The battle begins

In the survey, it was apparent that children under the age of thirteen preferred the gaming consoles and games from Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.

Because many games from Gamestar Electronic Entertainment are indeed relatively more child-friendly, children tend to prefer them.

Gamestar Electronic Entertainment also has absolute dominance in this age group.

However, within the range of teenagers over thirteen and young adults in their twenties, it's a split between Gamestar Electronic Entertainment and Surui Electronics on who they prefer.

Many of these teenagers were not initially gamers; they were introduced to the gaming world by their classmates or friends.

In their judgment, gameplay was secondary, and the quality of graphics was more important.

Under the influence of visual effects, the two new game consoles from Surui Electronics were evidently more attractive this time.

This time, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment only released a handheld product, and their home game console's graphics were slightly inferior to the PS2 era.

The gap with Surui Electronics' new home console, PNF, was really significant.

However, Takayuki did not necessarily strive to catch up in graphics for home consoles but continued to focus on making games step by step.

Because Takayuki wanted to seize the last market opportunity before the rise of mobile smartphones. Once mobile smartphones completely dominate people's field of view, handheld consoles will really decline.

And it's estimated to be at least ten years or more.

He wanted to fully capitalize on the handheld console's dividends during this time period.

After the rise of mobile smartphones, he would then launch a new home game console.

Fortunately, he had many game titles from the PS2 era that were suitable for the performance of the current handheld consoles. Just releasing these titles one by one would be enough to form a strong competitiveness. So he wasn't particularly worried.

Now he would focus on the handheld consoles.

And not all of his handheld consoles necessarily had to feature games from the previous era. Some slightly lower-performance console games that were not ready could also be available.

At this moment, Takayuki had countless thoughts on game development.

After the end of the International Consumer Electronics Show, many people didn't remember much about this year's groundbreaking electronic products, but the memory of Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's "149" was still fresh.

And so, time slowly moved into February.

The advertising competition in February seemed particularly intense, even more so than before.

Surui Electronics went crazy buying various advertising spaces for ads.

They even considered Facebook. Although they knew this was Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's main battlefield, after all, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment wasn't the decision-maker. If they paid enough money, Bob would definitely agree to run their ads.

But YOO overlapped with Facebook in some business areas, and the two sides had some subtle competition. So the idea of advertising on Facebook was temporarily shelved.

But elsewhere, Surui Electronics was spending a lot of money.

Especially during the Super Bowl, the grandest event in the United States, often referred to as the American Spring Festival, Surui Electronics spent seven million dollars to buy multiple advertising spots, including a thirty-second advertisement during halftime, banner advertisements in the audience seats, and advertisements during the halftime show. This price immediately set a record for the highest price a company has ever paid for advertising during the Super Bowl, stunning many people.

More people finally realized that the competition this time was probably more intense than they had imagined.

In the United States, the Super Bowl is the most-watched program of the year, comparable to Japan's Kohaku Uta Gassen and China's Spring Festival Gala.

And the price of inserting ads in such programs is sky-high.

These are advertising spots that only truly top-tier companies can afford.

Gamestar Electronic Entertainment could certainly afford it, but Takayuki didn't do this because it was equivalent to giving away money. His reputation was already established, and now Surui Electronics was burning money, so he didn't need to rush.

Now the department stores were his main stronghold, and the gaming consoles from Gamestar Electronic Entertainment were the best-selling products. No business would refuse such a lucrative opportunity. They would even give Gamestar Electronic Entertainment some advertising discounts and actively seek advertising with Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.

Isn't this better than licking the advertisers from the Super Bowl?

In the end, the statistics showed that Surui Electronics' investment in advertising probably exceeded fifty million dollars, while Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had about ten million dollars.

Mainly because Takayuki only needed to promote one product, but Surui Electronics needed to promote two products simultaneously.

Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's new handheld console was officially released in early March, and Surui Electronics, unwilling to lag behind, was only five or six days behind Gamestar Electronic Entertainment in timing. Moreover, relying on its global sales network, Surui Electronics decided to release its products worldwide simultaneously.

Including Europe, Australia, Asia, the Americas, and even Africa.

This was the advantage of having a large scale, with sales networks everywhere.

And online and third-party platforms were handed over to YOO. YOO also happened to be planning to launch internet shopping services. He had wanted to promote it in Japan before, but the financial conglomerates in Japan strongly resisted, which made him very frustrated. However, it was relatively easier to promote in other regions, where new things, especially in the internet field, were accepted more quickly, especially in Europe and America. After all, they were the ones who started this internet trend.

Compared to that, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment was lagging behind in terms of sales networks.

Until now, they had only conquered the department store markets in the United States and Japan, and their presence in other regions was still relatively small, without truly absolute dominance.

By the end of February, The Legend of Zelda and the new Super Mario Bros. had already been completed and had entered the mass production stage of cartridge production.

This time, these two first-party games each prepared over two million cartridge boxes. Just this part of the investment alone exceeded tens of millions of dollars, not counting the game development costs, transportation, and store profit sharing, which would only be calculated after the sales.

Other cartridges were similar. Takayuki only provided between a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand cartridge boxes for each third-party first-release game.

Such production volumes were already under considerable pressure. Takayuki wanted to produce more, but the cartridge manufacturers couldn't handle it anymore. Their production capacity couldn't meet such a huge demand.

In the last few days of February, Surui Electronics' advertising reached a new peak.

In this world, sometimes having a loud voice was also an advantage. It would make more people remember your product, and even good products might be overlooked in such circumstances. Many games that were praised but not commercially successful in the past were affected by this.