In May 1980, an arcade storm suddenly broke out on Hong Kong Island...

And at the storm, it is both a simple and classic game called "China Square".

"Li Ka-shing seizes the opportunity of plastic flowers and makes the first pot of gold for money. The "China Square" game console is not only a new opportunity to achieve the next Li Ka-shing!"

"It's easy to make money by opening a game hall. If you invest 200,000 yuan in half a year, it will double in a year."

"The most profitable thing is not real estate, but game consoles!"

Under the ethos of business in Hong Kong, everyone wants to make a fortune, but reliable opportunities for making money are very rare and ordinary people can't catch them at all. But the game hall is different. A game console costs only 10,000 yuan, and you can get a 100 yuan a day, which means you can earn back the investment cost of the machine in a hundred days. After that, you will make a pure profit.

Most people may be powerless if they want to run hundreds of game halls.

However, if you take out your savings to buy a house and invest in a small game hall with twenty or thirty arcade machines, many families with savings can still do it.

This is different from pyramid schemes and other deceptions. At least, the current arcade market can really make money. Of course, a large number of arcade halls are established and gradually saturated the market, so profits will drop. However, in any case, the arcade industry has at least 20 years of huge profits. In the 1980s and 1990s, before the Internet was popularized, arcades were difficult to lose money.

Lin Qi is preparing to dominate Hong Kong's arcade market, so that every game hall in Hong Kong will be dominated by games from new startups.

In the future, after strong capital, we will even consider acquiring arcade halls and including half of Hong Kong’s game hall market in self-operation. In this way, we will create a relatively stable monopoly market and provide profit guarantees for our own product research and development.

The current arcade giants mainly focus on the American and Japanese markets. The arcade operation interface and text are basically in English and Japanese. For the time being, most arcade companies have not yet considered the Chinese market. Therefore, many arcade machines are not very popular in Hong Kong because they do not have Chinese versions.

In addition, arcade manufacturers in the United States and Japan do not attach much importance to advertising. Even if they invest in advertising, they will not invest in Hong Kong.

After all, arcade sales rely more on business personnel to directly sell game consoles to arcade halls and shopping malls. These business places are not only real customers of arcades, so putting advertisements in the media is simply to use cannons to big mosquitoes. It looks amazing, but it is an extremely waste of resources.

If these game companies advertise the profits they make in markets around the world, then... the profits they finally make will soon be burned by advertising fees.

Even if some arcade companies are willing to invest in advertising, they will only use it in Japan and the United States, two major mainstream arcade markets.

Those giants will not invest their valuable resources in a small market with millions of people in Hong Kong to advertise and promote their new arcade games.

But Lin Qi is different. Since he does not have the capital to confront the game giants of the United States and Japan for the time being, he regards Hong Kong as a base camp and strengthens the position of new entrepreneurial electronics as a monopoly in the Hong Kong game industry at all costs. Then, he goes to markets around the world to compete for the US and Japanese giants.

The game giants in Japan and the United States basically start with local and then world. The local market has established a complete distribution channel, which has a certain guaranteed nature for recovering investment costs. Only with a certain local guaranteed market support can you have the confidence to further promote the game to the world.

"I received 36 arcade orders, one with the lowest quantity, and the one with the largest quantity was to order 50!" Zhang Ru handed over the compiled report to Lin Qi for review, "A total of 386 orders have been received at present."

Lin Qi nodded and said curiously: "What is the origin of a customer who orders 50 units?"

"It is a Japanese company called Sega Co., Ltd.," said Zhang Ru.

"Sega Co., Ltd.?" Lin Qi was stunned.

This is definitely an old senior in the gaming industry. Originally, Sega was founded by American David Rosen in the 1950s. Before the video games were released, it had already started to operate coin-operated gambling games.

Sega's performance in the 1970s was mediocre, but in 1979, the company introduced the new vice president, Shikao Nakayama, which quickly transformed the company into the direction of electronic games.

In 1983, due to the sudden collapse of the Atari Empire, American investors of Sega decided to withdraw from the game industry. Nakayama and Japan's consortium raised $38 million to buy the assets of Japan's Sega from the Americans. Later, Sega did not meet the status of a major arcade manufacturer, but instead invested a lot of capital to enter the markets of handheld consoles, TV consoles, etc. Although he was defeated repeatedly during the fight with Nintendo, he became the second second in TV console games after Nintendo with his tenacious fighting spirit.

Originally, Lin Qi had thought about developing the Japanese market and also considered forming an alliance with Sega, but that was to wait for Nintendo to show off his muscles and make Sega feel the crisis. At that time, it was a good opportunity to cooperate with Sega.

It seems a little early to cooperate now!

"Do you want to contact this customer?" Zhang Ru asked.

"No!" Lin Qi shook his head.

In essence, the premise of joining Sega Company is Nintendo's strength. The enemy of the enemy is friends. Now, Nintendo has not yet shown its edge. If Sega Company is a big deal and it will replace Nintendo's position, it may not be a good thing.

After all, Sega's potential may not be inferior to Nintendo. The original loss to Nintendo was just because the rhythm was not good at the beginning, and it was more of a factor of luck.

Although Nintendo has developed some game products now, it is not very mature. Nintendo's real gorgeous transformation was that it entered the arcade market in 1981, and relied on "Donkey Kong" to become the new popularity king in the arcade market. "Donkey Kong" can be said to be the predecessor of "Mario". From this game, Nintendo has truly entered the state.

In 1982, Nintendo launched FC to enter the home console game market and sold 2 million units in Japan, becoming a rookie in the TV console game market.

In 1983, the year when Atari collapsed. Before that, the number of third-party game software companies that rely on developing games for Atari platform had exceeded 1,000! Overnight, thousands of companies and tens of thousands of game developers were in a survival crisis.

Nintendo took advantage of the situation and occupied the market share that should have been Atari, and recruited companies that originally developed games for Atari, forcing these companies to sign exclusive agreements with Nintendo. Because Nintendo was like a god's help during this period, the rhythm was too accurate, so he achieved unprecedented success.

Sega was only a little late, so most of the high-quality game developer resources were taken away by Nintendo. After Sega's console games were launched, the quantity and quality of game resources could not be compared with Nintendo, so it is naturally impossible to compete with Nintendo.

In the future, we will definitely enter the console game market, so Lin Qi not only regards Nintendo as an opponent, but also regards Sega as an opponent.

The collapse of the Atari Empire was equivalent to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when the emperor formed a false situation and the princes competed for it.

Nintendo is probably the strong Wei, Sega Company is roughly the Shu Han, and Lin Qi's position is probably the worse Sun Wu. Sun Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, a large amount of land was actually not developed, and the fish and rice land in later generations did not exist. Therefore, we should focus on farming and join forces with Shu to fight Wei. At the same time, we will continue to consume population and resources. Finally... the Wu Kingdom, which successfully farmed, swept the world and changed fate against the heavens.

In history, the Wu Kingdom did not have a cheating device, so it was naturally not possible. But Lin Qi felt that his advantage was still very big!
Chapter completed!