Gu Ao, who is still dissatisfied with the fact that only more than 3,000 bombers were shipped in the first phase, but he didn't know that this achievement had already made his Japanese colleagues very jealous.

Even though the number of competitive companies increased to 5, the sales price of a single arcade machine continued to fall, and the net profit margin was even more severe.

However, the arcade profit in mid-1980 still exceeded the average level of other products in the electronics industry.

A machine with a factory cost of more than $600 and a total cost of more than $800 after marketing/promotion is sold for more than $2,000 in October 1979.

At the end of last year, it was discounted to 1,800.

At the end of February this year, Namco entered the game and scored 1,500.

After Nintendo and Korami entered the market, the price of fixed-screen shooting game arcades on the market finally dropped to 1,200.

There is still 30% of net profit before tax.

Sony's Walkman only has a net profit before tax, which is still a patent-protected category. Sharp's famous brand-name companies that make TVs generally only have 10% to 15%.

Therefore, arcades are still an industry that is enough to make capital, technology and design flock into the sky.

Taidong, an outsider who had made a fortune by relying on initiative and luck in history, had only been popular for two or three years. Now that even the initiative has been intercepted by Gu Ao, it is naturally even more difficult to become a great man.

However, Hudson and Capcom will soon step on Taidong's body and continue to continue.

...

In mid-May, Kyoto, Nintendo headquarters.

It was a six-story light yellow office building.

All the blue and green sunscreen glasses indicate that the building does not require too good lighting, just like the vampire's witchcraft laboratory.

President Hiroshi Yamauchi, who is nearly 60 years old, took over the project report handed over by his general Yokoi Junhei, and his expression was slightly relieved.

At Nintendo, the team responsible for arcade projects mainly consists of two core members: Yokoi Junhei, who was born in the electronics department and was responsible for hardware research and development; and Masayuki Uemura who is more software-oriented.

Yokoi Junhei is an old backbone of Nintendo and has served the company for more than 20 years.

When he first joined the company, he was recruited as a production line debugging and maintenance staff. Later, he turned to research and development because of an opportunity in 1965.

At that time, Nintendo was still producing cards, mahjong and electric betting machines. Because the work of maintaining the production line was boring, Yokoi took the spare materials for the production line maintenance and invented a toy that was a spring fist that controlled extension and flexion by buttons.

(Many people should have played with it when they were young. The shape of the grip is similar to a pistol. You can shoot it out after pressing it. Now you can buy it by searching on Taobao.)

As a result, while Yokoi was playing a prank with his colleague in the workshop, he accidentally punched the passing president Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Everyone thought Yokoi was going to be fired. Unexpectedly, the president asked him to go to the office after get off work, and then said: If the design can be optimized and the spring fist can be made into mass-produced children's toys, he will be pardoned and transferred to the R&D department.

Later, Nintendo's sideline product was patented and sold millions of them. Yokoi Junpei successfully became the company's R&D backbone.

As for Masayuki Uemura, another leader in the R&D department, his years at Nintendo are much shorter. He is a rare job-hopper in this era. He jumped from Sharp, who made TVs eight years ago. However, this job-hopping also laid the groundwork for Nintendo to in-depth strategic cooperation with Sharp to carry out progressive scanning high-definition displays in the later Nintendo to the FC era.

Let’s talk about the background for now. Just talking about Nintendo’s shooting game arcade, after two months of distribution, it finally overturned its sales.

Compared with Namco and Korami, Ren's machine was on the market for more than a month at night. Sales in March were not optimistic. The imitation of fixed-screen shooting game only sold more than 600 units in the first month.

At that time, Namco and Korami had more than 900 units and more than 700 units respectively. The old Taidong had 1100 units and Hanle Electronics had 1300 units.

However, after April, the situation immediately changed. Nintendo's sales soared to 1,500 units, Namco and Korome barely maintained the situation, neither rising nor falling. However, Taidong plummeted to 400 units in a cliff, and Hanle Electronics only had more than 900 units left.

