Having a good product and being able to successfully sell it in the market are two different concepts. A good product is only the foundation. If you want to achieve good sales results, you also need to carry out detailed promotion work.

It has been determined that the product will be released at the Los Angeles Electronics Show in January next year, and the work in the next few months will be fully focused on this goal.

If you want to participate in the exhibition, you must first obtain a booth. At this time, the exhibition is only three months away, and the good booths have already been reserved by the big manufacturers. Hero Games has only decided to participate in the exhibition at this time, which is already a bit late.

At this time, we can see the role of Zhao Ping as a shareholder. After all, Zhao Ping has lived in the lighthouse country for more than ten years and is an executive of AMPEX. After activating his contacts, he quickly settled the booth matter.

Although the location of the booth finally obtained was not very good, the area was quite large, covering a full thirty-six square meters. The booth fee paid to the organizer alone amounted to US$20,000.

Although the company's products will be kept confidential before participating in the exhibition, it does not mean that the company will just wait quietly before the exhibition. The construction of the distribution system still cannot be stopped.

Since the Lighthouse Country is the main market, it is necessary to set up a sales branch in the Lighthouse Country. The management candidates for the sales branch are still recommended by Zhao Ping and all come from AMPEX.

The manager is a white man named John, who was also an engineer and later switched to sales at AMPEX. The deputy manager is a Chinese named Fang Xudong, and his work experience is basically the same as John's.

As a new company, there are insufficient resources in all aspects during the startup period, so nepotism is a very realistic choice. The management of the sales company are all from AMPEX. Of course, it is due to Zhao Ping, but it is also related to AMPEX's status in the lighthouse country.<

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In the past two decades, AMPEX has been one of the leaders in the technology industry in the lighthouse country. A large number of electronics industry practitioners will have various connections with this company.

There is often a saying in later generations that XX company is the Whampoa Military Academy of XX industry. In fact, this situation is very common in emerging industries.

When a new industry has just emerged, everyone is a new practitioner, and there are no so-called senior industry experts. The leading companies that were the first to successfully develop this industry naturally assume the responsibility of cultivating industry practitioners.<

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These practitioners gradually accumulate experience in pioneering enterprises in this industry, and naturally become the earliest experts. After they start their own businesses one after another and drive the entire industry to flourish, looking back, almost all practitioners will be the same as pioneers.

Pioneer companies in this industry have a variety of contacts.

AMPEX was founded in 1944 and is headquartered in the lighthouse country of California. It has emerged as a leading electronic technology company in the 1960s. At that time, Silicon Valley in the lighthouse country had not really taken shape. Large companies like AMPEX were actually the backbone of California's electronics industry.

First, in the process of the gradual formation of Silicon Valley, AMPEX actually served as a talent training and reserve function.

Many people who have successfully started businesses in Silicon Valley were associated with AMPEX in the early days. Through AMPEX's network, they can contact almost all electronics companies in Silicon Valley. This is one of the reasons why Chen Bing strongly invited Zhao Ping to join.

For Yinghao Games, which has just entered the lighthouse country market, the network of contacts that Zhao Ping can build will have an immeasurable effect on the company's business development. With this network of contacts, business in the lighthouse country, especially in Silicon Valley, will

The development can be greatly facilitated.

John and Fang Xudong quickly recruited a dozen employees and set up the framework of a sales company. The job of this sales company is not only responsible for the layout of the Los Angeles Electronics Show, but also the establishment of a dealer system.

Although the products are still confidential and cannot be displayed to these dealers, preliminary work can be carried out. A dozen employees were divided into several groups and visited the major potential dealers in the western states of the lighthouse country.

In states that were too far away, even if we couldn't arrange for people to visit them, we still sent invitations to the electronics show by mail to these dealers. By the time the New Year was approaching, even though none of these dealers had seen Yinghao Games' products.

, but they all got the news that Yinghao Games’ products will be unveiled at the Los Angeles Game Show.

Yinghao Games is just a small company headquartered in Xiangjiang. It has just been established and has not launched any successful products. The products to be launched are kept confidential. Under normal conditions, it is difficult to have any impact on market dealers.

