Traveling through the Tokyo bubble era

Chapter 888 Video Games, Welcome Sony

After the first dinner after arriving in Las Vegas, Hideki Hanyu, who had given a big pep talk to the top management of Elf Entertainment, finally returned to the MGM Hotel where he had booked a reservation.

On the way back to the hotel, Hideki Hanyu felt that Akina Nakamori looked at him strangely.

After entering the hotel room, while the little fairy was changing clothes, he pulled Akina Nakamori and asked, "What's wrong with you? You keep looking at me weirdly."

But the next moment, Akina Nakamori responded in an admiring tone, "You were so charming just now."

"Huh?" Hanyu Hideki looked puzzled, not knowing what Xiaopangcai was up to.

Akina Nakamori took the initiative to hug Hanyu Hideki's waist, snuggled into Hanyu Hideki's arms, raised her head, and spoke as if there were stars in her eyes.

"When you just told them to believe in you, I really liked your confidence. You are more amazing than anyone else."

"Yeah……?"

Hanyu Hideki thought, I was cheering for those Elf Entertainment managers, but accidentally I ended up hurting innocent people and also captured Akina Nakamori.

Really, the downside of being too charming is that women will fall in love with him if you are not careful.

Fortunately, the people having dinner together today were all acquaintances. If there were girls with whom he had no relationship, he might have been involved in more romantic affairs.

"Of course." Nakamori Akina affirmed.

"Since you like it, you should show it well."

During the time he spent with Zhou Huimin in Vancouver, Hanyu Hideki was in a state of complete abstinence, which was definitely an unspeakable torture for a scumbag with strong sexual desires.

He had been holding it in for a long time, and now with a beauty in his arms, how could he endure it any longer? While talking, he started to get entangled with Akina Nakamori.

A moment later, the little elf, who had just changed her clothes, walked out and saw Hideki Hanyu and Akina Nakamori doing something indescribable on the sofa in the living room of the suite.

Immediately, he said in dissatisfaction, "I agreed to come back to play in the casino, but you did this and you didn't even wait for me."

Of course, despite the complaints, it did not affect the little goblin's decisiveness in joining in.

In this way, Hideki Hanyu's first day in Las Vegas got off to a pleasant start.

……

The next day, April 26th.

The day before the opening of the sixth E3 exhibition.

After a tiring night, Akina Nakamori and the little elf were still sleeping, but Hideki Hanyu had already set off for the E3 exhibition and inspected the Elf Entertainment booth with others.

As the absolute overlord of today's electronic game market, Elf Entertainment's booth at the exhibition is also the most eye-catching one.

The exhibition area with a sci-fi design is divided into several different areas.

There are EGP arcade exhibition area, Pokemon handheld exhibition area, electronic pet and Pokémon Fight exhibition area, and other product exhibition areas.

Of course, there is also a mysterious exhibition area that is hidden and not opened, which is naturally the second-generation PS console that has been brewing for many years.

The official name of this console is PlaySystem 2, abbreviated as PS2.

Such a concise name that continues the previous generation of PS consoles is naturally for the convenience of consumers to remember and to more easily associate it with the first generation of PS consoles, thereby enhancing the marketing effect.

Faced with this finalized name, Hideki Hanyu was very curious. With the name PS already taken, if the new product jointly developed by Sony and Nintendo is really a console, what will it be called?

But don't worry, because we will know tomorrow.

As the organizer of the E3 exhibition and one of the initiators of the American Video Game Software Association, it was quite easy for Hideki Hanyu to know some arrangements of this year's E3 exhibition through Game Base Publishing.

For example, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s media conference, like that of Genie Entertainment, was scheduled on the opening day.

However, Elf Entertainment's product was first launched at the highly anticipated opening ceremony, and it was the first manufacturer to hold a media conference at this E3 exhibition.

As for Sony's media conference, it was scheduled for the afternoon when attention had declined.

Such an arrangement naturally requires his secret operation.

Although he is not worried about the threat from Sony, he will not ignore his own advantages.

