After watching the opening ceremony, most Olympic spectators thought: If the opening ceremony is already this good—this cool—then the actual competitions must be amazing too, right?
But in reality, it was still a bit different from what they imagined.
Once the Games entered the official competition phase, there weren't that many flashy tricks anymore. Everything came down to results.
Of course, most people were mentally prepared for that. They just wanted to see whether this Olympics would have any new "surprises" beyond the opening ceremony.
There were indeed new things—but there were also plenty of awful ones.
It proved that even though the world Takayuki had come to was a parallel world—and one that seemed better than his original world in many ways—fundamentally, not much had changed.
Scheming, backstabbing, and all kinds of maddening nonsense were still everywhere.
In his previous life, the Tokyo Olympics' disasters weren't limited to a "hellish" opening ceremony.
Takayuki could save the opening ceremony—
But he couldn't control the entire Olympics' operation and development.
And he didn't want to meddle anyway, because it would be meaningless.
For example, in a shooting event, the equipment Japan provided for athletes didn't meet standards, causing many competitors' results to drop noticeably compared to their usual performance.
Then there was basketball—Japanese referees, lacking professionalism, frequently made baffling calls, infuriating athletes who wanted to argue, only to be forcibly suppressed in the end.
And then swimming—the water quality wasn't great either. Just like in his previous life, there were scenes that felt like people were competing in muddy drainage water, drawing ridicule and curses from audiences at home and abroad.
Takayuki could only sigh: even in a parallel world, none of this garbage was missing.
If he hadn't stepped in to prepare and run the opening ceremony, the opening ceremony itself would probably have become yet another failure.
The Japanese Prime Minister was ambitious, but his grip on his subordinates was clearly not strong enough. In the Olympics preparation, problems big and small popped up in every link of the chain.
What should have been a great chance to showcase national strength instead became a platform for showing off ugliness.
The Summer Olympics lasted twenty-one days in total, with packed schedules and tight competition every day.
Logically, even if most people weren't interested in the Olympics, there would still be sports fans willing to support the event.
But even those people were offended cleanly and thoroughly. They had deliberately set aside time to enjoy an exhilarating Olympic experience—only to have it ruined by outside factors, leaving them feeling like they'd swallowed a fly.
Originally, many people expected an opening ceremony that set the tone, and then the Games would keep rising—smooth, successful, joyful all the way through.
But reality was the opposite: a strong start followed by a downward slide.
The opening ceremony stirred everyone's enthusiasm. Even those who didn't care about the Olympics were drawn in and wanted to watch a little.
The organizing committee would have been delighted by that.
But afterward, that bunch in the Japanese Olympic preparation committee basically crippled the popularity the opening ceremony had worked so hard to build.
You could only say they were hopeless. In the end, the public cursed them for a long time.
Later, the only things people remembered were the breathtaking opening ceremony—and the frustrating, hard-to-accept mess of how the Games were run.
After that came a series of scandals involving the Olympics preparation committee, but that had nothing to do with Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
Gamestar had already gained enormous attention from the opening ceremony. Now it was time to reap the harvest. As for which direction the Olympics drifted afterward—who cared?
Maybe one day, some unlucky soul in this world would reincarnate into yet another parallel world and decide to do what Takayuki did—try to save a terrible Olympics.
That would be a different story.
After all Summer Olympic events ended, it was time for the closing ceremony.
That segment was once again led by Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, with Director Ono Sa personally supervising—a last attempt to salvage what little reputation the Olympics still had.
Ono Sa didn't disappoint. And, crucially, the budget was generous enough for him to deliver a truly outstanding closing ceremony.
The closing ceremony, overall, was a procession of classic Japanese cultural icons, one by one leaving the arena alongside the torch, followed by the announcement of the next host city. Then the next host's representatives presented what they would bring to their Olympics.
The closing ceremony brought ratings back up somewhat, restoring a bit of face for the organizing committee.
Once the Summer Olympics ended, Gamestar immediately began compiling statistics.
The first thing they analyzed: sales of the games connected to all the game character icons that appeared during the Olympics.
The Mario series saw the biggest surge in popularity during that period.
Second was the Pokémon series.
During the Olympics, average sales for both series increased by at least thirty percent.
And that thirty percent was all new users—freshly added.
That meant the player base had expanded significantly because of the Olympics.
And that was even more exciting than higher sales.
In the future, these new users would likely buy more games to try out—they wouldn't be satisfied with just one or two.
That created an opportunity for Gamestar, and for the entire video game industry.
Next came overall console sales. The increase wasn't as dramatic—about five percent over the month.
Most of the user increase was concentrated on PC.
Nowadays, computers were in almost every household. They weren't the luxury items they used to be—while consoles were once the "cheap" entertainment channel.
Now, playing games on PC had become the cheapest option.
The growth in BattleNet platform users showed that clearly.
And the games that happened to be on sale during that time saw their sales surge right along with it.
Those newly arrived players often didn't even know what games were good.
But when they opened BattleNet and saw highly-rated games on the front page with huge discounts—75% off, 90% off—they bought without hesitation.
Whether they'd play them later was beside the point. If there was a bargain and you didn't grab it, you'd feel like you'd lost—that was the common mindset of most newcomers.
