Is only one person leaving now? Or do the other three all want to leave?" Zhu Youxing asked.

“The other three have the same idea. Before, no one started it, but now that someone wants to leave, it will be difficult for the other three to stay. But, President, I can assure you that my friend’s brother will not leave easily.”