With the serious business concluded, Kiyoshi Hattori gathered the scattered acquisition proposals and financial reports on the table, stacking them neatly to one side.
The tension in the conference room dissipated.
Kiyoshi lifted his teacup, took a sip to moisten his throat, and then brought up another briefing sent by the North American branch.
This one had nothing to do with capital operations; it was entirely gossip about this year's North American copyright market and entertainment industry.
The North American consumer market was extremely hot this year.
The lingering heat from the Atlanta Olympics had not yet faded, and the Internet gold rush in Silicon Valley was in full swing, with new tech millionaires being born every day.
Though these grand narratives dominated the front pages of newspapers, they still couldn't overshadow the buzz surrounding the box office.
The movie-going audience was simply too massive.
The gaming industry had been surging in recent years, with its output value reaching new highs. But in terms of social popularity and penetration into the mass market, it still couldn't compete with the popcorn blockbusters churning out of Hollywood's industrial assembly line.
Independence Day had already claimed the title of this year's box office champion.
Fox Entertainment was raking in the money with the spectacle of aliens blowing up the White House.
Kiyoshi Hattori had a professional instinct for copyright derivatives.
Hollywood studios had always spared no effort in squeezing every last drop of value from their IPs.
The licensing for the Independence Day tie-in game had been sold off early.
The project was handed over to Radical Entertainment.
This Canadian studio, based in Vancouver, had previously worked on several outsourced projects. Rumor had it that their internal team was developing a new physics-based destruction engine, building a technical foundation for a prototype project with a similar codename.
Fox Entertainment didn't care about these technical details. They simply shoved the Independence Day contract onto Radical and demanded on-time delivery.
The release window was set for early next year.
It would be a multi-platform launch, with versions for PC, Sega Jupiter, and Sony PlayStation releasing one after another.
Hattori's assessment of the project was abysmal.
Fox had kept the game's genre completely under wraps.
Several major gaming outlets had visited the studio, yet they failed to secure even a single frame of actual gameplay footage.
Such a marketing strategy defied common sense.
Hollywood movie-to-game adaptations had always followed a tradition of quick cash grabs.
The release window was too tight, severely compressing the development cycle. To launch before the movie's home video release or before the hype completely faded, quality was often sacrificed.
Radical's development progress remained a mystery, and the final product was likely to be a crude shooter.
Sales expectations were far from optimistic.
Paramount's Mission: Impossible was in no better shape.
Kiyoshi Hattori continued to provide more information.
The game adaptation rights had fallen to Nintendo, who secured it as an N64 exclusive.
Nintendo had always been obsessed with first-party and strong second-party support. They were notoriously strict when reviewing third-party licensed games, but they had loosened their standards for such a global blockbuster IP.
Given the current penetration rate of N64 development kits and the capacity limits of the cartridges, it would be extremely difficult for Mission: Impossible to recreate the movie's espionage atmosphere on the console.
When it would even be released remained to be seen.
Takuya Nakayama leaned back in his chair and joined the conversation.
"Whether it's acting as a contractor for someone else's IP or selling your own IP for others to turn into fast food, both are just draining the brand's lifespan."
Fortunately, Sega still held some aces up its sleeve.
The movie John Wick: Chapter 2, a collaboration with Universal Pictures, is scheduled for release next year.
Development on the game of the same name is already well underway.
Drawing from the experience of the original game on the Mega Drive, this sequel has jumped straight to the Jupiter platform. Combining Jupiter's technical advantages with the action engine technology accumulated from the previous title, the development team has deeply polished the fluidity of both gunplay and melee combat.
Without the pressure to rush a half-finished product to meet a release date, surpassing the predecessor's visual performance is merely a basic requirement. The core focus is the completeness of the gameplay experience.
Takuya Nakayama used this as a springboard to discuss IP operations.
"Betting everything on a single work in one domain is an uncontrollable risk," Nakayama said, tapping his finger on the desk. "Cinema scheduling, competitors in the same release window, even the weather on opening day can determine a movie's fate. It's the same for games—a console generation shift or a competitor's price drop can instantly derail sales projections."
Expand the platforms, build the IP's framework.
Focus on the quality baseline for each domain, and strictly control the cost redline.
The cross-domain amplification effect will then grow exponentially.
Gamers who play the game will go watch the movie, and moviegoers who see the movie will buy the merchandise and models.
This mutual traffic generation can forcibly pull audiences, who were originally confined to a single circle, into another.
More importantly, there is the dimension of time.
The long tail effect of excellent works far exceeds most people's expectations.
With the threshold of the new century right before them, many people's expectations for the future have actually become more conservative.
Especially after seeing some newly released entertainment products with increasingly terrible quality, the general public will instinctively develop a sense of nostalgia.
They will go looking for those old things that once moved them.
Takuya Nakayama lifted his teacup, blowing away the foam on the surface of the water.
In the gaming circle of 1996, all major companies were racing in the 3D technology track.
The number of polygons, texture resolution, and lighting rendering—these cold hardware indicators became the absolute core of marketing.
Interestingly, there was a widespread technical anxiety in the industry. 2D pixel games on old consoles were quickly marginalized and labeled as backward and outdated.
Executives of major companies were busy launching new IPs, trying to carve out territory in the new era.
Few people cast their gaze toward the dusty old project proposals in the warehouse.
But with his memories of his past life, he knew very well that ten years into the new century, the renovation and remake of old works, as well as various cross-border collaborations of old IPs, would become the most effortless cash flow for the entire entertainment industry, requiring almost no additional investment.
The names that had shone so brightly in the eighties and nineties could be polished with high-definition graphics, updated with modern controls, and slapped with a "Remastered" label. This was all it took to make veteran players willingly open their wallets.
These were all classics, household names by now.
The shelf life of this kind of commercial value was astonishingly long.
"How feasible is it to translate nostalgia into actual sales?" Kiyoshi Hattori asked, setting down his teacup. The older man's understanding of the video game industry was built on the logic of technological iteration. After all, the industry had only been in the public eye for a dozen or so years. Nostalgia seemed out of place in a field so relentlessly driven by cutting-edge tech. "The glory days of the arcade era are over. Today's players have been spoiled by 3D graphics. Paying for old games from years ago? That just doesn't fit current consumer habits."
"Human nature is a contradiction: we love the new, yet we're desperately nostalgic," Takuya Nakayama said, his fingers interlaced on the table. "Let's change the terminology. We won't call them 'old games.' We'll call it 'Reconstructing the Classics.' Or, in Hollywood terms, a 'Reboot.'"
He took a sheet of white paper and wrote two English words: Remaster and Remake.
"High-definition restoration, and complete remake," Takuya said, tapping the paper with his pen. "The former only requires increasing the resolution of the old game, smoothing out the textures, and porting it to a new platform. The development cycle is short, and the marginal cost is extremely low. It's essentially the secondary monetization of an existing asset."