The sales of "American Cubes" are very popular.

Although four sellers led by Schwell Group set their retail prices at a terrifying $8,000 per unit, merchants in arcade game halls across the country were still rushing to grab all the arcades equipped with "American Cubes".

There are a lot of 5,000 units, but in fact, the average number of 50 states in the country is only 100 units per state.

For the entire huge American market, it is just a drop in the bucket.

You should know that the Donkey Kong machine was only 2,000 US dollars, but they sold more than 120 million US dollars worth of arcades a year.

The current American Cubes are far behind them.

Moreover, these businessmen have come to California to see how popular this game is, and they have also seen the miserable scenes of arcade halls without "American Cubes".

Isn’t it just eight thousand dollars? Ten days! You can earn it back in half a month at most!

In the eyes of these people, "American Cubes" has indeed become a hen that can lay golden eggs.

It is something you need to get it anyway, at all costs.

Even Jester has to sigh that Americans of this era are really crazy.

In fact, under the leadership of Reagan's mercantilism in the 1980s, the United States was not inferior to those of the giants from 1900 to 1930, and even more so.

It is simply no scruples. The surging waves hidden behind this market that seems to be full of flowers and cooking oil.

All of this will not stop until that Black Monday three years later.

But, it has nothing to do with Jester.

However, very realistic problems are also placed in front of Jester.

Insufficient production capacity.

The production capacity of Atari's several factories in Orange can no longer supply those surging purchasing enthusiasm.

Even the order of 5,000 units signed with four sellers has only been completed for more than 2,000 units. Moreover, after seeing the popularity of "American Cubes", Atari raised the price by 30% when Jester proposed to sign a larger OEM contract with them!

This made Jester furious.

Do you think that only you, Atari, can produce arcade machines in the United States?

However, after searching for a while, Jester pessimistically found that there are indeed many other factories in the United States that can meet his requirements.

But the problem is that either the scale is too small to meet its production requirements. If you find N companies at the same time, it will be difficult to coordinate.

Either it needs to be renovated, which may not be of use in a short period of time.

Finally, he found that the only one in the United States was Atari that had a large number of factories that could produce arcades immediately without any modification.

In desperation, Jester could only pinch his nose and sign a new contract with Atari for 5,000 units. Adding the previous OEM contract of 10,000 units, Jester would have to pay a total of 4.6 million US dollars for this.

But Jester and his Mars Entertainment can earn at least $60 million in revenue, plus 20% of all profits from the four sales companies.

Despite this, Jester, who had just blackmailed those sellers, was still a little secretly happy. This time, Atari took the opportunity to blackmail him and felt as uncomfortable as eating a fly. Such blackmail was unbearable.

He can only take advantage of the situation to blackmail others, and never let others take advantage of the situation to blackmail him.

He has decided that he must solve the problem of being unable to produce his own products next, otherwise, it would be like being strangled by someone. It is still a trivial matter now. If someone uses it for use in the future, it would be too late to find a way for him.

Also, Jester also thought that this time, the four sellers of Schweer Group offended him so much that they had offended him. They had fallen into a business dilemma due to Atari's collapse. I'm afraid that this time they could relieve themselves through their "American Cubes", and the next cooperation will not be so easy.

Looking for other sellers?

Jester just sneered. These sellers are not that simple, they are all birds of a feather. Moreover, are there few software vendors swallowed up by publishers in history?

It is necessary to establish your own distribution and sales network. A game company without its own distribution network can only be considered a larger studio, and it is far from being called a giant.

The game industry is not big, especially when the game industry has shrunk to a bad appearance, Mars Entertainment quickly caused a sensation in the entire electronic game industry.

A game earned $60 million in less than a month, which is not something any game company can do. It can even be said that even in Silicon Valley, few new technology companies can do this.

Even Apple and Apple were not good back then.

Of course, it is the American consensus that the game has died, so even if Mars Entertainment made the arcade market hot again, it did not attract enough attention, and some people even thought that it was just a retrospective.

For example, Atari's new boss, Jack Tramel.

"What I mean? What I mean is that game consoles are worthless. The future belongs to PCs. What the game console can do, PCs can do, and do better, and what the PC can do, game consoles can never do. That's what I mean. Atari Never, Never, Never will not return to electronic games."

This is what Tramel said in an interview with ABC.

After reading this report, Jester not only wasn't angry, but he laughed happily: "You'd better never come back."

Indeed, sales data of only $60 million is not even considered a drizzle compared to Atari's $2 billion annual profit two years ago, but the problem is that it is not two years ago now.

