Silicon Valley

Chapter 264 Atari Corporation

Simon Hodge immediately sent people to expand the firefly game house, and it is estimated that 2,000 firefly game houses will be built in the United States.

Because Japan, South Korea, and Europe are also key areas of the game industry.

Therefore, Simon Hodge organized two overseas teams, one for Europe and Europe, and one for Japan and Korea.

China is a country with a large population, but the Internet has not been opened for two years, and the network fee is very expensive. Except for some universities, governments and scientific research institutions, ordinary people simply cannot afford the Internet. In addition, the number of computer users is also poor. At present, the most popular games in China are the red and white game consoles and the arcade machines in the video game room!

The little bully has endless fun! ! !

Xiaobawang's copycat Nintendo FC game console is a mess in China! Speaking of Xiaobawang, Henry was a loyal user of Xiaobawang in his previous life. Duan Yongsheng took over the Xiaobawang company in 1987, and then changed the company's development direction and imitated the FC game console. In just three years, the Xiaobawang company has grown from a company with a loss of millions to a large company with a market value of more than 1 billion yuan. !

Xiaobawang game consoles are cheap, two or three hundred yuan a piece, while Nintendo's FC costs more than two thousand.

Pirated game cartridges are awesome, they can play N+1 games. The genuine game is generally just a game! Not to mention the game, it is also expensive to sell, tens of hundreds of dollars for a game cartridge. Pirated game cartridges are only 10 yuan! It is conceivable that genuine games cannot be sold at all! There are very few people who use FC game consoles and play FC genuine games in China. It's not that there are no players, on the contrary, China has more players than Japan, but they are all using pirated copies.

Nintendo is very helpless about this!

The same is true of arcade machines. All kinds of pirated arcade machines have poor graphics and poor operation, but some of them are already very good, and they are also liked by many Chinese players.

If a firefly game house is established in China. Must lose money!

In particular, the main game of Firefly Game House is still computer games, obviously there is no market in China.

At that time, there were very few households with 10,000 yuan in China, let alone buying a computer. A computer at least cost tens of thousands of yuan. An average computer in the United States costs around $1,000. To enter China, you have to pay tariffs, and I will not say more about China's tariffs. Anyway, if the computer is not expensive, you can't make money!

As for Chinese local computer companies. It is equivalent to an assembly company. All kinds of components have to be purchased from abroad. Can it be cheaper?

However, some shrewd and cunning businessmen took advantage of it. In 1993, Xiaobawang company launched the self-developed Xiaobawang computer learning machine, just because it had a keyboard and mouse, it was sold as a computer. ——“Before, I used my fists to conquer the world. Now in the computer age, my son will use the little bully to conquer the world”!

But that thing can play real computer games, what a joke...

It will take many years for the popularization of computers in China. At the beginning, there will be computer rooms without Internet access. Usually, there are only a few computers in the room, and only ten computers can be installed. However, even if there is no network, the cost of getting on the computer is very expensive! Prices may vary from place to place, however. In the hometown of Henry's previous life, it was 10 yuan an hour! Don't look at the price, you may not be able to find an empty machine!

After that, China pulled a few more submarine cables. Only then will the internet fee come down, and at that time, Internet cafes will rise!

Henry's support for Firefly Game House is very strong. In addition to 2,000 in the United States, 2,500 will be established in Europe and 1,000 in Japan. 500 in Korea! A total of 1500 have been established in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Brazil and other places.

As for mainland China, a firefly game house will be established in each of the first-tier cities, and the right should be for publicity.

To build so many firefly game houses, if the business is not good, wouldn't it be a loss?

Henry has considered this issue. Currently, video game consoles, handheld consoles, game cassettes, CDs, and arcade machines are still popular products, but in the future, with the rise of online games, perhaps no one will buy game CDs. At that time, people downloaded games from the Internet, and Firefly Game House needed to consider new profit points!

The essence of Firefly Game House is to operate game products. Therefore, sell game peripheral products and develop a variety of rich game peripheral products, such as toys, posters, clothing, accessories, comics, etc. One can make money, and two Come and promote the game!

