“That’s not how you should put it!” Iwata Satoru waved his hand, but before he could finish, Mr. Huang immediately retorted, “If this deal doesn’t go through, and I apply to have Blizzard’s games appear on Nintendo platforms, would you refuse?”
“Well, we at Nintendo conduct thorough reviews of game quality. Only after passing our review can we…” Iwata Satoru began to recite his rules by rote.
“It’s simple. If we can’t get onto Nintendo, we’ll go to PlayStation. I’m sure Sony wouldn’t refuse the world’s number one PC game, Warcraft III, with over 40 million players worldwide, from being on the PlayStation platform!” Mr. Huang said calmly. Iwata Satoru immediately changed his tune, “Ahem, I believe there are no problems with Blizzard games appearing on Nintendo. If Mr. Huang is truly interested in this matter, we can discuss it separately. I guarantee Mr. Huang a satisfactory answer!”
It was unthinkable for Iwata Satoru to push Blizzard games towards Sony. After all, the biggest reason Nintendo had fallen to its current dire situation was that its original third-party game companies had largely taken their major titles to Sony, leaving Nintendo with only its first-party games and a small number of loyal third-party titles, significantly reducing the number of games available for Nintendo.
Now, if Warcraft III, the number one single-player PC game, and all of Blizzard’s games were adapted into console versions and entered the console market, it would undoubtedly bring a huge influx of traffic to Nintendo.
After all, many console players were also very interested in the popular games on computers, but they either didn’t have computers or didn’t want to play games on computers, considering it heresy, and thus had never played them.
Once Blizzard games were console-ized, it would undoubtedly have a massive impact on the entire console market.
Of course, this impact might only be temporary. Blizzard’s most popular games, Warcraft III and StarCraft II, are real-time strategy games. Adapting them to console games, the control scheme would likely be quite a… unique experience.
However, Diablo II could be perfectly adapted to a console version. But this game has been out for over four years. Releasing a console version now might be seen as re-hashing old content.
Yet, there has been persistent dissatisfaction online regarding the lack of a console version for Diablo II. If Blizzard were to release a console version at this time, it would certainly attract a wave of fans and attention.
From this, one can see how nonsensical and shameless the conditions proposed by Nintendo were. They were presenting something they were asking Mr. Huang to do as a favor in return for a deal. This god-tier maneuver, was it aimed at provoking Mr. Huang?
Seeing the obvious anger on Huang He’s face, Iwata Satoru could only sigh and quickly appeased him, “Mr. Huang, I know this condition is not enough. How about we look at another condition?”
“What condition?” Mr. Huang asked with annoyance.
“How about Nintendo’s agency rights in China!” Iwata Satoru took a deep breath. Upon hearing this condition, Mr. Huang’s expression changed slightly.
Nintendo’s agency rights in China. This condition showed some sincerity from Nintendo, but only a little.
“How does Nintendo plan to cooperate with our Jiangnan Group?” Mr. Huang asked. Mr. Huang naturally had his own considerations regarding the cooperation conditions with Nintendo.
He was considering that whether their company was responsible for sales or if they established a joint venture company with Nintendo, both cooperation methods were acceptable.
The former, by leveraging Jiangnan Group’s existing resources and the cost-free agency method, could stably generate profits.
The latter was similar, and with a joint venture company with Nintendo, they could follow the established path and find ways to obtain more resources. Therefore, Jiangnan Group could accept both methods, the only difference being the profit distribution between these two methods.
Just as Mr. Huang was pondering the pros and cons and bottom lines of these two methods, Iwata Satoru spoke, “We can adopt a consignment sales cooperation method with your company!”
“Consignment sales?” Mr. Huang’s expression changed again. “What kind of consignment sales? Are you setting a sales target for us next year?”
If that were the case, it would depend on the sales volume Nintendo demanded for the year. This was a major pitfall. The console market in China was actually very bleak. If Nintendo’s demanded sales volume was excessively high, then Mr. Huang would respectfully decline.
“Something like that!” Iwata Satoru said vaguely. “Our parent company will distribute relevant products to your company according to plan next year. Your company can purchase these products at a 40% discount and then sell them in your country. All profits obtained will be yours, unrelated to Nintendo!”
“I *******!” Even with Mr. Huang’s good temper, he couldn’t help but curse in Chinese directly in front of Iwata Satoru.
