Time passed quickly. After more than a month of testing and several optimizations by Woz, the final motherboard and internal software of the Snake arcade were decided. Chen Zhiwen immediately ordered the purchase of 300 sets of motherboards from related companies in the United States. Hong Kong Various other hardware materials are also prepared.
On April 15, 300 arcade machines were installed, of which 270 were shipped to the United States by sea and 30 by air. After arriving in the United States, these arcades will be quickly delivered to 30 arcades in three cities: Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Inside the large bar.
These bars are all customers of Red Bull and are very familiar with the Red Bull business team. After telling a company that they wanted to put an arcade machine in their bar for market testing, they would also get half of the profit from it. Naturally, they agreed without any harm. They will naturally do business that can make a small profit.
Ted is the owner of a bar on Queen Street in New York City. He has opened this bar for more than ten years. It is very large, with an area of 2,000 square feet. It is the largest bar in the neighborhood, and most of the residents nearby are also his regular customers. .
"Cheng, it's only the afternoon, what are you doing here?" Ted was thinking about tax issues and asked curiously when he saw people coming outside the bar.
"I'll give you a gift." Midea representative Cheng Weibin said with a smile.
"What gift? You brought Red Bull puree?" Ted asked.
"No, the game console I mentioned last time has arrived." Cheng Weibin shook his head and said.
"Game console? It's here so soon? Didn't you say it was still in Hong Kong last week?" Ted stood up and saw someone carrying a large item outside.
"It was airlifted and spent a few days at the customs. I got it this morning and sent it over," Cheng Weibin said.
"Oh my god, you guys are transporting such a big and heavy thing by air? Are you out of your mind?" Ted was shocked. He spent a long time debating whether to send a small box by air because the price was too expensive. A few dollars per kilogram.
"Our boss is very rich." Cheng Weibin shrugged and said, "And air transport of large items is different from small items!"
"Okay, you're right. Rich people generally don't care about money." Ted shrugged and handed over a bottle of beer. Even if it's not night, as long as you come to the bar, you have to drink some wine. This is a habit throughout the United States. .
The two watched the installer push the arcade machine in. There were universal wheels on the bottom of the arcade machine. Only when the height changed, several people needed to lift it together. Under the arrangement of the boss Ted, the arcade machine was placed at the door of the bathroom and faced towards the door. The outside is about 2 meters away, and this is also a place with a very large flow of people inside the bar, second only to the bar counter.
Power on, start up, the relevant personnel have already been trained, and the game interface will be opened in a minute.
"Greedy Snake?" Ted looked at the name of the game and asked.
"Yes, the name of this arcade game is Snake." Cheng Weibin smiled, and then told the people around him about the general gameplay of the game.
"It's pretty simple, let me try it." Ted understood after hearing this, took out a wallet from his body, rummaged through it, found a 25-cent coin, and put it into the game machine.
"Let's start." Ted said with confidence. As a bar owner, he has played a lot of arcade machines and is quite experienced. After passing the new game, he naturally has to try it himself to know whether it is good or not.
Cheng Weibin on the side smiled and said nothing. Although they were Red Bull salesmen, the demand for Red Bull in the United States has always exceeded production capacity, so there was no worry about not being able to sell it. Therefore, when the company decided to help its brother company promote new products, They were arranged to return to Hong Kong as early as last month, where they learned theoretical knowledge, practical operations, etc. before being sent back to the United States.
Ted played very enthusiastically. At the beginning, the snake's body was relatively short, the space was large enough, and the food was scattered. It was not difficult at all. But what he didn't know was that this was a deliberate design of the game. The snake had to grow in the early stage. It's in the interest of the game to hurry up.
There are also points in the upper right corner of the interface, which record the length of the snake, allowing players to have an intuitive understanding of their results.
A minute later, the body of the game snake controlled by Ted was getting longer and longer, and he also discovered the problem. It was too difficult to operate, and the food appeared in increasingly remote locations.
After a while, Ted, who made a mistake in control, bumped the snake's head onto his own tail.
"It's a pity, no, I want to play another game." Ted was a little dissatisfied with the result of his failure, and continued to take out his wallet to look for coins, but he couldn't find any.
"Here is the key. Inside is the coin you just bought." Cheng Weibin opened a small door from the side and took out the coin.
