This price war is a bit like a round game for Sega. After the opponents finish their moves, Sega will respond and put the attitude of being forced to fight in order to safeguard the market interests of home video game consoles perfectly.
The outside world is certain of this, because after Sega's public relations treatment, the situation is clearly there.
Among the four main forces of the price war, kangmaoda and Texas Instruments invaded the home video game market by means of "internal struggle" of low-end cheap personal computers. Obviously, they don't care about the life and death of the home video game market; Atari is a combination of video games and personal computers. Only Sega focuses on video games. It is not too much to describe the current situation with the relationship between life and death.
In this case, while Wall Street foresees that Sega's profits will decline significantly, and other video game manufacturers complain that the industry leaders are pressing people with momentum, it can't really point out that Sega's decision is wrong.
I am also forced. If the market is broken, I will never carry this pot!
In fact, with the development of the situation, the video game manufacturers such as Atari and Mattel have also reached their own market research conclusions, that is, the personal computer products of kangmaoda and Texas Instruments have seriously impacted their home video game console sales.
Therefore, when Sega announced that the price of its eight family video game consoles, the sg-3000 series, was further reduced to $98, everything seemed so natural and reasonable.
Moreover, Sega also has a decision to "please" the consumer market, that is, to honor its previous commitment. The difference between the previous round of price reduction and the current round of price reduction will be returned to users in the form of coupons, which can be used to deduct the expenses of purchasing new game consoles, official peripheral devices including handles and game cards.
Of course, there are still some restrictions on this coupon, including that it can only be used once until September 30 this year, that it can only buy Sega's own games, and that Steve Ross, who has obtained the official license of Sega, wants to share his losses with his partners, "Does Sega have any unexpected heavyweight new products to be listed?"
"Yes, but it's not a family video game console platform, but an arcade platform." Sir Gao showed the Frank quality of his comrades in arms. "In fact, at this stage, arcades are also very popular in bars, restaurants, shops and even special game halls, and there is no invasion by foreign enemies such as kangmaoda and Texas Instruments."
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In the exchange of information like this, Steve Ross didn't get nothing. After discussing with Sir Gao, he immediately called ray CASA, chief executive of yadali, and asked for more details about the electronic game "et alien". Didn't you report that the electronic game "et alien" is going to be launched, so what platforms does it match? "
Ray Casa didn't expect Steve Ross, who has always delegated power, to pay attention to such a specific problem, but he can only truthfully answer: "because time is too tight, the current development has only completed the yadali 2600 platform. As for yadali 5200, arcade, personal computer platforms yadali 400 and yadali 800, they are only planned for the time being."
Steve Ross is certainly not satisfied with this answer. In order to win the exclusive adaptation right of the video game of the film et alien, he paid a high price. How can such a good resource not be fully utilized?
After expressing such dissatisfaction, Steve Ross asked about the production plan of the video game "et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et et
Ray Casa was trained to sweat on his forehead. He suddenly felt that the big boss was quite reasonable. In recent years, no matter how bad the video games are, consumers have bought them, and then snapped up them. Although the production time of the video game "et alien" has been seriously compressed, it can be expected that some places are not satisfactory, but a handsome man can hide a hundred ugliness, "et alien" How many movie fans!
"The boss is right. Let's increase the production plan to 4 million copies, and we will always pay attention to the market to make adjustments as soon as possible." Ray Casa immediately corrected his "mistakes" on the spot.
Steve Ross was satisfied. He waved his hand and said, "all right, hurry up and implement it."
On Gao Xian's side, of course, he can realize that Steve Ross relies on Atari's business, including video games and personal computers, and then holds the self-confidence of ease in this price war, so that Atari and Sega do not have the same position on the price war.
But what does it matter? Sir Gao has no real hope. Yadali can help turn the tide. It's enough to act on the stage.
However, when Gao Xian and Steve Ross exchange information, although they sometimes have reservations, they do not fake what they say. For example, Sega will launch a new arcade and its supporting video games.
The home video game market in North America is bound to be broken, but the arcade market is still healthy, and the current market is hot and popular with players.
This phenomenon is not difficult to understand. In terms of performance alone, arcades are much stronger than home video game consoles, and the game experience has been greatly improved.
At this stage, Sega's home video game console and arcade product models use the letter "SG" plus four Arabic numerals.
Among them, the home video game console uses the code starting with an odd number. The eight bit home video game console with the largest sales volume has evolved to the sg-3000 series. Moreover, because the product technology is far from being comparable to the Atari 2600, which can only call up to 128 bytes of random dynamic memory, there should be no major architecture change, and the product model basically stops in this range; The upward sg-5000 series is a 16 bit family TV game console product whose sales volume is far lower than that of the eight bit family TV game console and the price is also small and expensive.
Sega's Arcade has evolved to sg-6000 series. Now it is ready to release sg-8000 series. Its CPU adopts the Z80 32-bit upgraded z8000 of ZILOG company, which has been silently supported by Gaoxian. The callable resources, including memory space, are far from the unique chips comparable to those family TV game consoles that also use Z80 and mos6502 8-bit CPUs and are specially responsible for processing video and audio, The performance has been greatly improved compared with sg-6000 series, which is proved by the performance of electronic games Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
David Rosen, the chairman of Sega's board of directors, personally attended the sg-8000 series press conference and answered questions from the media.
This includes, for example, Sega did not have a new home video game console, but made a big move in the arcade. Was it unable to pay attention to the ongoing price war, so it found a way back through the arcade.
David Rosen, as always, expressed his heartache for the price war and reiterated that Sega was the biggest victim, but stressed that Sega was in good operation and did not have the problem of disobedience to the price war power. Finally, he tried his best to draw the reporter's attention back to the excellent performance of sg-8000 series.
The media still have professional ethics. While they have concluded that Sega lacks confidence in the price war, they have not forgotten to praise that sg-8000 series will take over sg-6000 series and become the most powerful arcade at present.
After appreciating David Rosen's bitter "performance", Gao Xian laughed to himself and was very satisfied with the results achieved. You all thought Sega was going to be unable to withstand it. As long as you add more oil, you can grab Sega's position!
In Gao Xian's opinion, the new products in the video game industry at this time are all life-threatening symbols! The products are not satisfactory, which will make the bad money appear and drive away the chaos of good money; The brilliant products set off the morbid state of the current market.
When Gao Xian personally asked questions such as Sega's financial treatment scheme for price difference coupons, so as to reflect the losses as much as possible in the unlucky third quarter, the price war started again. Kangmaoda, the main attacker, lowered the price of its main personal computer product Commodore 64 from US $400 to US $200.
Now, not to mention Sega's hint that it can't stand it. Even Texas Instruments, kangmaoda's direct low-end low-cost personal computer competitor, dare not hide it and began to release the wind and take preventive shots. What, the third quarter will have the biggest loss in the company's history