"Last week, I worked part-time washing cars at a repair shop and made eighty US dollars." He gloomily pawed through the coins. "I had it all planned out—one Electronic Arts sports game and one new Sony disc. But looking at this, Jupiter alone has more than a dozen high-quality 3D games coming out in the second half of the year! What the hell is eighty bucks worth?!"
"That little bit of money wouldn't even fill a tooth gap, buddy." His companion in the baseball cap mocked him without mercy. "I just did some rough calculations with a calculator. Sega's three first-party blockbusters alone, plus this French team's action game and that space shooter that looks cool as hell—buying all of them would start at three hundred US dollars!"
The chubby boy sighed and silently swept the coins back into his pocket. "Looks like I'll have to beg my dad to let me take on all of next month's lawn-mowing and painting jobs. Otherwise, this fall I can only watch you guys have fun."
Old Tom, the shop owner, leaned against the counter. Listening to the boys' complaints, he could not suppress the smile at the corner of his mouth.
Conversations like this played out dozens of times a day in his shop over the past two days.
Players' wallets had limited capacity, but the sheer number of games exploding out of this year's E3 had far exceeded everyone's expectations—even the retailers' imagination.
After UE 1.0 utterly shattered the barriers to entry for underlying development, the terrifying productivity unleashed by small and medium studios had directly become those densely packed release lists in magazines, stretching farther than the eye could see.
Although their release schedules were all at least half a year away, they still gave players plenty to look forward