Only after buying did they start seriously evaluating whether the games were actually fun… and by then it was already too late—they were gradually falling into the pit.
The developers of those discounted games practically laughed themselves hoarse.
They had simply followed their routine discount schedule. They hadn't anticipated the Olympics at all.
They also likely never imagined that an Olympics could, in turn, bring such a massive influx of users to video games.
If they had known earlier, they would have prepared more—like putting even more of their games on sale during that window.
Meanwhile, the developers who hadn't discounted anything—and therefore earned almost nothing from this wave—were pounding their chests in envy, thinking that if they'd known, they would have launched a whole set of discounts too.
Sometimes you only regret things after they happen.
But thankfully, there was still room to recover. New players were still in the "everything is fresh" stage. They hadn't formed clear preferences yet—any genre could attract them if the discount looked good.
A big discount campaign at this moment would be an excellent choice.
Seeing the situation, Gamestar simply launched an event:
Olympic Discount Season.
The Summer Sale was already coming soon anyway, so they moved it up.
Developers were delighted, joining the battlefield in droves, ready to harvest hard.
At the same time, Mikfo looked rather awkward.
Their PC platform penetration couldn't compete with Morgan Group's operating system.
Before this, Mikfo's PC ecosystem focused on professional work; games were only an add-on.
Now, watching Gamestar expand its user base through BattleNet and further enlarge the player population, some Mikfo executives felt terrible.
The head of the game development department even wondered what would happen if Mikfo's games were released on Morgan's operating system. Maybe they'd sell well too.
After all, the games they made were good quality.
But Myron Case obviously would never agree to that.
So they could only watch as Gamestar, Suri Electronics, Brown Entertainment, and the others ate the meat—while Mikfo drank soup.
Suri Electronics had previously collaborated with Gamestar and gradually began pushing some of its older games onto PC, slowly loosening exclusives. At first, player backlash was strong, but supporters were even stronger, so they kept going.
Now, with discounts, Suri's profits were solid—meaning their plan to open up more exclusives would be carried out even more steadily.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment was the company that benefitted most.
BattleNet was theirs. The biggest sales increases were theirs. The best cut of meat was essentially monopolized by Gamestar.
Other game companies seemed to have largely made peace with it; they didn't have much appetite left to fight Gamestar.
Only Suri Electronics still didn't seem to have given up. They were just waiting for the moment Gamestar showed fatigue—so they could rush in and take a savage bite. Because of that, Gamestar itself didn't dare relax.
"These are the full revenue and growth figures from the Olympics period. Overall, through this Olympics we gained at least five million new users. Their spending power over the next period will be quite considerable. And after that, we can keep benefiting steadily—even in the short term, even if we don't release new games, we should still do very well."
At Gamestar's weekly meeting, the department in charge of statistics delivered the report. The management team all looked relaxed.
Not long ago, user growth had slowed and game sales had dipped slightly, and many people had been worried.
They worried it might be a sign that video games—after developing for so long—were entering a decline.
After all, every industry rises and falls. Nothing stays smooth forever.
But up to this point, Gamestar had never experienced a "fall" phase.
So these people were even more sensitive to any sign of trouble.
If it were Suri Electronics, they could accept it more easily.
A slump in video games? Fine—they had other industries. Just reduce investment in games.
Not a big deal.
But Gamestar was different. They were a company that had always stayed focused on games.
If the video game road collapsed, it wouldn't be easy to grow other roads.
Now that they saw users still increasing, everyone could finally breathe easier.
Takayuki only cared that the user base was growing. He wasn't too concerned about the rest. After the report, he immediately asked:
"Speaking of new games—aren't there a few titles that should release new information soon? The next battle isn't over yet."
Hearing Takayuki, the relaxed executives all straightened up again.
"GTA 5 is about to finish its final phase and can enter high-frequency marketing."
"Final Fantasy XIII Versus is the same. Progress is solid. Honestly, Cyberpunk 2077 left behind such a huge legacy—later development difficulty has dropped dramatically."
Everyone laughed. Yes—Cyberpunk 2077 had been done so well and left behind a mountain of excellent technical accumulation, and now applying it to new development was incredibly suitable.
Cyberpunk 2077 was, in a sense, a technical summary for Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
Takayuki had pushed to include every usable technology and every conceivable gameplay feature, while still building a rich game with no catastrophic holes.
In Cyberpunk, most things players could think of existed. Some people could even find plenty of fun just wandering the streets.
And that didn't end when development ended.
After development, Cyberpunk 2077's technical accumulation became an immensely valuable asset—an ultimate secret weapon to widen the gap with other studios.
These things weren't even folded into the Unreal Engine. At minimum, the internal teams would use them for two or three years before considering sharing or promoting those techniques outward.
Many problems encountered in later projects could be found in Cyberpunk 2077's development records. Just comparing to the solutions used back then made solving technical bottlenecks far easier than before.
Final Fantasy XIII Versus and GTA 5 were the biggest beneficiaries.
What was originally expected to take three to five years of development could be shortened by at least one-third, simply because technical problems were easier to solve now—terrifyingly so.