In the following years, Japanese car companies faced various obstacles and pressures from the outside world.
During that era, Japanese cars were synonymous with good quality and affordability.
However, because they were too affordable, it led to a high trade surplus, which had a huge impact on employment in the United States, triggering nationwide protests. Eventually, Japanese car companies couldn't withstand the pressure, succumbed to pressure in the United States, built factories there to provide jobs for Americans, and resorted to various compromises such as imposing export restrictions and canceling domestic tariffs, which was quite humiliating.
Subsequently, Japanese car companies entered a long period of decline, and their sales in the United States never recovered to their previous levels.
But in fact, those car companies had always been ambitious and eager to regain their footing, but they lacked channels.
During that time in the United States, even their advertisements had to undergo strict scrutiny to ensure they wouldn't affect American interests.
Later, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment took the initiative to approach these car companies, stating that their video games would be released in the United States, and if they could obtain their authorization, they would also benefit from it, essentially helping with publicity.
At that time, these Japanese car companies didn't take it too seriously, but they saw it as an advertising channel and even waived the authorization fee, agreeing to let Takayuki use their trademarks in video games.
Then, the hundreds of thousands of sales of Need for Speed immediately reminded Americans of Japanese cars once again.
According to recent sales data from several Japanese car companies in the past month or two, their sales percentages have all increased by at least forty-five percent.
This was a pleasant surprise for them, as they hadn't expected such a valuable return from an inadvertent investment.
And of course, the savvy Germans noticed this too.
They had always been good at business, with strong market insights.
Moreover, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had approached them before, so they naturally paid close attention.
When they saw that Japanese car companies seemed to be generally increasing their sales in the United States, they immediately set their sights on Gamestar Electronic Entertainment and offered to authorize their car brands to appear in Need for Speed for free, hoping to take advantage of the opportunity for publicity.
Takayuki originally thought that this matter would take at least half a year to ferment, but he didn't expect them to be so sharp.
Or perhaps most people in this world were more sensitive in business and creation, as evidenced by the more developed film and television markets in Japan compared to the past life.
Takayuki naturally had no reason to refuse this request.
If a racing game lacked the authorization of authentic car brands, its influence and sales would be greatly reduced in the future. In the world of Gun Cars Ball, guns, cars, and teams must all be consistent with reality, which was also the experience of success in the future.
Takayuki readily agreed to the request, as the free authorization was too good to pass up.
Takayuki even wanted to sign a ten or twenty-year authorization contract directly.
However, the other party was cunning, agreeing only to a free authorization for three years. Beyond that, a new contract would need to be negotiated, which disappointed Takayuki somewhat.
Then he promised to slightly increase the attention given to their car brands in the upcoming Need for Speed 2, of course, ranking them behind Japanese car companies.
After all, they were latecomers, and they had previously underestimated the promotional power of video games. Now that they realized it was profitable, they wanted to join in, so they had to be put in a lower position.
The spokesperson for Rein Brothers was quite easy to talk to, only asking Takayuki to include their car brands in the game. They didn't bring up any other requests.
This was quite a savvy move.
As for some other well-known car companies, they naturally noticed the reasons behind the increase in sales of Japanese car companies. However, they seemed to be reluctant to take the initiative and wait for Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, a small gaming company, to approach them.
Takayuki wasn't in a hurry to approach such companies either; he would wait for them just as they were waiting for Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
Takayuki stayed in the United States for about half a month, witnessing the arrival of forty to fifty energetic new employees at the US branch, and then delegated some of the game development tasks targeting the US to them before returning to Japan.
The main reason he returned to Japan was that the development progress of Final Fantasy V had reached halfway, and he needed to supervise it, as well as the parallel development of the new trilogy of Dragon Quest.
Apart from Mario, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were the two series that Takayuki valued the most at present.
It was currently the heyday of role-playing games, and if they missed this period, the popularity of both games would immediately decline, and future game sales would be greatly reduced.
As for The Legend of Zelda, Takayuki planned to wait until the release of the new console before producing classic works such as Skyward Sword and Dream Island.
For now, he needed to stabilize Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which were both half-year projects.
Previously, Final Fantasy 3 and 4 had landed on the GB and SFC platforms respectively, and their sales in Japan had been quite good, reaching nearly a million copies by now.
Moreover, Final Fantasy was also very popular in the United States, even more so than Dragon Quest, indicating that the future potential of Final Fantasy would be even stronger.
Apart from supervising game production, Takayuki also needed to continue pushing the development speed of Japanese game companies.
With just his own company, it was absolutely impossible to meet the demands of players.
Takayuki needed more and more game companies to grow.
If an industry only had one leader, it would be extremely abnormal and not conducive to overall development.
Now, under Takayuki's leadership, Japanese game companies were bursting forth like mushrooms after rain, and the variety of electronic games was increasing with time.
Last year, the average number of games logged in monthly on the SFC and FC game consoles was only about a dozen or twenty.
In the previous life in 2020, just the computer platform STEAM alone logged over ten thousand games annually.
Compared to this scale, there was still a long way to go.
And this year, there was a significant increase in the number of game logins in the third month, reaching a level where there were over thirty games logged in per month.
Moreover, each game was of high quality, with ratings generally remaining above three stars.
This once again elevated the overall standard of the SFC, essentially telling players that they could blindly buy SFC games.
If there was a type of game you weren't interested in, it didn't mean there weren't any fun games.
Under Takayuki's absolute leadership, the entire Japanese market was dominated by him, and other companies developing consoles could only drink soup on the sidelines.
After all, the solid sales figures were there; as long as a game was logged in by Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, it would definitely sell.