If a game is extremely classic and enduring for a long time, Firefly Games can even build a game theme park! The Warcraft theme park, the World of Warcraft theme park, must also be extremely attractive...

In August, the Firefly Games Company split infinitely, and there was no two for a while.

Online and offline double harvests are enviable.

Since the release date of the game disc, the disc production factory has not stopped, and has been fully producing the game discs for "Doom" and "Warcraft 1". Up to now, in just over 20 days, the two game CDs have sold a total of 10 million copies. According to the price of a game CD of 100 US dollars, Firefly Games' offline revenue alone has reached 1 billion US dollars!

"The King of Fighters 1992" is also very popular. The order volume in the United States alone is as high as 200,000 units. The price of an arcade machine is 3,000 US dollars, and the income is 600 million US dollars!

"The King of Fighters 1992" is more popular in Japan than in the United States, with 250,000 arcade machines sold and a revenue of $750 million. Major game rooms in Japan have already purchased "The King of Fighters 1992", and Japanese newspapers have reported: ""The King of Fighters 1992" is another masterpiece by Capcom, more classic than "Street Fighter 2"!

Capcom has been imitated, never surpassed!

Capcom made Street Fighter 2, and as a result, all arcade makers are copying it!

However, when everyone was imitating "Street Fighter 2", "The King of Fighters 1992" turned out!

"The King of Fighters 1992" has completely surpassed "Street Fighter 2". In other words, the game that everyone is imitating now is an outdated game. Anyone who has played "The King of Fighters 1992" will never want to play "Street Fighter 2" again!

This year, Capcom Co., Ltd. will definitely be regarded as the king of arcades because of "The King of Fighters 1992"! ! ! "

Countless media reporters rushed to Capcom Co., Ltd. to conduct interviews. The company's external spokesperson said in an interview with reporters: "From "The King of Fighters 1992", we can see that this game is a series of works, and we will launch "The King of Fighters 1993" in the future. ""The King of Fighters 1994", etc. As long as players like it, we will continue to do it! Every time a sequel is released, we will add new characters. At the same time, we will make some improvements to the game."

The reporter asked: "Has the "King of Fighters 1993" been approved?"

"Yes! At present, we have officially decided to add two new characters, of course. It is not ruled out that more new characters will be added in the future game production process!"

The reporter asked curiously, "Excuse me, who are these two new characters?"

"Hehe, the first one is a panda from China, a panda who knows kung fu. How about it? Isn't it fun and interesting?! I think, when the time comes, everyone will like it very much! As for the second one, it will be kept secret for the time being. …”

Although Capcom Corporation is highly praised by the outside world, and the arcade market is greatly exaggerated, Henry knows that the arcade market will seriously shrink in the future! So Henry has decided that Capcom will start a transformation, of course. The pace can be slower, without complete transformation, you can develop video games while making arcades!

Capcom's classic "Resident Evil" can be put on the agenda!

Four or five months ago, Atari, the former gaming industry tycoon, released their latest 32-bit game console "Black Panther", intending to return to the video game console and regain the top spot in the gaming industry! However, the "Black Panther" game console occupies less than 2% of the market, a complete failure!

Atari "Black Panther" is twice the price of Nintendo SFC, completely uncompetitive. Being hanged is normal.

Atari's 1982 sales were $2 billion and profits were nearly $400 million. However, by 1983, the production of "ET", the terrible game, began. Atari began to go downhill, losing $500 million this year, and then losing money year after year!

In 1984, Atari's parent company, Warner Inc., couldn't hold it anymore, so it sold Atari to the richest man Tla Meyer for $300 million.

Tra Mayer is so confident that he thinks he can help Atari get back to the top!

However. After a few years, Atari is still suffering serious losses, and the losing Tra Mayer wants to vomit blood! This time, Atari carefully built the "Black Panther" game console, and wanted to have a hard time with Nintendo, but the result was a bloodbath. Tra Mayer is desperate for Atari, let out the wind, whoever wants to buy it, hurry up...

