"President, do you really want me to step in? Can I really walk in front of you? "Tajiri asked cautiously as they stood at the entrance of a building.
"Don't worry, I'm your secretary now!" Boss Jia laughed and said, "I know that you have a good relationship with some of the higher-ups in Nintendo. If you step in, it's much better than me!"
"I understand!" Tajiri nodded and heaved a sigh of relief. He then led Boss Jia into the Nintendo building.
After the game was completed, the most important thing was to pass Nintendo's review and release the game on Nintendo's GB platform.
This was very important to Boss Jia. Some people might find it strange. Didn't Boss Jia already have his own Brainiac? Why couldn't he release it on Brainiac? Why did he have to release it on Nintendo's GB platform? Wasn't this giving money to the Fusangpeople to earn?
Logically speaking, if Brainiac was popular all over the world, and there was a handheld version, Boss Jia would definitely choose to release it on Brainiac.
However, the problem was that Brainiac was only popular in Hua Xia. Boss Jia was very self-aware. At least before the next generation of game consoles came out, Boss Jia had no ability to compete with Nintendo for the chance to be the world's number one game console.
Therefore, Boss Jia now had to cooperate with Nintendo. He had to use Nintendo's hands to release the entire "Pokemon" to the world so that all Nintendo users could become "Pokemon" players. Then, when the next generation of consoles came, Boss Jia would have an interesting set of operations.
Therefore, it was very important to log into Nintendo now. No mistakes were allowed. Therefore, Boss Jia asked Tajiri to step in. He would only follow Tajiri and play the role of his secretary.
After all, in another era, this task was also completed by Tajiri. Therefore, Boss Jia tried his best not to flap the wings of this butterfly.
In the future, it was actually very simple to release a computer game. If it was a big company, they would have their own distribution channels.
If it was an independent small company, they could directly go to a gaming platform like Steam, register a developer account, and directly upload it to Steam through the Internet. Then, they just had to wait for the other party to review it, and they could directly use the Steam platform to publish it.
Steam's review process was very lax. Generally speaking, as long as it did not involve racial discrimination or serious cyanin, it would be able to pass the review and be put on the shelves.
However, if it was a console game, it would be a headache.
Especially in 1993, when Nintendo was the dominant company, it was even more troublesome to get it on the shelves.
First, you need to prove that you are a developer. Simply put, you need to pay a sum of money to Nintendo as collateral. You need to prove that you are a capable developer and not a company that will run away after selling the game. You need to prove that you are a capable developer and will not tarnish Nintendo's reputation.
It was like paying a deposit to the landlord when renting a house. If you tarnished Nintendo's reputation, Nintendo would deduct the deposit.
Well, theoretically speaking, if you don't continue developing the game for Nintendo, Nintendo will refund the money to you. But in reality, hehe, it will be more troublesome. Nintendo has 100 ways to deduct this sum of money from you.
Then, it was the review of the game. This process was very complicated, and it was divided into three stages.
The first stage was the stability review of the game. Nintendo would send out three to five staff members. Their task was to repeatedly play the game and come up with all kinds of tricks to determine the stability of the game and whether there would be a large number of malicious bugs.
There was nothing wrong with this review, but Nintendo will not pay the salaries of these three to five staff members. It is the developer's responsibility.
The second stage was the review by professional game editors. These two stages were actually the same. The three to five staff members are professional game editors. They will give the game a basic rating based on their experience in the game.
The full score is 100 points. If the game editors give the game a score of less than 60 points, the game will be stuck at the second stage.
The third stage was the review by Nintendo's higher-ups. Generally speaking, the head of the game publishing department will be responsible for the final review. As long as the head of the publishing department approves, the game's review will be completed.
However, it was said that Nintendo's chairman, Yamauchi Yamauchi, was very involved in this matter. 80% of the games were personally reviewed by Yamauchi Yamauchi. Without Yamauchi Yamauchi's approval, a game will not be released on Nintendo.
In Yamauchi Yamauchi's words, there is no need to care too much about the performance of the game console, as long as it is good enough.
What really determined the sales volume of a game console was the games in the console faction. Only interesting, stable, and high quality games could truly capture the market.
Yamauchi Yamauchi's thinking helped Nintendo defeat Sega and Atari. In the end, Nintendo became the king of the game console industry in the first half of the 90's.
Even many competitors had to admit that you could criticize Nintendo's game console for its poor performance, and you could criticize some of its games for being boring. However, you had to admit that most of Nintendo's games were interesting and of high quality.
And this also formed Nintendo's reputation for the past few decades. In this era, there was no such thing as Blizzard's products being the best products, because this image belonged to Nintendo.
It was thanks to Yamanouchi's high requirements for quality that Nintendo was able to succeed.
But everything was a double-edged sword. Yamanouchi's extremely high requirements for games caused great pain to the game developers in Nintendo's camp.
Can you imagine a game that took one or two years to develop, only to lose the opportunity to be published on the console because Yamanouchi said that it was too boring?
If it was a large game factory, it would be fine as they would be able to bear such a loss. However, if it was placed in front of a small independent game development company, this sentence would cause the entire company to go bankrupt in an instant.
Since he had been rejected by Nintendo, would he be able to try another brand of game console?
Of course, it can. But Yamauchi Yamauchi is known as a tyrant in the industry. From his name, you can hear how tyrannical Yamauchi Yamauchi is. If a third party game company dares to publish their games on other consoles, Yamauchi Yamauchi will immediately kick all of the company's games out of Nintendo's platform. Then, he will not allow the game company, or even the investors behind it, to publish any games on Nintendo's platform.
This kind of rule made all the third party game companies tremble in fear. Even if they were wronged and suffered such a loss, in order to stay on Nintendo's platform, they will carefully serve Yamauchi Yamauchi.
They have no choice. If they are rejected by Yamauchi Yamauchi, at most, they will lose a sum of money.
But if they are rejected by Nintendo's platform, the company will go bankrupt.
Of course, this kind of behavior doesn't matter when Nintendo is at its peak.
But when Nintendo starts to decline, and new competitors appear, it will be fatal.
For example, after Sony's PlayStation entered the market, they invested a lot of money to compete with Nintendo for the gaming market. The third party companies, who had been suppressed by Nintendo for a long time, betrayed Nintendo and joined Sony's camp. This caused Nintendo to almost go bankrupt.
Later, it was the stable performance of Pokemon and Super Mario, the two super ace game IPs, that withstood the pressure of GB and earned billions of dollars in profits for Nintendo, as well as tens of billions of dollars in derivative value. Otherwise, Nintendo would have really died.
Cough … back to the main topic.
At this time, when Boss Jia accompanied Tajiri to Nintendo for the review, they had already paid the deposit and had gone through the first and second steps of the review. They had already passed and were now waiting for the head of Nintendo's distribution department, who was also known as the father of GB, Gunpei Yokoi, to conduct the final review.
"I hope I don't see that tyrant today!" Tajiri prayed with his hands clasped together. Yokoi Kohei is an easy-going person. But if he meets Yamauchi Yamauchi, only God knows what will happen.
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