In a certain sense, Sony now counted as having its own "Mario" and "Sonic," and its confidence had grown another three notches.
Flipping further back, there was the routine report from the major North American third-party publishers.
Electronic Arts's FIFA 97 and NBA Live 96 had launched on schedule across all major platforms.
These two products, jokingly called "annual goods" by players, had barely even overhauled their underlying physics engines. They had merely slapped on the new season's player roster data, swapped in a cooler, flashier package box, and easily pulled in million-level sales on the North American market just as expected.
"Larry Probst really is a dab hand at business." Nakayama Takuya could not help teasing aloud, his tone carrying a bit of an industry insider's banter. "Electronic Arts has completely figured out the playbook for making money by reskinning on an assembly line. As long as the tournament licenses are in hand, year after year, those fanatical sports fans will still line up obediently to pay. It's practically a money-printing machine."
The middle section of the briefing recorded data for Sega's own Jupiter platform.
Among them, Jupiter Bomberman, developed by Hudson, was impressively listed.
"Hudson's game can only be considered barely passing if you look at software sales alone," Hisao Oguchi said, pointing to another set of exceptionally dazzling data beside it. "But the peripherals department has been grinning from ear to ear these past few days. In order to gather four players on the sofa for same-screen battles, sales of controller multitaps and spare controllers have surged by more than three hundred percent month-on-month! The factory is already rushing production overnight."
"This is a victory for the living-room social attribute." Nakayama Takuya delivered the final verdict. "A game like Bomberman is pure torture if one person plays