In the previous life, no one wanted to buy it, so Tra Mayer could only hold on, and finally gritted his teeth and said, "What the hell, I can't believe I can't beat Nintendo!" As a result, in 1993, only a year later, Ya Dali developed a 64-bit game console that shocked the world in one breath, and this time, the name of the game console has been made more domineering, called "Jaguar"! ! !

It's a pity that, whether it's a black panther or a jaguar, they all turned into sick cats in the end...

In this life, if others don't buy it, it doesn't mean that Henry doesn't buy it. Atari is still very good. In 1993, it was able to develop a 64-bit "Jaguar" (Jaguar) game console. Technically, it is no worse than other companies, and Atari has a lot of patents and game copyrights. In addition, Atari is a feeling in the hearts of Americans, a memory of youth! Just the Atari brand is already worth a lot of money.

In the future, there will also be film companies using the IP of Atari to shoot movies, which is very popular, and it is not inferior to those super IPs.

Sony has a lot of money. When it released the PS1, the machine was sold at a loss, and the purpose was to gain market share; when Microsoft released the XBOX, it lost billions of dollars, and the purpose was to gain market share. In the end, Sony and Microsoft successfully counterattacked and stood on a three-legged stand with Nintendo!

Atari has no financial backing, and no third-party game company support. How can it compete with Nintendo?

There is no doubt that failure is inevitable!

This time, since Tra Mayer wanted to sell Atari, Henry sent someone to contact him.

He bought it from Warner and spent 300 million US dollars, but now Atari is losing money. When Henry sent someone to ask the price, Tra Mayer only dared to shout 100 million US dollars!

Well, look at how miserable you are, $100 million is $100 million!

Henry soon signed a buyout deal with Tra Mayer. Henry originally wanted to merge Atari into Williams Electronics. After all, developing a game console would involve a lot of hardware. But looking back, Firefly Games has such a big reputation in the game industry. If Atari is merged into Firefly Games, both third-party game developers and players will look at Atari in a different way. The probability of peak will be higher!

After acquiring Atari, Henry visited the company.

Many people must be a little uncomfortable with Atari being sold. Henry held a meeting. At the meeting, he spoke a lot of words of encouragement, the glorious history of Atari, and the talents who went out from Atari, such as Jobs who founded Apple.

"Atari's predicament is temporary, but I believe there is no difficulty that can stumble you! Hemingway wrote in The Old Man and the Sea, 'You can destroy me, but you cannot defeat me'! We will never give up , Failure will only make us stronger!!! Since the 32-bit game console 'Black Panther' failed, then next year we will make a 64-bit game console 'Jaguar', the tiger roars in the forest, we are the king of the forest! !!"

As soon as Henry finished speaking, the employees below shouted excitedly, and many people actually imitated the sound of a tiger and made a deafening roar!

Seeing this, Henry nodded secretly, the military heart is available!

Afterwards, Henry gave them benefits, increased their wages by 20%, and launched an equity incentive plan! At the same time, in order to strengthen Atari's R\u0026D department, Henry transferred a lot of technical talents from Williams Electronics to work at Atari!

Henry's acquisition of Atari, it is impossible for the outside world not to know.

At this time, the front pages of American newspapers were filled with the news of Henry Williams' acquisition of Atari. The news was also on TV, and Tra Mayer was interviewed in which he admitted to selling Atari to Henry Williams.

"Atari is a flag of the American gaming industry, and it should not fall in my hands! Now, I have found a new owner for it, and I believe that Mr. Henry Williams can make Atari The company is back on top!!!"

The news quickly spread all over the world.

Nintendo can't sit still, it's like burning eyebrows. President Yamauchi was still on vacation in Hawaii with his wife, and they kept it for a few days. When he heard the news of Henry's acquisition of Atari, he hurried back to Japan, and an emergency meeting was held immediately!

Sega is also in a hurry, like ants on a hot pan, and hastened to hold a meeting.

And global game companies have also held meetings!

Several senior industry insiders said: "It's finally time to reshuffle the video game industry!!!"

(~^~)

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