Video Game Empire

The faces of several distributors were extremely ugly, and Han Peng felt very relieved, and continued to instigate while the iron was hot: "If everyone here dares to sell game consoles on a consignment basis, Dongfang Commercial is still willing to cooperate with you regardless of previous suspicions. Take action without fear of Atari's threat of out of stock, because if Atari dares to do this, it means that they will automatically give up the entire Southern California market!

If Atari really dares to put you all on the blacklist for refusing to cooperate, our game consoles can just seize the blank market. The sales data in your hands is also very clear. The profit gap between the agency-2600 and the agency sales of game consoles is actually not large.

As long as you dare to sell game consoles, after Atari is out of stock, our company guarantees that your profit from selling game consoles will never be less than your previous sales of -2600. If the previous profit is not reached, the difference will be subsidized by our company! "

Atari's so-called ban on game consoles relies on its strong market position. Many game distributors rely on Atari's products for most of their sales, so they have to obey it. The only way for Oriental Games to break the threat of Atari is to destroy Atari's market monopoly.

But without the support of distributors, it would be difficult for Dongfang Games' game consoles to even put on the shelves, let alone challenge the market leader of Atari's game consoles. So Li Xuan asked Dongfang Commercial to leave the middle distributors aside, go shirtless and contact the bottom-most retail stores in person.

Oriental Commercial's marketing team couldn't do it all across the U.S. market. But you can conquer a state first, or narrow it down further. Conquer a city first. Under the guidance of Li Xuan's idea, Oriental Commercial started from Los Angeles and San Diego in southern California.

Dozens of sales groups. Spent a week running wildly all over Southern California. Dongfang Commercial offers very favorable conditions for retail store owners. They do not need to undertake any up-front investment, do not have any hard sales tasks, and can withdraw at any time. Most retail store owners will not miss such a risk-free opportunity to make money, so Dongfang Commercial finally spread the game consoles all over the Southern California market at the fastest speed.

Then after waiting for another week, after the sales data of the game consoles came out, Dongfang Commercial finally had the confidence to sit down with these distributors in Southern California and talk again. Because of console sales in Southern California. It's not inferior to Atari's -2600 game console at all.

These dealers finally couldn't sit still with the data reports given by Dongfang Commercial. The reason why they fully compromised with Atari before was because they could not guess the market potential of the game console. Now the game console is still at a tie with the Atari game console despite the complete disadvantage.

The profits they could have made from the distribution business of game consoles were lost because of Atari's interference. These distributors are naturally reluctant to continue to be at the mercy of Atari.

With the provocation and support of Dongfang Shoji, several distributors in the Southern California area reached an offensive and defensive alliance and re-signed a new game console distribution agreement with Dongfang Shoji. The so-called Southern California area mainly refers to the super city belt composed of the Greater Los Angeles area and the Greater San Diego metropolitan area in southern California.

Orient Shoji wasn't in a hurry to announce new cooperation agreements with distributors in Southern California, but waited another three days. because later. Relying on the same impressive sales figures, and the example of the Southern California distributor, Oriental Commercial successfully persuaded dealers in the greater San Francisco area to steer clear of the Atari sales ban. Re-sign the game console agency agreement.

Distributors in three of California's most densely populated and economically developed metro areas have all opted to redistribute consoles, lured by huge real-world benefits. Oriental Commerce announced the two news at the same time. The repercussions in the industry are huge.

Atari was slapped in the face, and its dominance over distributors was greatly shaken. Atari's response was quick. Immediately blacklist a few dealers it thinks are spearheading the rebellion, trying to deter others.

But the few dealers saw that Atari was only targeting a small group of them. Immediately quit. So they completely tore their faces and invited mainstream media such as the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle to denounce Atari for relying on its monopoly position in the market, squeezing downstream distributors, and harming market fairness. Dali launches antitrust investigation.

"Xiao Lisheng, you used this trick well. The American newspapers started to report on this matter a lot!" Han Peng waved the "Los Angeles Times" and "San Francisco Chronicle" and said, this is the The two largest circulation newspapers on the West Coast of the United States, and the top ten mainstream newspapers in the United States.