With Hideki Hanyu's influence in the American Game Software Association, he can certainly arrange Sony's media conference before Genie Entertainment's, and then wait for Sony to make the first move, and Genie Entertainment can then take advantage of the situation and respond accordingly.

But as the great man said, we should despise the enemy strategically and take the enemy seriously tactically.

The first thing Hideki Hanyu needs to do is to strategically despise Sony.

Since Elf Entertainment is already the dominant player in the electronic game market, it should act like a dominant company and confidently unveil its first next-generation console, which has been in preparation for three years, for everyone to see.

If Elf Entertainment gives up the advantage of being the first to market just for a little bit of latecomer advantage and loses the ambition to look down on its peers, what qualifications does it have to be the boss?
As for tactics...

Sony is very powerful and is the world leader in consumer electronics, but when it comes to the small business of video games, it still has to rely on Elf Entertainment.

After all, Hideki Hanyu’s planning over the years was not in vain.

Since Game Base Publishing House went public, the huge amount of funds raised in the stock market has all been used for continuous expansion.

Today, the global gaming media, major gaming-related exhibitions, and almost all awards in the industry are either directly hosted by his media or indirectly controlled by the media he invests in.

Organizers, co-organizers, referees, judges, media inside and outside the venue...

These are all his people, so how can Sony fight him?
At Sony's media conference tomorrow, if there is even a single problem with the new product, the media will criticize it to the point of devaluation.

If there are major problems, then Hideki Hanyu can only say that Sony should just wait to be criticized.

Business competition is so direct and ruthless.

How could he continue to be polite and gentle when others came to mess up the place?

Even if there is, it is just for show to outsiders.

But in places where we can't see, I'm afraid the bayonets have already drawn blood.

After visiting the exhibition area of ​​Elf Entertainment, Hideki Hanyu discussed the details of the opening of tomorrow's E3 exhibition with a group of Elf Entertainment executives in the exhibition area.

The senior executives of Elf Entertainment who were present today were not the same people who were at the Japanese restaurant last night.

With the launch of epoch-making strategic products, the importance of this E3 exhibition to Elf Entertainment is self-evident, so the top management of Elf Entertainment can be said to have come out in full force.

North American Region, European Region... At the Neon headquarters, all the executives gathered together, listening to the arrangements of the big boss Hideki Hanyu in the exhibition area.

As time approached noon, Hideki Hanyu, who had said almost the same thing as everyone else, decided to take a look around the site before the exhibition opened to understand the current situation of the game market.

After all, by tomorrow the venue will definitely be filled with game enthusiasts flocking to the scene. It will not be easy for Hideki Hanyu, a well-known figure and game production master, to wander around the exhibition.

When Hideki Hanyu travels, the senior executives of Elf Entertainment will naturally accompany him. By the way, the Elf Entertainment management from different regions will introduce exhibitors from different regions.

However, the visit had just begun, and Hideki Hanyu soon discovered that the more exhibitors he visited, the larger the group of people following him became.

At the beginning, they were just a group of senior executives of Elf Entertainment.

But gradually, those exhibitors who discovered his arrival at the scene or whose booths he visited all followed him.

The reason why these people did this was simple, which was to "please" him, the emperor of Elf Entertainment.

After all, to be frank, it would be a bit of an exaggeration to say that all the game manufacturers that can now come to the E3 exhibition rely on the platform of Elf Entertainment to do business.

But if we remove every other one, there will definitely be some that slip through the net.

Saying two-thirds is a bit conservative, and saying three-quarters is not an exaggeration.

What does it mean to be the overlord of the video game market?
Look at the group of senior executives from industry companies following Hideki Hanyu.

Today's Elf Entertainment deserves it.

In terms of the comprehensiveness of its business scope and its overall dominance in the industry, it has actually surpassed Nintendo from another time and space.

So when Hideki Hanyu walked around the exhibition site, a large group of people soon followed him.

Although some manufacturers have no intention of trying to please Hideki Hanyu, the problem is that when one manufacturer does so, others have no choice but to follow suit.