Although there is rumors in the market that Hanle Electronics invested production capacity in new games because the unit price of the old fixed-screen shooting game fell and the profit margin decreased. However, this proves that Nintendo's price war and channel sinking are very effective and can be successfully consumed step by step.

"Kun Yokoi, I have already made you feel relieved, but it was not as expected!" Yamauchi Hiroshi was satisfied and walked to the window with his hands behind his back to look down at the sentient beings.

"No matter how wise you are, you will be gone, everything is in your control." Yokoi Junhei was very convinced.

Last month, he was still worried about the product he was a project manager.

Yamauchi smiled with a scheming smile: "Arcade business, once innovation stops, it will be about cost control and channels. Especially for channel dealers to see the long-term preferential conditions for exclusive distribution with large clubs like us, long-term cooperation! Compared with channel policies, who can be our Nintendo's rival!

Nintendo has taken root in Kinabalu and never moved its headquarters to Tokyo, just to show that no matter how big Tokyo is, it only accounts for 20% of the population of Japan. Even if Tokyo people are rich, they only have 30% of the sales volume in Japan. And more entertainment operators do not react so quickly, and they do not have the frivolity of Tokyo people. They are nostalgic and trust only those they have used to trust for the rest of their lives."

President Yamauchi's playing style is very clear: Nintendo is a century-old company that operates gambling tools, and has accumulated channels with operators of various entertainment venues across Japan, which is much deeper than other peers who have only entered the market in the electronic entertainment era.

In the initial market distribution process, everyone rushed quickly because customers were smart people who dared to be the first in the world. When doing business with smart people, the channel was not important. They would try every means to choose the best, most cost-effective, or the best cost-effective thing.

Just like when playing with mobile phones only in hardcore players who know how to run scores, Xiaomi will definitely ship the most eye-catching, even if Xiaomi has the fewest purchasing channels.

However, smart people and brave people are only a little bit after all. After being deeply cultivated by Han Letai Southeast Dream Palace for half a year, all the operators of entertainment venues in Japan who dare to fight are absorbed.

The rest are old-school conservative operators who only dare to run the Mahjong Pavilion Chess and Card House. Perhaps the owner of a chess and card house is up to the age of fifty, and even born in Taisho and Meiji era.

When they bought marble machines, they shrank timidly. In the end, Nintendo, who had been making mahjong tables for them, also began to produce marble machines, so they tried to operate them.

To corrupt these thinking and do not know how to act, but the large number of elderly people can only count on Nintendo!

Just like after the hardcore mobile phone player market was sucked dry, when the factory girls arrived, the ov brothers broke through!

...

Since the report data is improving, Yokoi Junhei can only listen to President Yamauchi's previous upset words first.

Finally, he had to remind him: "President, in the past two months, we have observed that in addition to Hanle Electronics, another new company has risen in Xiangjiang. Their arcade machine and logo are "Tiankun Entertainment". However, the shipping channel is exactly the same as the original Hanle Electronics.

Even the owners of the game halls who bought the new arcade of Tiankun Entertainment were the ones who originally bought Hanle Electronics' 'Thunder Fighter' and 'Tank War'. It was equivalent to Tiankun Entertainment not having any new customers, and directly expanded the business scale of old customers who tasted the sweetness. Now, the cumulative shipment is estimated to exceed 5,000 units by scale ratio, which is no less than the peak season at the end of last year."

Yamauchi frowned slightly: "That's obviously the creative team and team of the same company. A few months ago, I heard that Sony's Akio Morita went to China to visit and inspected Hanle Electronics in the new special zone across the Hong Kong River. At that time, the company had just obtained trust bond financing and built its own factory.

I knew that the creative team behind Han Le would not be willing to surrender to the mainland's asset value algorithm's new product selling points. Have you analyzed it? Have you ever thought about how to imitate it?"