Times have changed.

Nowadays, the game consoles in Atari cannot be sold at one or two percent in the mall, and the game cartridges that are backlogged in warehouses may not be much less than those they are buried in New Mexico.

The entire video game market is now deserted.

Only Mars Entertainment's arcade called "American Squares" is sold out on the market.

Moreover, when the easter egg hidden in "American Cube" was exposed, it intensified the craze of "American Cube". I don't know how many children would rather skip classes and practice their own skills. They hoped to fill in their names on a machine so that they could pretend to be timid towards their friends, classmates or admirers.

"Look! I'm the most amazing person here to play "American Cubes"!"

Even some unconscience-ridden profiteering businesses that doubled the price of "American Square" game coins, which could not stop the enthusiasm of these crazy players.

In some places, some teenagers steal and robbery were even seen in order to play "American Cube". Some NC media are still shouting because of this, and they are still afraid that the world will not be in chaos. "American Cube" should be banned from being released.

Of course, this can only be a joke.

In short, "American Square" has become a phenomenon.

Things are divided into two sides.

Although "American Cube" has become a phenomenon, the future of electronic games is still not favored by mainstream society and mainstream media.

Atari's host is still treated as garbage at one or two discounts, and there are still very few people who are interested.

"American Cubes" is like a stone that surrenders to a stagnant pool. Although it stirs up layers of waves, the stagnant water is still stagnant water.

But for those who truly love video games, Mars Entertainment is like a glimmer of light, adding a hint of light to this dark environment.

That's where hope lies.

When Mars Entertainment recruited employees who truly love electronic games to work in this industry that seemed to have no future with the slogan of "making the best games", it received a very enthusiastic response.

In addition to those game designers who were confused after leaving Atari, these echoes also have a large number of real game enthusiasts.

Some of them are on the East Coast, some are in Florida, and some are in the Great Lakes... These people all came to California from thousands of miles apart.

They want to join Mars Entertainment and make the best games.

They want to prove to everyone that video games are not dead yet.

The recruitment program for Mars Entertainment was set by Jester with reference to the recruitment program of Blizzard in later generations.

Blizzard's philosophy is very similar to Jester's. There are many excellent technicians in the world, but a person who does not love games, no matter how high his skills are, he cannot make a good game.

Game companies are not places to show off their skills, but places to design games.

The only right thing for the people here is to make a good game that players like.

Even if it is just a simple pixel block, as long as the player likes it, it is correct.

Therefore, the first principle of Mars Entertainment recruitment is that, first of all, no matter how good your skills or your education is, you must be a fanatical game player.

Of course, this is just a recruitment standard for software development. As for hardware development, Jester didn't know much, so he let his father be fully responsible. His father has been engaged in arcade hardware research and development for ten years and is also very famous among Atari's hardware engineers.

The recruitment of Mars Entertainment is still very smooth, and with the previous relationship between Jester's father and Mark Seney, a large number of software and hardware designers who had not found a new job joined Mars Entertainment.

The recruitment of the hardware R&D department was particularly smooth.

Especially when Jester asked him to contact the previous Atari VCS7200 R&D team under the banner of "Tramer revenge, proving that he was wrong", those Atari's most outstanding hardware R&D personnel left Atari almost without hesitation and joined Mars Entertainment.

This almost made Tramel furious, but he had no choice.

This is a conflict of ideas and an irreconcilable contradiction.

Mars Entertainment, recruiting new employees on the first day of employment.

In a conference opened in a warehouse, more than 30 young people who had just entered Mars entertainment gathered and sat down.

They were notified that before they formally worked, their boss, who was also the designer of "American Cubes", wanted to give them a brainstorm first.

I want to discuss with them what games we will do next.

These people are almost all loyal fans of "American Cubes", and their love for this game is endless, so they are all looking forward to what will happen next.

But now their boss hasn't arrived yet, these young designers are bored looking at everything in the house.

Among these people are students who have just graduated from college, designers who have had experience in game research and development before, and those who were just purely electronic game enthusiasts before.

The only thing in common is that these people have the deepest love for video games and all kinds of fantastic ideas.

There are no rows of seats in this conference room like other companies, only sofas scattered around, various snacks and toys, Lego blocks, and even Transformers, which just started selling this year.

There are even two color TVs, which are connected to one VCS2600 and one that has not been released in the United States. Most people here have only heard of the name FC.

Of course, game cassettes are also indispensable.

These young people find this novel. Does this company also allow employees to play games during meetings?
To be continued...