Although Hanyu Hideki doesn't care about these things, when things have developed to this point and everyone is acting in unison, everyone is thinking that if you follow, there may be no benefits, but if you don't follow, you might be hated.

Perhaps Hideki Hanyu doesn't even need to do anything. The management of each major region will take the initiative to make things difficult for them in order to please Hideki Hanyu.

When a company grows big, it will become like this.

The boss is comparable to an ancient king.

Although it is a modern enterprise, its internal structure is sometimes more feudal than that of ancient dynasties.

This is also one of the reasons why many large companies are called empires and their controllers or bosses are called tyrants.

The situation in Europe and the United States is slightly better, but it is most serious in Asia.

When Hideki Hanyu was in Japan and South Korea, he knew that many business owners would ask all important senior executives to report on their work at home in the morning, just like ancient ministers going to court.

For example, Lee Gun-sik of Samsung likes to do this very much.

Sometimes, this is due to the boss's personality, but in more cases, it is "cultivated" by the subordinates' unconditional flattery and fawning.

Seeing that more and more people were following him, although Hanyu Hideki was unhappy, he did not want to embarrass everyone in public, so he had no choice but to end the tour early.

But just before he was about to announce his departure, he suddenly saw a group of people walking towards him.

Coincidentally, the two companies that came over were the most feared rivals of Elf Entertainment at the E3 Expo, the combination of Sony and Nintendo.

There were seven or eight people on the opposite side, and they seemed to have just arrived at the venue.

The leader was a middle-aged man of short stature and ordinary appearance.

Hanyu Hideki knew the other party. Many years ago, when Elf Entertainment first brought electronic pets to the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he met Ken Kutaragi at the Sony exhibition area.

Many years later, he led Genie Entertainment to become the leader in the video game industry.

And as if from another time and space, Ken Kutaragi became the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

However, in another time and space, the company founded by Sony was originally called Sony Computer Entertainment Co., Ltd., and was renamed Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2016. This time and space was directly named this name, and it was probably caused by the flapping of his wings.

As for why Hideki Hanyu knew that the team in front of him was a combination of Sony and Nintendo.

That's because following closely behind Ken Kutaragi is Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi's son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, who is also the president of Nintendo's North American division.

This rich kid with a background in Marubeni Corporation helped Nintendo build a huge empire in North America in another time and space. In many people's minds, he was originally the successor to Yamauchi Hiroshi.

The surprising result was that Arakawa Minoru lost the battle for succession with Iwata Satoru and did not receive the recognition of his father-in-law Yamauchi Hiroshi.

However, in this time and space, Arakawa Minoru doesn't have to worry about this problem.

After all, Satoru Iwata was accepted by Hideki Hanyu to Pokemon Entertainment very early on. At the age of 30, he was in charge of the huge Pokemon Entertainment empire. He was hailed as the youngest and most successful professional manager in the world by Japanese and overseas media. It is impossible for him to return to Nintendo and compete with Minoru Arakawa for the position of president.

After all, the Nintendo of this time and space has been completely ruined by Hideki Hanyu.

This can be seen from the positions of Arakawa Minoru and Kutaragi Ken in front of us.

You know, in Neon, whether you are walking or standing, the spacing between people is very important.

Kutaragi Ken was leading the way, but Arakawa was always one or two steps behind him, showing his attitude of following Kutaragi Ken's lead.

From this, it is not difficult to guess what position Nintendo occupies in this cooperation with Sony.

It is obvious that Sony is the main focus and Sony is the only one who follows its lead.

The powerful Nintendo in the previous life, which was halfway through its cooperation with Sony but dared to switch to Philips and let Sony down, is unlikely to appear again in this time and space because of the existence of Elf Entertainment.

And just when Hideki Hanyu discovered Ken Kutaragi and Minoru Arakawa and their group.

Ken Kutaragi and Minoru Arakawa also discovered Hideki Hanyu.

Well...it's really hard not to notice.