Yokoi Junhei cheered up and quickly analyzed the highlights of his review of the "Pac-Man" and "Bomb Man" gameplay and the reasons why he quickly attracted consumers.

Then, he gave his own conclusion: "Imitating similar games, changing the mechanism and picture slightly, of course you can make some money. But I am afraid that my peers will imitate them. Judging from the saturation speed of the shooting game, the total profit of this follower will not be too high. However, I will never relax in this work. I am already arranging a work that imitates the "Bomb Man", called the "Gold Digger".

In addition, Tiankun Entertainment's successful experience also inspired us: Even in the current fixed-screen shooting game field, there are many ways to deeply explore. Only by designing new from the bottom of the gameplay can you make huge profits. And as long as it is a brand new gameplay, once it is launched, it can monopolize at least four or five months before imitations will appear."

When only the "Thunder Fighter" and "Tank War" became popular, the market analysis departments of their peers generally attributed their success to "because they opened up Japan's electronic arcade market from scratch."

Therefore, this kind of success is considered "no longer renewed".

The success of "Pac-Man" and "Bomb Man" was the second time that the sales of shooting arcades had begun to decline, and it exploded against the overall market trend, which refreshed everyone's three views.

Several giants have realized that it is not only that they can make a big profit by creating a new hardware, but even in the existing hardware field, a new design and major innovation will still have a future if they make a new design from the underlying gameplay.

In this way, the original enthusiasm was finally completely ignited.

"Do you have any good ideas?" Yamauchi asked casually.

Yokoi Junhei: "I think in the original fixed-screen games, the characters were all moving on the horizontal plane, at most they were looking down. This led to the process of passing the level game being too short.

The latest model of Tiankun Entertainment inspired me. I think we can play a game that passes the level layer by layer on the same screen and lengthens the progress. I call this project "Dambokan". In addition, if the company can invest in larger research and development and bear higher future hardware costs, it is also possible for us to forcibly research and develop the level-by-step game of horizontal scrolling maps."

Gu Ao, who was far away in the capital, didn't know that the "Donkey King" proposed by Yokoi Junhei would also be a very popular work in history.

Even the "gold digger" mentioned earlier will divide a lot of markets from the "bomb man".

After all, Gu Ao did not have the existence of Baidu built into his mind. He only knew the general trend of the game development history, and it was impossible to intercept the past one by one according to the historical sales rankings. After the creativity of major Japanese manufacturers was stimulated, the fierce competition was inevitable.

"What are the benefits of the horizontal scroll map game you have been talking about? Can't you make up for it with the design of the stair floor?" President Yamauchi was obviously not willing to spend more hardware costs.

Yokoi Junhei finally explained: "It's just a difference in the picture. The design of the stair floor can cleverly make up for the problem that the process of the fixed screen game is too short. If it really doesn't work, you can pass a few more levels. However, the pixel size of the fixed screen game used to display the protagonist and the object is only that large, which is not conducive to the exquisite picture quality in the future."

Yamauchi Hiroshi immediately stopped: "Then wait a little longer and wait for your 'gold digger' and 'Da King Kong' to see which one sells better. If the sales volume of 'Da King Kong' is indeed higher, it means that the lengthening of the tube clamping process and similar elements are decisive to promote arcade price and sales. We will invest in the research and development of the horizontal axis.

Spending more money is not a skill. Once an arcade uses a more expensive CPU, all products in the future will be downgraded, which will make the owners of the arcade hall feel that they have been deceived. No one can expect the net profit of arcades in the future. If they take a big step, they will not be able to return."

President Yamauchi’s decision is actually correct. Anyone who cannot predict history should be so cautious.

"Dialogram, control group test", what a classic and efficient business decision.

So he would not think of upgrading the Motorola CPU for at least half a year, and to do the epoch-making design of horizontal scrolling, so he could only accept his fate.
Chapter completed!