"This game of yours is much more interesting and easier to operate than Arkanoid." Ted returned from the game state to the businessman state. He has played many arcade games. The best one before was Arkanoid. It The characteristic is that you can control the position of the ball to control the direction of the ball, but this is still indirect control, while the operation of Snake is obviously direct operation, which can give people stronger stimulation, more pleasure, and A stronger competitive spirit, especially under the urging of alcohol and a bunch of bad friends in the bar, I guess the coins are thrown in as if they are not money.
"How much does this arcade machine cost?" Ted then asked.
"I don't know, I really don't know the price." Cheng Weibin shook his head and said: "The order from above is to put it in each bar for a few days for free, and the profit will be divided with the bar owner."
Midea's senior management really didn't tell them the price. In fact, if you think about it, you know that the company's senior management spent such a large cost to airlift dozens of equipment this time just to know the market feedback in the shortest possible time. Even if there is The price can only be an estimate, and the details will definitely have to wait until the test results come out.
"Okay, let's keep it for a few days. If it's fun, I'll buy it." Ted thought for a while and said, if he didn't agree, the person in front of him would find someone else. There are many hotels in New York City, some bigger than his house. Quite a lot, and it's first come first served near the water. If this arcade really attracts a large group of people, then you have to buy it first. One is that you can make more money, and the other is that it might attract more people. Customers come over.
"This is a short-term storage contract. It is only one page and the content is relatively simple. Please take a look." Cheng Weibin handed over the one page.
Ted took the page and glanced at it. Basically, the content was relatively simple. The ownership of the equipment belonged to a company in the United States, and it was placed in the bar and operated for 3-5 days. The bar was responsible for the electricity bill, and the coins obtained also belonged to the bar. The main function was Avoid causing some disputes.
"How much does this thing cost?" Ted asked with a frown.
"750W, not much, just a TV." Cheng Weibin said.
"That's fine, it's not a problem." Ted didn't care. Electricity bills in the United States are not expensive. Even after the oil crisis, electricity prices had little impact.
Cheng Weibin glanced at his watch and said with a smile: "Ted, you have to prepare a large number of 25-cent coins."
…
"Ding ding ding" the phone rang. Cheng Weibin immediately put down the newspaper in his hand, picked up the phone, and said after hearing the voice on the other side: "Hello, who's there?"
Ted's voice came over the phone and said, "Cheng, your machine seems to be broken!"
"What? The machine is broken?"
Cheng Weibin was shocked. He had only been away for a long time, but the equipment was broken.
After hanging up the phone, he immediately called the engineer who came from Hong Kong, and then went to the bar first.
"What's the problem?" Cheng Weibin asked quickly after seeing Ted.
"It's useless to put a coin in over there. It seems to be blocked." Ted pointed and said.
"Is it blocked?" Cheng Weibin frowned. In the training last month, he roughly knew the entire structure. The coin recognition device is the most likely problem on the equipment, because this technology is directly borrowed from Japan. Came here.
The two walked to the arcade. At this moment, there were several blond young people standing around. Cheng Weibin leaned over to open the coin door lock, and suddenly felt a weight pressing down on him. Countless 25-cent coins fell out of the box. down.
"So many?" This was what everyone was thinking at the moment. Cheng Weibin was also shocked. The box inside was fixed and neatly stored, which could hold almost 1,000 coins. However, the coins that rolled down from the top were not neat and fell apart. The discount is about five or six hundred.
It's only 11 o'clock, the nightlife has just begun, and this arcade machine has already made more than 100 US dollars?
Ted was also shocked. He had only seen people at the arcade before, but he didn't pay much attention. After all, the most important thing in a bar is drinking. A few hours later, he heard someone reporting that the arcade was broken. , the coin couldn't be inserted, so he subconsciously thought that the hardware inside was broken, but he never expected that there would be a box full of coins.
"I need to suggest to Hong Kong that the box for storing coins should be bigger." Cheng Weibin thought to himself.
"Wow wow wow" Other people around him cast curious glances. Although they were not short of money, the appearance of hundreds of coins still shocked them.
"Put it away first." Cheng Weibin began to collect the coins, while Ted went to the front to get a basket and put the coins at the front desk.
