Back To 1995

   Chapter 578 Watching the Wind

No one at Microsoft opposes Bill Gates' decision. The "StarCraft" game and the hot sale of Sega consoles prove that Bill Gates is still young, and his investment vision is still the top, but Microsoft has not invested too much in the game industry. A lot, and Xue Leshan was the first to board.

Staring at the game industry, not only Microsoft, but also Yahoo and AOL are eager to move, these two are the two most active companies in the Internet and technology industries this year, social networking, search engines, e-mail, e-commerce, online education, etc. , there is almost no outlet that they are willing to miss.

   The second day after "StarCraft" was sold out, Yahoo and AOL started, quietly releasing announcements. To enter the game industry, Yahoo directly announced the establishment of a game studio.

Other Internet manufacturers are watching the wind even more. Now the Internet is a hype period. One company will play gimmicks more than the other. There are a group of Wall Street investment institutions behind the Internet. They all understand that what the Internet is playing now is not about performance, traffic, Users, revenue, technology and other things, but to be able to brag. Whoever brags more is the darling of the market.

   Game concept stocks are so hot, how could they want to miss it? After Yahoo and AOL, a large number of Internet listed companies such as Lycos, Excite, and infoseek announced their entry into the game industry, and the game industry was hot for a while.

   For a rookie game designer who just entered the industry, his salary was fired to more than 20,000 to 30,000 US dollars a month. Even so, the supply was still in short supply, and it was madly robbed by major Internet manufacturers, just like a "prosperous" scene in the game industry.

The sales volume of "StarCraft" on the second day, compared with the first day, dropped a bit, barely maintaining the record of one million sales in a single day, but in two days, more than 2.3 million sets of games were sold, still Enough to make "StarCraft" the most sought-after game for game fans around the world.

  The major game magazines and forums have also released ratings for "StarCraft" one after another. The Xue Leshan online game platform, for its own games, must have raised the rating to the death, and directly gave a rating of 9.8 points!

   "Wired Magazine" also gave StarCraft a high score of 9.7. The annual advertising fees of Xue Leshan Online and Double Click Company in "Wired Magazine" are obviously not in vain.

The editor of the IGN forum gave an evaluation of 9.3 points, "You can always believe in Blizzard, believe in Xue Leshan, there is no doubt about the playability of the StarCraft game, but its difficulty of operation and friendliness to players are compared to the previous one. "Diablo" is indeed not as good as it is, but the e-sports and player-versus-play concept introduced by "StarCraft" will be recorded in the game history!"

IGN still gave a good score for "StarCraft", especially in "player team battle", it is very praised, thinking that StarCraft, which has really changed the game's previous stand-alone games, is a history of playing alone .

GameStop also gave a high score of 9.5 points, which is basically touted. Other Yahoo, AOL, and the game section of Microsoft's newly launched MSN portal have all given Xueleshan a bit of face, and the scores are quite good. .

   However, it is not without opposition. Several conservative media and congressmen have fired on "StarCraft".

This is not a conservative media. They are deliberately targeting Xueleshan. When they bombard those rappers and rappers, they are much more ruthless. Previously, rap was banned in America, and they could not release records or sing publicly. Can play underground music that set.

   Those rappers who are now famous in America were not even allowed to hold concerts a few years ago. As soon as a concert was held, people from the Federal Police Department would smash the venue and arrest people directly.

This time, it is not uncommon to shoot at "StarCraft". The last time "Diablo" was launched, conservative media began to speak out, but it was not very obvious. objection.

   "Video games that celebrate violence must be banned, video games are becoming more and more realistic, and more people are starting to imitate the actions in the game, it is creating monsters!"

  The Mississippi State newspaper violently fired at Snow Mountain, arguing that video games were one of the culprits of the "gang problem" and demanded that the release of "StarCraft" and several other shooting games be stopped.

In addition to the conservative media, there are also several state and Capitol Hill members who came out to show their presence, and constantly bombarded Snow Mountain. The most outrageous one was one of the Capitol Hill members, or the American Rifle Association in Congress. Representation of mountains.

This is a bit outrageous. Even if the media spray Leshan Snow, people from the America Rifle Association dare to spray it. This is a bit unreasonable. It was demolished eight hundred times!

Xue Leshan is not a vegetarian either. ICNC TV station, ICQ portal, etc. immediately started to fight back. They also invited professors from universities such as Oxford and San Jose, and several well-known psychologists in America to form a research topic. Those gangs and the streets are related to the problem, is it related to the game, the result has not come out yet, but it is basically foreseeable.

   Around the game issue, the media camp organized by Xue Leshan, and the conservative media side, scolded the heat in full swing.

   But these controversies, apart from increasing the popularity of "StarCraft", did not have much impact on sales.

  After two consecutive days of game sales, breaking one million copies, the sales of "StarCraft" finally began to fall off a cliff, much like the movie box office trend.

   However, the sales volume has dropped, and the sales volume of more than 500,000 sets per day is still maintained, and under this circumstance, the phenomenon of "out of stock" has occurred in America and game retail stores around the world!

Xue Leshan announced that it will increase the supply of game discs, but the phenomenon of out-of-stocks still exists. When Cameron was pouring water on the IGN forum, he found that some water friends complained about the local area in New York, and some game retail stores had already put a " StarCraft" game discs sold for $80.

Compared with the official price, it was a full 20 dollars higher. Cameron was stunned when he saw the post on the forum. Those two dealers and scalpers who hoarded the goods were so dark in their hearts that they dared to increase the price so much. .

However, when he saw the "Collector's Edition" StarCraft, when it was listed on eBay for $150, Cameron couldn't help swallowing. When he pre-ordered on the Snow Mountain online platform, it was only $99. On the e-commerce platform, directly increase the price by half!

   (end of this chapter)