章 249: Esports?
Actually, sometimes it's necessary to guide players.
Sometimes, good games aren't immediately discovered and liked by people.
Previous examples like Dragon Quest and Pokémon are clear examples of this.
These games didn't have eye-catching graphics or immediately interesting gameplay at the beginning, and they could seem a bit dull at first.
At times like this, if game companies intend to give up on such games, it would be a significant loss.
Sometimes players don't really know what they like to play, so they need to be informed.
In the first week, thanks to Mario's fame, Mario Kart's sales surpassed one million units combined in the United States and Japan.
However, sales plummeted rapidly in the second week, which was not a good sign.
Takayuki was preparing to save the situation again.
And the best way to do that naturally was to organize a competition.
The competitive aspect would interest most players, but this time it would be different from previous challenges. This time, they could also hold a real e-sports competition, bringing out multiple games for another competitive event.
And to generate publicity, they could consider holding competitions in both Europe and America, and then have a Japan-US showdown, which would obviously generate more buzz.
So Takayuki immediately called in the usual publicity team, and also connected with the publicity personnel in the US through a video conference call.
With the current state of the internet, conducting a video conference across the ocean had some latency, but it was already usable.
At this moment, it was already seven or eight in the evening in the US, just when the employees were resting.
But for this plan, the employees in the US had to join the meeting.
After everyone had gathered, Takayuki glanced at the people participating in the conference on the TV screen, and then at the crowded meeting room; they all looked cheerful.
Takayuki was generally easygoing in the company, and his temperament was mild, so even during meetings, everyone felt relaxed.
"Alright, let's get down to business now, everyone quiet down."
In the US, the people in the meeting room immediately fell silent, then looked at Takayuki one after another.
Yasutaka Nomura, who was mainly responsible for publicity and marketing, looked at Takayuki with confusion. Usually, Takayuki rarely interacted with the publicity department, giving them a lot of freedom to do as they pleased. So it was indeed somewhat puzzling for him to call them for a meeting this time. He didn't know what to expect.
Takayuki coughed lightly and said, "Everyone, our recent sales of Mario Kart haven't been particularly good, so I think it's necessary to change our publicity strategy."
"How do you plan to change it?" Yasutaka Nomura asked directly.
"Do you all remember the Speed Run Challenge we had before?"
Among the employees in the US, there was some confusion when they heard this term. Most of them were not familiar with this event.
But soon, those who understood began to explain it to them, and they suddenly realized.
Then they thought, electronic games can also have competitions? This was something they hadn't thought of.
Yasutaka Nomura and the people in the Japanese meeting room nodded; they had personally participated in this event with Takayuki before, so they were very familiar with it.
"I plan to hold such an event again, but this time it will have a higher competitive element. I intend to directly turn it into an industry line."
Takayuki walked to the projector and played the content he had prepared.
E-sports plan.
Introduction: A competition event specifically for games with a certain competitive element, expected to be held once a year.
Everyone watched with wide eyes, their minds now starting to work quickly.
"This e-sports plan is actually similar to the previous challenges, but this time it will emphasize honor more. The competition will be more formal, and all participating players must meet certain certification conditions. In the future, this will lead to the formation of e-sports teams, forming a completely new industry chain. Of course, all of this is still just a preliminary plan. My current idea is to focus mainly on promoting Mario Kart."
"President, so is the competition in Mario Kart just about who can get first place?"
Takayuki nodded. "That's right. But as I mentioned earlier, this time I plan to have participants form a group, or rather, a team, and then compete in team battles. In Mario Kart, there will be eight participants, divided into red and blue teams, with four players each. The two teams will compete, and the ultimate winner will be the team winner. In addition to this, we will also have individual matches, one-on-many challenges, and so on. And the games won't be limited to just Mario Kart; we'll also have Street Fighter and Street Basketball, both of which have strong competitive elements."
On the projector, scenes flashed by, first showing four players racing against each other in Mario Kart, then one-on-one battles in Street Fighter, and finally, crowning the victor.
In the field of video games, e-sports had always been an area that couldn't be ignored.
It wasn't that the video game industry couldn't develop without e-sports; it was just that with e-sports, the video game industry would expand its territory once again, attracting more people to be interested in video games.
In this world, there were really many people who were purely interested in winning and losing, but didn't care about what determined the outcome.
So in this way, they could attract this group of people to become players as well.
In his original world, there were actually only a few core players, and the player community of four billion worldwide was diverse.
If they only relied on console video games to achieve the scale of the gaming industry in their original world, it was a bit of a pipe dream.
There were always people who preferred online games, people who preferred competitive games, and likewise, people who preferred farming games.
This time was also an attempt to broaden the field, and several major game companies in his previous world also had their own different e-sports projects, but compared to the top-tier e-sports, those projects weren't as prominent, but they were still a group of people worth paying attention to.
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