The two put the coins away and put them in again. The machine started running again as normal, and the young people around them immediately gathered again.
After the coin was returned to the bar, Ted frowned and said, "Now that I have taken out this coin, how will you determine the actual profit of the arcade machine?"
"Don't worry, the device's background has actual daily data, and it also records how many coins have been invested in a day." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.
"That's not bad." Ted thought for a moment. With this function, it would be convenient for him to manage it in the future. After all, the bar's arcade revenue is only a small part of the arcade. The counter is the focus, and he can't keep an eye on it all the time. In the arcade, the daily income used to be just a rough estimate. If someone really took away 5% or 10% of the daily income, he didn't know.
When the people around saw that the equipment was ready, they immediately asked impatiently if they could continue playing, and Ted naturally got out of the way.
Cheng Weibin also went to the bar. Ted gave him a free beer and asked: "Chen, what is the price of this arcade machine? Do you really not know?"
Cheng Weibin took a sip of beer and said, "Okay, I heard the price is around US$3,000, maybe more. Are you interested?"
"3,000 U.S. dollars?" Ted couldn't help but be speechless. The net profit of a large bar like his in a month was about this amount. Such a simple device costs 3,000 U.S. dollars. The price is indeed outrageous. You must know that an ordinary car now only costs about 2,000 U.S. dollars. Dollar.
However, after looking at the coins he had just recovered, Ted silently calculated that he was still very excited. He could earn more than a hundred dollars a day. Although it was the first day and there were more people playing, the traffic in his bar was still the same. It's not small. In the future, even if the income is thirty or forty US dollars a day, the cost will be earned back in three months, and then it will be pure profit.
"Ted, we have known each other for more than a year, and I can tell you some of our internal data." Cheng Weibin suddenly said in a low and mysterious voice.
"What data?" Ted suddenly became interested.
Cheng Weibin said: "In the past two months, the Hong Kong headquarters invited thousands of students and adults to play this game in Hong Kong, and also purchased the recently popular Brick Breaker. The data obtained is that most people are interested in Snake is far more interesting than Arkanoid or other arcade machines on the American market, and its patience with the game is much stronger. Many people can continue to play for a long time, which is far more than Arkanoid, but it is free to play. In this case, charging will still depend on the data currently tested in bars.”
"The free charge only affects the number of times everyone plays, and the interest should still be the same." Ted said.
"Well, that's what we guessed as well." Cheng Weibin nodded and said.
"How many days are you going to stay in my bar?" Ted asked. He didn't care before, but now that he is making so much money, he naturally wants to know more about it.
"Just three days. You know how big New York is and how many bars there are. We were only assigned 10 bars. A bar is open for three days on average. In a month, we can only choose 100 bars." Cheng Weibin said .
"3 days!" Ted was a little reluctant to part with it, but this is also true. There are too many bars in New York City. This is where Americans spend time when they are bored. There are several bars in every town, and in big cities like New York In Los Angeles, there's probably one on every street.
"Hong Kong has already started large-scale production, and it will be available in the United States in a while." Cheng Weibin said with a smile.
"Then if there are any goods, be the first to give them to me." Ted said quickly. Based on the interest of today's crowd, he concluded that this game will definitely be popular, because now the Arkanoid and Arkanoid games near the Snake arcade are Almost no one cares about table tennis anymore. A bunch of people gathered around the Snake Arcade machine to watch the players play, and at the same time, there were a few people who were constantly instructing them on how to proceed.
"No problem, how many do you want? Let me write them down first." Cheng Weibin asked.
"How many?" Ted felt a little inwardly. One unit costs 3,000 US dollars, and a few units would cost tens of thousands of dollars. This is not a small amount of money, but if you buy less, isn't it a loss to make less money?
"Ted, if you are under financial pressure, you can apply for a loan from Citibank. Our company has already negotiated with Citibank and you can get a loan directly. The bank will provide 70% of the funds." Cheng Weibin said well prepared.
"Like a car loan?" Ted asked.
"Yes." Cheng Weibin smiled and said, "Let's do this. I'll write it down first. When we decide the price, you can decide how many units to buy."
"Okay, thank you, brother." Ted patted the other person's shoulder and laughed.
PS: That’s it for today’s chapter!
(End of chapter)