This Nintendo was truly treating Jiangnan Group as a complete fool. This kind of consignment sales system was really treating Chinese companies like dogs.
In fact, Mr. Huang was no stranger to such a system. When he was working for Bandai’s Chinese distributor, Ruihuan Trading, their cooperation system with Bandai was like this.
As Bandai’s distributor, Ruihuan Trading could never decide how much stock they imported from Bandai, nor could they decide what types or varieties of goods to import. Whatever Bandai allocated to Ruihuan Trading, Ruihuan Trading could only sell that, with absolutely no room for independent choice.
Even the prices were completely dictated by Bandai. Furthermore, Ruihuan Trading had to pay immediately after receiving the goods and could not return them. If they couldn’t sell them, they had to bear the loss themselves.
One year, Bandai was facing overcapacity, and coincidentally, the Gundam Build Fighters series was a flop. Large quantities of toys couldn’t be sold even in Japan. So, they dumped all these excess goods onto Ruihuan Trading, happily receiving a large sum of money from Ruihuan Trading.
But Ruihuan Trading could only cry tears of blood looking at this pile of unsellable goods. It was said that if they had to bear the losses, Ruihuan Trading’s profits from three years would have been wiped out.
However, Ruihuan Trading was not stupid, or rather, they weren't exactly good people either.
After all, Ruihuan Trading was the general distributor, not the actual point-of-sale distributor. Therefore, they very ingeniously announced a bundle sales strategy.
That is, to get a hot Bandai product, one had to bundle it with an unpopular Bandai product.
For example, at that time, the PB series, Sazabi, and Nu Gundam were very popular and in short supply. As long as there was stock, they could be sold.
So, when the downstream distributors came to pick up goods, Ruihuan Trading directly announced that if you wanted to take a box of Master Grade Sazabi, you had to take several boxes of the unsellable SD series.
Then these distributors could only look at the large pile of unsellable SDs in their warehouses with tears.
However, these distributors were not stupid either. Since they were selling them in bundles, they reduced the price of the unsellable SD series and directly increased the price of popular items like Sazabi.
All distributors colluded together. Both online and offline platforms collectively raised prices. After all, the cost of acquiring goods had increased, and no one would sell at the original price just to survive.
As a result, Gunpla enthusiasts at the time found that the cost of buying Gunpla had increased by more than a hundred, or even several hundred, reaching a crazy level. They then began to scold the distributors and scalpers. On the other hand, Bandai could openly declare that they had never increased prices and that market fluctuations had nothing to do with them.
In short, the consignment sales system that Nintendo spoke of was to make Jiangnan Group their dog, a dog that had to eat whatever it was given, even if it was a pile of shit.
Mr. Huang naturally would not agree to such conditions. However, it was rather strange that later a certain tech giant actually agreed to such a condition, completely disregarding its face and prestige as a company tens of times larger than Nintendo, and agreed to be someone else’s dog.
But to maintain its dominance in the gaming market, it wasn't shameful!
“Mr. Huang, what did you say?” Iwata Satoru, not understanding Chinese, asked in confusion.
“I said President Iwata has a high opinion!” Mr. Huang, having regained his composure, put on a smile again and spoke in Japanese. Although Iwata Satoru felt that Huang He certainly didn’t mean what he said, he couldn’t say anything and could only nod. “In that case, Mr. Huang agrees to this cooperation?”
“No!” Huang He shook his head and then said, “To be frank, Nintendo has no market in China. China has never had a game console culture, and all players now are PC players. Therefore, I believe the console market does not exist in China. So, Jiangnan Group has no interest in acting as an agent for your company’s products. You can find other manufacturers!”
“…” Mr. Huang’s directness made Iwata Satoru feel ashamed and annoyed again. He said, “In that case, I don’t know what other benefits we can offer your company. Does Mr. Huang have any suggestions or ideas?”
“Yes!” Mr. Huang also felt a headache. Negotiating with an idiot like Nintendo was too tiring. So, he said very decisively, “How about this? I’ll propose just one plan. If it works, it works. If not, I’m leaving!”
“Please, go ahead.”
“I can sell all our externally sold chips to you at a price of 40% of the original cost, but these chips can only be used for the manufacturing of Nintendo game consoles and game cartridges, and the total annual purchase will not exceed 100 million units.”
“In return, we hope to obtain the copyright authorization for all of Nintendo’s game characters, storylines, images, and other cultural products!” Mr. Huang said.