At the empty exhibition site that had not yet opened, Hideki Hanyu's handsome face walking towards us was already eye-catching enough.

There was a large group of people following behind Hideki Hanyu, which made him even more eye-catching.

Ken Kutaragi carefully identified and found that except for the executives of Elf Entertainment, all of them were executives of companies in the gaming industry.

There is no need to guess, they must be the exhibitors of this event.

Looking at Hanyu Hideki and so many people walking towards him in a mighty manner, a huge sense of oppression instantly surged into Kutaragi Ken's heart.

If it were in the past, perhaps Kutaragi Ken would not have had this feeling.

But now Sony and Nintendo have joined forces and are preparing to enter the game market, becoming direct competitors to Hideki Hanyu's Pokemon Entertainment.

When facing Elf Entertainment again at this time, Ken Kutaragi finally felt what pressure was.

Such a large group of people in front of us is not just about numbers, but also represents the ecology of the entire gaming industry.

After the Sony board of directors decided to establish Sony Interactive Entertainment under the lobbying of Ken Kutaragi and officially enter the video game industry.

Ken Kutaragi conducted an in-depth investigation and understanding of the industry.

Then he realized that a high-performance console is important, but if the console wants to form a platform, the game itself is more important.

The vast majority of game consumers buy consoles for the sake of playing games, rather than buying games after buying a console.

After all, no matter how good a console is, it needs games to present it.

So after Sony Interactive Entertainment was established, Ken Kutaragi began to contact game development companies in the industry, offering various favorable conditions in an effort to allow developers to develop and distribute games on Sony's console platform.

In another time and space, Sony's PS1 console had excellent performance and outstanding 3D technology, which attracted many game developers who were ambitious in gaming.

In addition to actively contacting developers in the industry, Sony also acquired and established its own first-party game development company, gradually consolidating its gaming empire.

In addition, the "royalty" system adopted by Nintendo at the time, although its starting point was to ensure the quality of platform games, eventually became an important means for Nintendo to exploit third-party developers.

Therefore, when Sony offered more favorable conditions, it was natural that a large number of third parties defected from Nintendo.

However, in this time and space, when Sony Interactive Entertainment was established, Ken Kutaragi once again used the same method, such as better-performing consoles and more favorable cooperation treatment, to attract game developers in the industry, but ended up with a complete failure.

The reason why Ken Kutaragi failed was that the Pokemon Entertainment in this time and space and the Nintendo in another time and space seemed the same, but they were completely different things.

First, in terms of host performance.

Although the new products Sony prepared for this year's E3 exhibition are the product of a strong collaboration between Sony, which has strong technical R&D capabilities, and Nintendo, which is experienced.

But the problem is that Elf Entertainment, led by time traveler Hideki Hanyu, started developing new products three years ago.

With his experience and knowledge as a time traveler, Hideki Hanyu helped the new product bypass all detours and avoid all mistakes, and determined the 3D route from the beginning of the design.

Even on the graphics processing chip that cooperates with Shenling Vision, the quad rendering that Huang insisted on was forcibly corrected to triangular filling.

In addition to error correction, Hideki Hanyu also provided inspiration for many mature functions and accessories for the new console.

For example, joysticks, a new generation of progressive scan peripheral light gun technology, stereo sound output, and dedicated anti-theft game CDs...

Even the vibration function of the next-generation handle and the idea of ​​somatosensory control have been handed over to engineers by Hideki Hanyu to be implemented as an upgrade concept for subsequent consoles.

In addition, while developing the console, Hideki Hanyu is also conducting basic research and development for the next generation of Phantom handheld game consoles.

All in all, it is because of the existence of Hideki Hanyu that the second-generation PS console can almost be called a perfect product in this era.

That's why, after seeing what a perfect strategic product is, the developers who have participated in the internal confidential meeting of Elf Entertainment, when they heard Sony say how excellent their console is, many of them didn't even bother to understand it and just smiled with disdain.

What's more, at the beginning, Sony's so-called high-performance console was just a "PPT" that could only be introduced with data.