However, the sales staff of Yinghao Company have been visiting dealers for more than two consecutive months, which still aroused the curiosity of quite a few people.

The handheld game console industry has just emerged less than a year ago, and there is no market structure at all. However, the success of Nintendo has attracted the attention of many dealers to this field.

Although the products of Yinghao Games have never been shown, just such a large number of continuous visits shows the ambition of this new company and has already caused a certain shock in the dealer circle.

Many dealers have become curious about Yinghao Games' products, and are willing to come to Yinghao Games' booth after the exhibition opens to see in person what the games this company will launch look like.

Even potential competitor Nintendo has noticed this new Xiangjiang game company. Although there are many manufacturers imitating Nintendo handheld game consoles, this rather mysterious Xiangjiang company is extremely special and deserves to be added.

Great attention.

Nintendo even sent people to Hong Kong to conduct an investigation, but Yinghao Games also had no products on the market in Hong Kong, and the information that could be found was very limited. The company's mysterious veil could only be removed at the Los Angeles Electronics Show.<

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As a consumer product, handheld game consoles must be sold in the market, and stocking up is unavoidable. The key to the problem is who will bear the funds occupied during stocking up.

Before the product is officially released, the funds for stocking up can naturally only be borne by Yinghao Games itself. Although the cash invested by Yinghao Game shareholders is not small, a large part of it needs to be invested in the construction of distribution system, marketing, and knowledge

For property rights protection, only 1 million Hong Kong dollars can be used to prepare goods.

Even if Xu's Electronics offered the best price, the amount of funds in stock was only 20,000 units, which was far from enough. For this reason, Yinghao Games borrowed the contacts of the Li family and the Zhao family to find a bank for a loan of HK$2 million.

, increasing the inventory to 60,000 units.

As a bank for the loan, Chen Bing did not look for banks from China or Chinese banks that were more active in Hong Kong. Instead, he chose Citibank from the lighthouse country. The main market for Hero Games in the future is in the lighthouse country, so he chose banks from the lighthouse country to provide funding services.

More convenient.

After New Year's Day, Chen Bing and Li Shihao will take the final exam, and after the exam, they will set off with Zhao Ping to attend the electronics exhibition in Lighthouse Country.

However, before New Year's Day, 60,000 handheld game consoles were already shipped on cargo ships and headed to the Lighthouse Country in advance. In addition to the handheld game consoles, this batch of goods also included four arcade machine samples.

These four arcade machine samples were rushed out in the past two months. The games on them were transplanted Chinese Cube and Snake. Another game, Sokoban, was not transplanted to the arcade platform.

The electronic game market in 1980 had formed a basic framework. According to the different hardware platforms carrying games, the electronic game industry can be divided into four sub-markets: arcades, video game consoles, handheld game consoles and personal computer games.

Among the four sub-market categories, the largest market size is actually the arcade market, and the entire market size has reached several billion dollars.

Followed by the video game console platform, the market size also exceeds one billion US dollars.

The handheld game console market is a new market that Nintendo has only opened up this year. Although the market size has just reached 100 million US dollars, its development potential is already very promising.

Personal computer games are a market that only grew after Apple successfully launched the personal computer in 1977. Limited by the number of personal computers owned, the scale is not yet large. Many games are still distributed for free privately and have not been fully commercialized.<

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But the potential of this market is also huge. Chen Bing knows clearly that with the release of the PC architecture by IBM next year, personal computers will truly begin to enter the popularization stage, and the personal computer game market will also enter a rapid explosion.

Although the hardware platforms of the four sub-markets are different, most games can be transplanted between these platforms. This kind of transplantation is not technically difficult. The key depends on whether the tonality of the game can match the hobbies of the platform users.

Get up.

The three games launched by Yinghao Games at this time can technically be installed on four hardware platforms at the same time. However, Yinghao Games is a small company and does not have its own video game consoles and personal computer platforms. If it wants to enter these two markets, it must

You must find hardware manufacturers to cooperate.

The hardware of the arcade platform is already very mature, and Yinghao Games is also capable of developing and producing its own arcade products. However, after careful evaluation, Chen Bing still focused the market on handheld game consoles.

