Taking stock of cheap game strategies

November 19, 2014, in order to promote mobile payment, Apple China's App store many games, application prices suddenly dropped to 1 yuan, quickly detonated the player's buying enthusiasm, the original calm of the pay list was instantly activated. Over the next few days, pay-game sales, which have rarely been paid for in the past, have grown by dozens of or even hundreds of times-fold, and the heat of the market has allowed Apple to quickly decide to set the price of $1 and 3 as the permanent pricing option for the App Store in China. There is no doubt that this is the triumph of cheap tactics, with the history of electronic game development in which similar price-determining fates abound, especially Tiger Electronics, the most famous. Next, let's review the story of the creator of this cheap game concept.

Do you know the history of "cheap strategy" in the gaming industry?

Founded in 1978, the Tiger Electronics company, located in Illinois State, USA, is a low-cost manufacturer of electronic products that manufactures low technology content. Throughout the 80 's, their only product was the electronic learning machine "K28", a large calculator with an alphabet key, a small display, a 165-word storage vocabulary and an electronic voice. With this electronic learning machine to open the retail market, Tiger Electronics began to officially enter the gaming industry, launched its own LCD palm machine.

In the history of the Palm machine that many of the players have compiled, there is no record of the LCD gaming machine sold by the tiger, because it is a sort of outright "shanzhai", modeled after the Nintendo Jin Ping Design and manufacture of Nintendo's technology, the game of the 1980 Market & Watch. The idea of Game & watch stems from the fact that Wang Jin Ping in the Shinkansen when he saw an office worker who had been fiddling with an electronic calculator because of his car boredom, was a portable game machine developed using the computer technology that was already fully mature and even close to elimination. This kind of palm machine uses the Black-and-white LCD screen, the picture is the fixed single frame switch, uses the fixed pattern the liquid crystal display and the simple input button to complete the game content. In the decade of 1980-1991, Game & Watch sold nearly 60 games, successfully saved the Nintendo economic crisis, and finally decided the prototype of the Palm machine. But because a host can only run the characteristics of a fixed game, Nintendo quickly lost interest in Game & Watch, abandoned the series after its second generation of handheld Game Boy, and let the market's counterfeiters make similar products.

Game & Watch is Nintendo's first handheld product, a combination of "game" and "Quartz clock". The success of this game has stimulated dozens of other games and toy companies to make their own portable consoles, many of which copy Game & Watch's games intact.

It was at this time that Tiger Electronics entered the gaming industry, and it had only old technology, outdated products, and "High and low" sales strategies. At this point, Game boy has been on sale, the first generation of color backlight palm machine has been interviewed, and the Tiger Electronics Palm machine is still a decade ago technology. What's even more embarrassing is that even in a copycat's perspective, the product of the Tiger Electronics is also extremely inferior-also uses the Black-and-white LCD screen, the Nintendo can produce "The Big Kong" and "the Mario" the image, but the tiger electron can only make a heap of the clumsy and the not to be able to identify the graffiti, in some players ' words, " Tiger Electronic Games color background stickers are hundreds of times times better than the picture. ”

Tiger Palm machine game mode is a variety of, in addition to the most basic Dodge class games, but also include racing, fighting, shooting and even role-playing mode, of course, the only constant is, and its poor image content and no fun game mode.

We have reason to believe that such inferior product quality is most directly related to the sales strategy made by Tiger electronics, in order to achieve the goal of "high yield and low cost", tiger games can only make different handheld machines quickly, then pack them on the coat of popular games or films, and distribute the market by each retailer. In the 90 's, the price of a Game Boy mainframe was about 60 dollars, and the cost of the game cassette was $30 trillion, which is definitely a big expense. In stark contrast, at that time, a tiger palm machine sold less than 20 U.S. dollars, for those in the non-affluent class, buying a tiger handheld as a birthday gift to a child who is still in primary school is clearly a more normal decision, and its outer packaging also prints "Superman", "Batman" or "Locke", "Street Fighter 2" and other reliable publicity. In the hottest phase, almost every convenience store can buy a variety of packaging, various themes of the Tiger palm machine, the cheap products in North America, the sales of more than game Boy. Yes, cheap victories.

The November 1993 "GamePro" published an interview with the powerful senior Tiger Electronics, and summed up their success as follows: Quick access to user-focused content authorization, low price and easy to learn game mode. "We are constantly focusing on the preferences of our users and trying to figure out what is the hottest thing for kids to talk about," said Tamara Lebovitz, who is the Tiger's director of electronics sales. Once the target, we will be the first time to negotiate with the brand owners licensing, we can always take advantage of the topic has not cooled when the launch of their own products, always. ”

While launching a variety of tiger handheld bombing markets, Tiger Electronics, which has plenty of cash flow, began experimenting with more "fun" content, including creative moves (making the LCD game the size of the watch, the real "Game Watch"), but more naked imitations--1994, Tiger Electronics sells their own "barcode consoles", a game model that sweeps the barcode to generate character data, and in Japan there are even reality shows designed to collect the strongest barcodes; in 1995, Tiger Electronics launched a simulation of the Nintendo "Virtual Boy" The cheap VR equipment "R-zone", and also has the selling point VB different, this is a kind of downright rubbish; In 1997, just a few months after the advent of the "e-chickens" of all generations, Tiger Electronics sold their own "Giga Pets" in the North American market, This kind of imitation relies on lower prices to sweep the market and even force generations to cut prices on their products.