After the host's performance failed to attract people, Ken Kutaragi could only use favorable cooperation conditions to attract people.

From the outside, it seems that Elf Entertainment is also imitating Nintendo, setting up a royalty system, and using this system to exploit game developers.

However, only developers who have cooperated with Elf Entertainment know that the royalty system of Elf Entertainment is fundamentally different from that of Nintendo.

For the latter, game developers can only passively bear it. They are indeed being exploited because they cannot make their own decisions freely.

But for the former, all developers who have worked with it will feel that this system is more of a protection.

Having learned from Nintendo's lessons, Hideki Hanyu understands that "royalties", a product of the times, will eventually be eliminated by the times.

Therefore, from the very beginning, he never thought about making money by relying on power.

After years of evolution and improvement, Elf Entertainment's "royalty" system has become very mature and complete.

There are so many clauses and they are so complicated that it is impossible to explain them clearly in a few words.

In short, everyone just needs to understand that the "royalty" system of Elf Entertainment, while maintaining the game developers' right to free choice, can also rely on sales decline and reward systems to encourage game developers to produce better game products.

With the release of the PS 2 console, Elf Entertainment also updated the "royalties", giving developers more freedom while gradually eliminating the restrictions of the royalty system.

All of these are actually Hanyu Hideki's way of gradually downplaying the historical product of the "royalty" system.

Today, as long as Elf Entertainment can continue to maintain the advantages of its platform, it will be able to make a lot of money, so there is no need to excessively exploit game developers.

So Ken Kutaragi's Sony Interactive Entertainment failed once again in the "bribe".

After Ken Kutaragi discovered that he could not attract third parties with consoles and profits, Sony thought about establishing its own first-party game developer through acquisitions.

However, Ken Kutaragi soon discovered that most of the game studios in the industry that had some potential but had not yet risen were enjoying the support plan from Elf Entertainment.

When Ken Kutaragi learned more about Elf Entertainment's support plan, his first reaction was whether Hideki Hanyu had money and nowhere to spend it?

During the years since Elf Entertainment was founded, this support program has almost always been based on the style of rather killing the wrong ones than letting them go, continuously spending real money, and even though most of them have not made any profit, the program has never been stopped.

Ken Kutaragi only made a rough calculation and found that Elf Entertainment had spent at least over $100 million on this project, and possibly even more.

This amount of money is more than the R&D cost of their new console.

If this kind of loss-making plan were put to Sony's board of directors, it would probably be stopped as soon as it was implemented.

But look at it from Ken Kutaragi's perspective.

By continuously spending money over the years, Elf Entertainment has incubated many successful developers, while also building a moat for itself in the gaming industry that gives competitors a lot of headaches.

For example, Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, is having a headache.

This resulted in Sony Interactive Entertainment, after all its efforts, only buying a few small companies that even Pokemon Entertainment didn't even fancy.

Host performance competition, inducement for cooperation, and acquisition plans all failed...

It was even some of these failures that brought Sony and Nintendo together.

Other failures after the cooperation with Nintendo also made Sony and Nintendo more closely tied together.

Thinking of this, Kutaragi Ken also understood that the people behind Hanyu Hideki who almost represented the entire electronic game industry today were the ones who brought him unprecedented pressure at this moment.

It was Hideki Hanyu who created all this, walked up to him with a smile and slowly extended his hand to him.

"Kutaragi-san, long time no see."

"Long time no see, President Hanyu."

Kutaragi Ken stretched out his hand and shook hands with Hanyu Hideki.

Recalling his first meeting with Hideki Hanyu at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Ken Kutaragi could never have imagined that a small company that could only set up a booth in a remote corner of the exhibition hall would grow into what it is today under the leadership of the young people before him.

The two men shook hands lightly and then separated, and Hanyu Hideki pretended to be stunned.

"Sorry, I almost forgot. I should address you as President Kutaragi."

After saying this, Hideki Hanyu looked at Ken Kutaragi meaningfully with his star-like eyes.

"Video games, welcome Sony."

(End of this chapter)