Speaking of which, 1980 was the most glorious era of the arcade industry. The multi-billion-dollar market was the largest among several market segments. However, the tonality of Chen Bing’s games and arcade machines were not completely consistent.<

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Although these three games have different focuses, in Chen Bing's opinion, they are all casual games, most suitable for players to relax and unwind. They will be more popular on TV game consoles, handheld consoles, and personal computers, but in

It’s not entirely suitable for arcade machines.

It is also the electronic game industry, but arcades and the other three market segments have completely different logics.

Video game consoles, handheld consoles, and personal computer games are actually all electronic consumer goods. After consumers buy them home, they can freely choose the timing and duration of playing games.

But arcade machines are completely different. Arcade machines are not consumer electronics, but tools for business operations. The buyers of arcade machines are actually various store owners. They place the arcade machines in their stores, and players go to such stores to pay to play games.

.

Video game consoles, handheld consoles, and personal computer games are for consumers to play alone or as a family for a long time. Consumers only need to pay once when purchasing.

However, arcades are for many players to line up to play. It is actually a rental operation model. What is sold is the opportunity to use the game console. It is essentially a charging model based on time.

Among the three games launched by Yinghao Games, Sokoban is an intellectual game that requires players to think for a long time and is essentially not suitable for the time-sharing charging model of arcades.

Chinese Cube and Snake can be operated as arcade games, but these two games are not exciting enough. In fact, they are not the most suitable to be operated as arcade games.

If Chen Bing had come to Xiangjiang a few years earlier, all arcade games would have been relatively simple. Chinese Cube and Snake would have had a chance to become phenomenal arcade games. But when Chen Bing came to Xiangjiang, it was already in the second half of the 1980s.

The arcade market has matured.

Space Invaders is a shooting game, and Pac-Man is a maze game. The reason why these two games have become phenomenal arcade games is because the gameplay of these games is more exciting and intense, and can bring powerful effects to players in a short period of time.

The excitement is a natural fit with the arcade’s time-sharing charging method.

Although Chinese Cube and Snake are also classic games that have been verified by later generations of the market, they are casual games and are completely different from the excitement of games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

Chinese Cube and Snake are not as stimulating, but they have a wider audience than Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Space Invaders and Pac-Man are more suitable for energetic young male players, while Chinese Cube and Snake

But it can attract players of different age groups at the same time, especially female players.

According to Chen Bing's assessment, Chinese Cube and Snake will not suffer losses if they are transplanted to the arcade platform, but they have no chance to become phenomenal arcade games. In the next few years, if they can cumulatively sell 10,000 arcade machines, they will already

It was considered a great success.

The price of arcade machines is relatively high, with a single unit selling for up to one thousand US dollars. The sales volume of 10,000 units is equivalent to sales of 10 million US dollars. Although it is not small, it is a little behind the handheld market.

Although the unit price of handheld consoles seems to be low, with each unit selling for only more than 20 US dollars, the sales volume of handheld consoles is large. As long as 500,000 units are sold, the sales volume can reach 10 million US dollars.

In almost all entertainment projects, novelty is the most important factor. In an early immature market, a little innovation will bring returns far beyond imagination because of its novelty. But once the market matures,

With various small tricks, it is difficult to stir up too much splash.

For example, China's unique kung fu movies, the Shaw Brothers kung fu movies in the 1960s, were once very popular, but as the novelty disappeared, they gradually declined. It was not until the rise of Bruce Lee that a new craze for kung fu movies was rekindled.

After Bruce Lee, all kinds of kung fu stars emerged one after another. They focused on real fighting and hard-hitting fists. However, this craze began to decline again after the mid-1990s.

After the new century, the appeal of kung fu superstars has been greatly reduced. Fighting with real swords and guns is not even as attractive as the slow motion of Wia. In the final analysis, this novelty has completely disappeared, no matter how beautiful the fight is.

, it’s not new anymore.

Games that were too simple and not exciting enough were no longer suitable for the arcade market in 1980, so Chen Bing positioned his main market in the handheld field, which was far from mature.

Although the arcade machine market is not a big deal, there is still some broth to drink. Chen Bing was not ready to let it go, so he made a few prototypes of arcade machines and brought them to the exhibition, but he would not use the arcade machines as the main promotion.
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Chapter completed!