The closer Infinite World drew to release, the more promotional resources Mikfow poured into it.
As a result, this indirectly affected Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's console and game sales.
At the beginning of this year, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment experienced something extremely rare: a negative growth rate in game sales.
Overall game sales in the early part of the year fell by 15%.
This made Takayuki sigh—no matter how good the wine is, it can still fear a deep alley.
Because cheap liquor at the mouth of the alley had already lured customers away, people could only smell the harsh alcohol at the entrance, never the fine wine hidden deeper inside.
In today's world, marketing still mattered.
That said, Takayuki wasn't particularly worried. Recently, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment hadn't released any heavyweight titles, so there was no need to compete head-on with Mikfow for promotional resources.
Fighting them head-to-head would only waste money on marketing and end up enriching advertising agencies instead.
Takayuki could have Facebook promote Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's games.
But Mikfow was paying more—at least 30% more—so Takayuki had no intention of asking Bob to interfere. He simply let him accept Mikfow's advertising money honestly.
After all, part of Mikfow's ad spending would still flow back to his side as revenue sharing. Takayuki wasn't worried in the slightest.
As for recent key projects, there was really only one: the Tokyo Olympics IP crossover game.
The total investment for that game was around forty million dollars—a small-budget project by Gamestar's standards.
Half of that forty million went toward licensing character IPs from multiple companies.
The remaining twenty million was actual development cost.
Even then, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment only put up twenty million themselves—the other twenty million was reimbursed by the Japanese government.
Within the overall Olympic preparation budget, the cost of this game was practically negligible.
The Japanese government sponsored twenty million dollars in development costs and only asked for a 10% revenue share in return. Takayuki naturally accepted without hesitation.
At present, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics game had already gathered IP characters from Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, Suri Electronics, and Brown Entertainment.
Later on, the development team felt that this still wasn't enough and asked Takayuki for additional funding to license anime character IPs as well.
Takayuki readily agreed. The licensing fees were trivial anyway—and it was the Japanese government footing the bill.
In the end, the total number of IP characters included in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics game reached around one thousand.
Over a thousand characters from games, anime, and famous cultural works across countries all over the world.
It even included characters from the Four Great Classical Novels of the Chinese mainland, which genuinely surprised Takayuki. He hadn't expected those licenses to be obtainable.
But this only further emphasized the game's spirit of global unity.
Honestly, Takayuki was a little curious about how players would react once the game officially launched.
Meanwhile, he was also closely following the promotional progress of Infinite World.
Although he was already convinced that the game would run into many problems—just like No Man's Sky did at launch in his previous life—he couldn't completely rule out the possibility that this world might actually produce a masterpiece.
After all, scientific progress in this world was already more than eight years ahead of the world he had come from.
Game development technology here was also far more advanced.
So who knew? Maybe they really could make an outstanding game.
And if that happened, Takayuki would genuinely be happy—happy to be able to play a truly excellent game.
"One month left, huh… just after the Gamestar Carnival ends. Looks like the carnival will be affected a bit too."
But it wasn't a big issue.
The Gamestar Carnival was no longer just a game launch event—it had become a social platform for players to communicate, gather, and share their passions.
Takayuki had full confidence in his team.
One month later, the Gamestar Carnival opened right on schedule.
By now, the Gamestar Carnival had been running for more than ten years and was already an extremely mature large-scale celebration.
The Japanese government even used it as a national calling card for international promotion.
Here, you could experience the best video games—and the best gaming atmosphere.
Countless players still traveled to Japan specifically for this event.
This further stimulated Japan's economy, especially Tokyo's.
After attending the Gamestar Carnival, wouldn't it be a waste to just leave right away?
Traveling all that way just for a single carnival would feel like a loss.
So where else should you go?
The answer was obvious: Gamestar Park.
Gamestar Park was undeniably one of the best check-in destinations in the world.
And its scale was still expanding.
If this trend continued, Tokyo's Gamestar Park had the potential to become the largest theme park in the world.
At that point, the title of "World's Largest Theme Park" could be used to attract even more visitors.
Seeing how Gamestar Park was booming and indirectly driving Tokyo's economy, a U.S. state governor had already approached Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's American branch, hoping to build a Gamestar Park in his state as well.
He was willing to offer cheap land and favorable early-stage tax policies as incentives.
Takayuki handed this matter over to Minori Matsuhashi, asking her to study whether the location was suitable for another park.
If it made sense, building another one wouldn't hurt.
Video games were already trending toward becoming the world's dominant form of entertainment—so why not amplify that advantage even further?
Takayuki still remembered that before his reincarnation, there had been four billion gamers worldwide.
In other words, half of humanity played video games.
Of course, that number included many non-core players—some might only play for ten or twenty minutes a week—but it still proved how widespread gaming had become.
This world hadn't reached that milestone yet.
And now, Takayuki wanted to achieve it—to let video games be truly written into history.
By this point, massive sales figures alone could no longer excite him.
Higher sales meant more revenue and better reputation, but it was still just making money on top of what already existed.
People always need higher goals.
His next target was a global player base of four billion.
He hoped that at least four billion of them would be players who were willing to spend more than one hour per week playing games.