"American newspapers like to publish news about weak and small forces resisting the rule of power, not to mention it has something to do with anti-monopoly! The US Department of Justice has just concluded its anti-monopoly investigation of IBM. This word is now a hot word!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

Reports in several newspapers are about the confrontation between game dealers and Atari, but the word "game machine" keeps appearing between the lines, which can easily arouse the curiosity of readers. What is it about a good game console that makes Atari so nervous and game dealers so hard to resist?

This is undoubtedly a huge free publicity opportunity for Dongfang Game Company. On the surface, Dongfang Game Company is well out of the way. As a foreign company, it could easily be at the disadvantage of being naturally ostracized by American readers.

But now the protagonists of the incident are Atari and a group of game distributors in California, which seem to have nothing to do with Oriental Games. In fact, all of this was planned by Dongfang Commercial, including the dealers who were going to file anti-monopoly charges with the US Department of Justice. Dongfang Commercial made a lot of promises behind the scenes, and they were so relentless.

"The US Department of Justice's antitrust investigation is definitely the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all major US companies. However, the US Department of Justice generally only targets giant companies such as IBM and Bell, and Atari's The scale is still not enough." Li Xuan said with a smile and shook his head.

Li Xuan does not believe that the Ministry of Justice will waste taxpayer funds to intervene in such a small-friction investigation. After all, the U.S. home game console market is now only a few billion dollars in size. However, with the attention and focus of the media, Atari will not dare to continue to implement the so-called ban on sales, otherwise it will really fall into the trap and let the Ministry of Justice not intervene.

In this way, the distributors in the United States can be said to have no worries at all. There have been game distributors in the past few days, and they can't wait to come to the door to seek cooperation with Dongfang Commercial on the game console again.

"The California market has been completely conquered by us! Next, we will see how many sales of the game consoles can be achieved!" Han Peng nodded and said, "Unfortunately, the cost of our self-built logistics and distribution system is too high, otherwise I really want to kick it. Open these sloppy distributors!"

Before, Dongfang Commercial used the logistics and distribution system of Computer Park Company to carry out direct distribution to retail stores in California. But this is only a stopgap measure after all. In order to support the operation of Dongfang Commercial, the logistics center of the computer park has additionally incurred huge operating costs including overtime, and these costs must be borne by Dongfang Game Company. .

In contrast, it is cheaper to distribute through agents. Oriental Commercial will naturally not have a hard time with US dollars, so in the end, it still chooses to cooperate with distributors. Of course, the new distribution system kicked out the state-level distributors, and Dongfang Shoji, through the computer park company's logistics center, supplied directly to regional distributors, who then wholesaled to final retailers.

While Li Xuan and Han Peng were reading newspapers at the US headquarters of Oriental Commercial in Los Angeles, at Atari's headquarters, the company's president, Mr. Casal, threw a newspaper to the ground. The report he just read happened to be that several game agents in Los Angeles were preparing to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting an antitrust investigation of Atari.

"! These bugs!"

According to Casal's original calculations~www.readwn.com~, he distanced most of the distributors from Eastern Games by threatening to cancel the supply. In this way, even if the game console is too good to appear on the shelf, it naturally cannot threaten the sales of Atari.

And Dongfang Game Company was disrupted the rhythm of listing, and the advertising costs paid before were all wasted. Dongfang Game Company has suffered such a major setback. When it readjusts its strategy, it will take half a year for the home game console market again, right?

Atari is developing a brand new -5200, and only until this new game console is launched, Casal is not afraid of the advantages of the machine in hardware performance. It's a pity that everything didn't go in the direction he envisioned. Dongfang Game Company's counterattack was extremely fierce, and it took only one month to turn back most of the game distributors in the California market.

He even encouraged a few thorns to fight with Atari, and Casal naturally did not believe that the Ministry of Justice would conduct an anti-monopoly investigation into Atari. But the word "monopoly" is enough to attract the attention of the media. Under the spotlight, the original methods that were not on the table could not continue to be used at all. (To be continued..)

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