Lil'lda is a company with several major capital shareholders, and its CEO can no longer easily control it completely.
He can make decisions within a certain range, but once he exceeds the boundaries set by these shareholders, they will immediately stop him and ask him to calm down.
However, he feels that they should be more aggressive and not stop there.
Increasing the price a bit is completely fine; after all, it's a combination of a phone and a handheld console, so it's normal for it to be more expensive than a regular phone.
But the shareholders obviously don't think so. They consider more factors and believe that they have eaten more salt than the CEO has eaten rice, so it's right to listen to them.
Be honest and don't be too radical.
The CEO of Lil'lda is somewhat helpless about this. If they don't increase the production cost, the yield rate will definitely not improve in the short term, and the loss will still be his.
But at least this product has won the favor of some people, so they can only find ways to promote the product first. Then, after achieving certain results, they can focus on ensuring the quality in the future.
At the same time, sales of all Lil'lda products have increased slightly.
With investment from several large capital firms, they can directly spend on a lot of advertising, almost boosting their products to the sky.
This time, it's not just the major department stores exaggerating their promotion; Lil'lda itself is doing the same.
Takayuki, who is busy wrapping up things at Metroid, only learned about this a few days after Lil'lda released the product.
When he learned that Lil'lda and a telecommunications company had jointly produced a handheld device that can make phone calls, he felt a bit magical.
He didn't expect the world to also consider researching the path of mobile phone consoles.
However, Takayuki, who had experienced the development trend of the technological era, knew that this path was not feasible.
In the past, whether it was Nokia or Sony's self-developed mobile phone consoles, they all eventually faded into obscurity and did not make much impact. They ended up as playthings for collectors.
It's not that the quality of the product itself is poor, or that the quality of the games logged into these phone consoles is poor, but they were just ahead of their time.
Mobile games may indeed be one of the futures of the gaming industry, but that's only after 2016. Before that, any mobile game was still struggling to escape the short, fast, simple, and rough style of gaming.
Before that, more users still simply used their phones as communication tools. Players who liked games would prefer the specialization of handheld consoles to avoid the annoyance of receiving a call or message while playing a game.
And those accustomed to phones would not even consider such a weird thing as a mobile phone console, which looks like a handheld console but also like a phone, like a four-legged creature with no clear identity.
Takayuki didn't know that Lil'lda was restricted by shareholders from letting the cost get too high.
If he knew, he would also think that those shareholders were reasonable.
If they really spent money recklessly, they would lose as much as they spent.
Lil'lda's move was akin to paying tuition fees for a lesson, and he felt that this thing wouldn't pose too much of a threat.
So he didn't worry about it anymore and continued to focus on the final development work of Metroid 3.
As February ended and March began, more news about Metroid 3 began to emerge, from gameplay to the beginning of the story, teasing the players' appetites.
Finally, in the eager anticipation of players, the release date of Metroid 3 was officially announced on March 15th, and the mass production of cartridges had begun preparations about two months ago.
Because the cartridges are specially manufactured, they also contain a chip to enhance the performance of the SFC, so the production cycle of the cartridges is much longer than before.
At the same time, Takayuki also needed to consider the initial production quantity of cartridges.
In the end, he decided to be more generous and not too conservative.
Since they already had a considerable player base, achieving sales of millions would definitely be possible. So he decided to make more cartridges at the beginning. If they had to hold inventory, they would hold inventory. He didn't really care much about the short-term gains and losses of this game.
And American and Japanese players, upon learning the official release date, were very excited.
This time, the game was released simultaneously in both regions to ensure that every player who wanted to experience it first wouldn't be spoiled.
At the same time, Takayuki also arranged various security preparations.
Previous experiences with the release of Dragon Quest and other popular games had proven one thing.
Popular games indeed had a different kind of magic; they could drive many players crazy.
This also reminded him of the days when he waited for games to be released.
Sometimes, he was even willing to buy digital versions of games in advance just to get a taste a few days earlier, and then he would spend extra money to buy a physical copy for collection.
And in this era, the internet had only just emerged for a few years and was not as developed as it would be in the future. It was still somewhat unrealistic to forcefully push out digital versions of games. Physical cartridges were still of utmost importance.
And then, the time came on March 15th, the official release day of Metroid.
In Japan, every sales point where you could buy Metroid 3 had long queues.
Especially in company-owned stores, people had started camping in tents about three or four days ago, waiting in line to buy the game. This had even become a symbol of the release of a game by Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
Any game released by Gamestar Electronic Entertainment would inevitably attract many people staying up all night in line.
At first, this behavior made the Japanese government nervous for a while.
Because of the previous brawl incident involving Dragon Quest 3, this matter also affected the Japanese government's side. But fortunately, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment handled it properly and quickly calmed down the situation. However, the Japanese government still worried about causing worse accidents.
But later, after several series of game releases, with the number of participants growing larger each time, there had been no more serious incidents. This made the Japanese government quite satisfied.
The industry self-regulated, reducing the need for excessive intervention or involvement from them, making things easier for them and also making them friendlier towards electronic games.
This was something Takayuki had always emphasized.
In the previous life, electronic games had caused many negative impacts, leading to electronic games being scapegoated multiple times.
So Takayuki could only try to avoid such incidents as much as possible based on his experience in the previous life, allowing electronic games to develop healthily in the early stages.
As for the later stages, he couldn't control them anymore.