In Huaxia, the game magazines sold quite well at first, becoming a trend for a while, but Takayuki was not very sure about their sales in Japan.
However, Takayuki vaguely remembered that after the rise of games in Japan in the 1980s, game strategy guides became treasures for many people.
Some highly popular games even had separate strategy guidebooks.
If you asked him what the best-selling game strategy guidebook was, he couldn't quite remember, but he did recall that one of his favorite games, Final Fantasy 7, sold over thirteen million copies, and the game strategy guidebook sold millions as well.
So, this might also be a good business, and it could indeed be one of the means to increase player retention.
A magazine specifically for game promotion, and with Takayuki's current prolific output, game magazines seemed to have real potential.
"Veteran gamers are enthusiastic about collecting everything about games, including behind-the-scenes stories, the latest game news, and so on, so don't worry about no one reading it. Therefore, please provide the latest information to the Spring Magazine as much as possible. The Spring Magazine will do its best to help any third party joining Gamestar Entertainment, assisting in promotion to make more money and gain more popularity."
At this point, many people were already somewhat intrigued; evidently, this sounded quite reasonable.
Some also remembered the key words in Takayuki's speech, such as Ishimura Mino.
"President Takayuki, did you just say that the game magazine is just one part of the expansion plan?"
"Yes, besides this, there are other promotion channels, such as the internet. However, for now, this can only be placed behind the game magazine, but in the future, this channel will definitely be crucial."
Game magazines would eventually be phased out in the future, but the internet would undoubtedly dominate.
It was like staking out territory early, taking advantage of the internet's rise to establish a specialized game recommendation channel, making things easier in the future.
It wasn't easy for him alone to build such a promotion platform because there were only so many games, but with more people involved, it would be different.
This was another move by Takayuki to recruit more people and bolster the scene.
The internet?
Oh, that was indeed secondary for now.
At this point in time, the internet was just starting to gain traction.
It hadn't fully matured yet, so they didn't pay much attention to it.
"In the future, the monthly magazine will focus on game strategies, behind-the-scenes stories, and some exclusive insider news. Additionally, I plan to establish a new platform on the internet, mainly for releasing the latest gameplay footage of games, allowing people to have a more intuitive experience of the game's visuals and gameplay. There will also be some video interviews in the future. Our company has already set up the website for this webpage, waiting for you to provide useful information and data."
Having an additional new promotional channel was always good. The representatives from Kubomoki and Wada were quite interested.
After the meeting ended, the representatives of the two companies stayed behind and shared some recent progress in game development and "underground news" with Ikeda Daigo.
In the next one to two months, the magazine would plan to publish its first issue, scheduled to coincide with the Red and White Machine reaching a million in sales.
This was also a symbolic celebration, and to celebrate the million sales of the Red and White Machine, Takayuki had also made some special preparations.
That was The Legend of Zelda, the first generation.
Before this, he had created the first RPG game, Dragon Quest.
Initially, it didn't receive a good response.
The main reason was that there weren't many people with the patience to get into it from the start. Most were drawn to games that provided more sensory stimulation.
But over time, players began to immerse themselves in the richer core of the game, and the highlights of Dragon Quest gradually emerged.
In addition to these, Takayuki also revamped the gameplay of Dragon Quest 1, adding more content without major modifications to the story, making it easier for players to immerse themselves.
Otherwise, with the slightly flawed gameplay of the first generation, it would be even harder to get players immersed.
Dragon Quest 1 allowed players to experience the charm of role-playing, and this time, Takayuki planned to let them experience another type of role-playing game.
The pioneer of action RPGs, The Legend of Zelda.
These types of games could also be called real-time action RPGs, where monsters didn't attack you in turns, but interacted with you in real-time. You needed to respond immediately, or the monsters would defeat you, increasing the urgency of the game.
Alternatively, you could think of it as Contra where you could level up and get equipment continuously, but The Legend of Zelda wasn't played in a scroll-like manner.
Moreover, apart from these, The Legend of Zelda also added decryption gameplay, letting players search for puzzles themselves, solve the secrets of the current level, and experience the thrill of cracking puzzles.
This was similar to reading detective novels. If you could solve the current problem before the characters in the novel did, you would also feel a sense of satisfaction.
Takayuki had been busy with this lately. It wasn't particularly difficult to do, but he wanted to do it patiently and well.
It was to celebrate the million sales of the Red and White Machine and to better showcase the charm of The Legend of Zelda to the world.
And, it was also to respond to Suirei Electronics' strong offensive.
Just a few days after Takayuki and the seventeen teams finished their meeting, Suirei Electronics had already taken action.
After a quiet period of three or four months, they spent a lot of money to launch a new offensive on television.
Fuji Kojin, CJK, Baide... More than ten Japanese companies with some reputation in the electronic software field collectively supported them, and they would release their electronic games or audiovisual software on Suirei Electronics' PN game console simultaneously.
Yes, if you wanted, PN could even be used as a karaoke machine.
Suirei Electronics was inspired by the gun-shaped controller from Takayuki Entertainment, realizing that controllers didn't necessarily have to have a specific shape. Unique controllers could serve some special purposes.
Since they couldn't temporarily get the gun-shaped controller due to patent restrictions, they simply developed a microphone controller. Designed by industrial giants, the microphone was small and exquisite, and it looked quite nice.
If you bought this microphone controller, it even included a game that was said to allow singing. In the TV commercial, the famous singer Nakamura Kaoru held the microphone controller and sang her most famous song loudly, sounding very moving in the ad. After the famous singer's song ended, a perfect score of 100 appeared on the screen, followed by a burst of brilliant fireworks celebrating the songstress, who also flashed a smile that could captivate all beings at the same time.
Then the image of the songstress gradually dimmed, and the full view of the microphone controller appeared on the TV screen, with big letters underneath saying: Officially on sale! Only 7000 yen to get the songstress's voice!
But that wasn't the end. After the advertisement for the microphone controller ended, suddenly another image appeared. Several products outlined with black borders were lined up from left to right, looping on the screen, while several big characters were written below the TV screen: Possess controllers with more infinite possibilities! Stay tuned!
This advertisement lasted a full three minutes, and there was not a single repetition in the three minutes, making it extremely high-capacity!
Takayuki was deeply impressed after watching this advertisement.
I didn't expect you, Suirei Electronics, to start selling controllers as peripherals? The train of thought at Suirei Electronics is quite intense!
Honestly, I hadn't thought of this route, at least not yet.
The people in this world truly lack no creativity and competitiveness.