"Alright, everyone, get ready, we are now starting the countdown to the broadcast. Ten, nine, eight..."
In front of the network monitor, Takayuki stared at the screen intently. The data traffic to the community was once again skyrocketing.
Originally, the active user count was only a hundred thousand, but now it had suddenly doubled.
At a time when the internet was just emerging, having over two hundred thousand internet users simultaneously accessing a community forum was already remarkable.
This once again proved the appeal of GameStar Entertainment.
"Seven, six, five..."
Beside Takayuki, Tsukino Ayame sat alone in one place.
She too stared at the screen without blinking, but her task was even more critical.
Whether it was someone scheming in the shadows or random events, the frequency of attacks on the forum had increased significantly today, seemingly aiming to overwhelm the forum.
However, these kinds of network DDOS attacks were trivial for Tsukino Ayame. She just had to stay focused and prevent any accidents.
In just half an hour before the broadcast, the forum had been attacked over a thousand times.
"Four, three, two..."
At this moment, players had also gathered around their TVs or computers. Some even made appointments to watch the live event together, just like watching a sports game, they were that focused.
"One! Broadcast begins!"
Ding, ding, ding~
To the familiar tune of GameStar Entertainment, Tokyo Television, the Facebook community live site, and Tokyo Television's affiliated internet live sites almost simultaneously broadcasted the event.
The real-time visitor count had reached three hundred thousand, with an astonishing viewership rating of twenty-three percent.
Nowadays, television media was gradually declining, but just a live broadcast event related to electronic games attracted a viewership rating of twenty-three percent. Other major television stations in Japan had long envied such a phenomenon.
Since GameStar Entertainment's partnership with Tokyo Television, both sides had reaped great benefits, which also made other major television stations jealous.
Because initially, they had vehemently opposed the promotion of electronic games on television.
They thought that as long as they could stop the momentum of electronic games, their television stations would still have a good future.
However, when they focused on dealing with electronic games, they didn't realize that the internet was the real killer of viewership ratings.
Electronic games were slowly attracting users' viewership.
And the proliferation of the internet directly slashed television viewership ratings.
By the time several major television stations realized this, it was already too late.
It was only at the moment of this live event broadcast that the top executives of other major television stations finally felt some regret.
If they had known, they wouldn't have tried so hard to hinder the development of electronic games.
In that case, they could have at least earned some dividends from electronic games.
But regrets were now useless.
And today's main event was, of course, the live event itself.
Players, industry peers, and even some people who joined in out of curiosity due to the hype were all watching this broadcast.
First appearing on the screen was the iconic logo of GameStar Entertainment.
However, the style of GameStar Entertainment's logo had changed slightly this time.
The previous color scheme was richer, while the current logo was flatter and more simplified.
The simple and plain style had already begun to be widely welcomed, so GameStar Entertainment naturally made some changes to keep up with the trend.
As soon as the logo disappeared, one of the debut games from GBA, "WarioWare: Twisted!" appeared.
"WarioWare: Twisted!" was essentially a collection of various quirky mini-games.
There were many strange gameplay mechanics inside.
Using the built-in gyroscope in the cartridge, the game allowed players to slice apples by shaking the console, help a man shave by swinging it left and right, or even play the violin by rocking it back and forth.
In addition to these, shaking the console could also switch between different games, truly integrating the gyroscope into the gameplay and binding it deeply with the game's depth.
"WarioWare: Twisted!" had a unique and peculiar art style, like an ocean of endless creativity. Each mini-game seemed inconspicuous at first glance, but once you played them, you would be attracted by their unique gameplay.
This game could be said to be a showcase of GameStar Entertainment's creativity, presenting all kinds of strange and quirky ideas in one go.
Through this game, outsiders and industry insiders could roughly understand GameStar Entertainment's magical train of thought and realize that perhaps only such a magical train of thought could continuously create various new game genres and lead the entire electronic game industry.
Many players were interested in this game, but even more interested were the game developers.
They realized for the first time that this might be a product to peek into GameStar Entertainment's development direction, and maybe they could learn something from it?
Of course, truly learning something from it might not be easy.
Takayuki made games to serve players; how could he think about game developers while making a game?
The previous live demos had not really showcased the charm of this game; they had only shown a tip of the iceberg. This promotion was more comprehensive, finally allowing people to understand the full picture of the game.
Meanwhile, the number of posts on the forum was also rapidly increasing.
They were all surprised at the simplicity and straightforwardness of this live event.
Just start with showing the videos, without too much unnecessary chatter. They liked this straightforward approach.
Many products in the past had summaries full of long-winded speeches at their launch events, talking about how great they were, what features they had, how much effort they had put in, and even bringing in a large group of seemingly like-minded researchers to talk about the difficulties they had encountered in the development process and how they had overcome them.
However, for users, they weren't really interested in these details.
They were more focused on the price and release date.
If you started by announcing the date and price, the attention of this launch event would definitely drop by ninety percent, and the retention rate would be as low as one in ten.
"WarioWare: Twisted!" would be sold simultaneously with the release of GBA. If purchased as a bundle, special gifts from the stores would be given, serving as a kind of commemoration while also promoting the sales of both the game and the console.
The video for "WarioWare: Twisted!" lasted for about five minutes, showcasing almost all of its gameplay content, before moving on to the next game preview.