The three major factions of the gaming industry

During the one month after the release of Final Fantasy 7, it was a very pleasant time for many players.

However, it wasn't so enjoyable for competitors.

For example, at Suyi Electronics, after discovering the release date of Final Fantasy 7, they promptly rescheduled the release dates of some key games to avoid overlapping with Final Fantasy 7.

But other companies seemed to pay no attention to this.

This resulted in a sudden drop in sales for games that were expected to sell at least a few hundred thousand copies, down to less than one hundred thousand.

Some small game studios were in tears, as they often didn't have much money to begin with.

But fortunately, the gaming industry was booming, and these game developers didn't lack for work.

While they felt sad, they didn't harbor too much resentment towards Final Fantasy 7.

Because they had all played the game themselves.

It opened a new door for them.

A 3D game with exquisite CG graphics.

Before the release of Final Fantasy 7, 3D games were limited to racing and first-person shooter genres, each carving out its own path.

Other types of games were still in the experimental stage.

Later, Mario 64 set a standard for third-person perspective, especially with the addition of joystick buttons on the controller, allowing players to control the game character with both hands while continuously adjusting the camera angle. This propelled games into the industrial age, one step away from the modern technological era.

And now, with the release of Final Fantasy 7, all game industry professionals discovered the visual spectacle brought about by massive investment.

Certainly, if Final Fantasy 7 had used old 2D graphics, it wouldn't have been a problem, because ultimately, Final Fantasy 7 was all about the story.

But with the addition of new graphics, Final Fantasy 7 was like adding some kind of catalyst.

It transformed a game that could have had a tenfold impact into one with a hundredfold impact.

No one would deny Final Fantasy 7.

Because it was almost perfect under current conditions.

Even colleagues, even some competitors in the gaming industry, harbored no resentment towards Final Fantasy 7.

On the first day of Final Fantasy 7's release, sales once again surpassed one million copies.

In Japan, it exceeded seven hundred thousand copies, while in the United States, it sold over three hundred thousand copies.

Then, on the second day, sales slightly decreased to about eight hundred thousand.

In the end, first-week sales totaled five million one hundred thousand copies.

This data was quite terrifying.

So far, no game had seen such a rapid increase in sales.

In the previous life, the original version of Final Fantasy 7 had sales capped at around thirteen million, and subsequent sales didn't have much statistical significance.

But in this parallel world, Final Fantasy 7 seemed poised to surpass that.

After the first week's sales figures were finally tallied, all three game development teams cheered.

With first-week sales of five million, if calculated at an average price of $69 per copy, that's roughly three hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue.

The total investment in Final Fantasy 7, including marketing costs, was approximately two hundred million dollars.

This was Gamestar Entertainment's flagship game, with only about thirty percent of physical production, sales, and transportation costs deducted, leaving the rest entirely to Gamestar Entertainment.

In other words, they had already recouped their investment in the first week.

And the momentum of Final Fantasy 7's sales showed no sign of slowing down.

Many players were quickly joining in due to the influence of those around them.

And this also indirectly boosted sales of GS1.

In less than a year, GS1's total sales exceeded twenty million.

This data was also record-breaking.

Almost every time Gamestar Entertainment released a game, it broke records.

Gamestar Entertainment had not yet announced its own game sales data.

But based solely on the online popularity and the scenes of queues at offline physical stores, other colleagues could roughly speculate that Final Fantasy 7 was a success.

It turned out that heavy investment could also bring success. So, perhaps it was really worth considering establishing their own gaming industry system.

With Gamestar Entertainment leading the industry, they only needed to follow behind Gamestar Entertainment.

Before long, many large companies announced their entry into the gaming industry.

Most of them had previously been involved in businesses related to the entertainment industry, so the transition was naturally straightforward.

Hot money began pouring into the industry in large quantities.

The voices calling for top game industry talent also began to grow louder.

However, at this point, they realized that the real game industry elites were concentrated in the three major camps.

The largest of these was Gamestar Entertainment.

Their in-house game development team had already exceeded a thousand people.

And external development teams, like professional outsourcing, were close to a thousand people as well.

Then there was Suyi Electronics.

Through the strategy of heavily recruiting game developers supported by Eiji Hayakawa for many years, they also managed to snatch some outstanding talents from Gamestar Entertainment in this talent war.

Their flagship games, 3D Racing and Solar Knights, were gradually becoming top-quality games rated at four stars, establishing themselves as their flagship titles.

Finally, the third camp with a rich lineup of game talents was the new company founded by Haku Brown, Haku Game Company.

This guy, who once founded Lilda and was mercilessly ousted by Lilda from the company, was now in his thirties, but his mentality was still as young as ever, full of ambition and constantly expanding his influence.

At present, he had already established a foothold on the PC platform and had also taken the opportunity to acquire a studio that had previously developed PC online games.

This studio was one of the first to develop PC online games, and their games were now equally famous, called Enigma Treasure, a network game that combined traditional single-player RPG elements.

This was the prototype of early online games, as its unique role-playing and social attributes had become very popular among many people.

In order to acquire this studio, Haku Brown even went so far as to borrow money using a gambling agreement, then fully acquired it for one hundred million dollars.

This was also the first definitive pricing behavior in the gaming industry.

A studio that developed a well-known game was worth one hundred million dollars.

From this, it could be seen that the gaming industry was truly about to take off.

These three major camps now almost controlled the discourse power of the entire global gaming industry.

Others could join in without any problem, but they first needed to overcome the challenge of talent shortage.