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 Gas entered the official competition phase, there weren’t that many flashy tricks anymore. Everything ca down to results.
Of course, most people were ntally 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 co to was a parallel world—and one that seed better than his original world in many ways—fundantally, 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 developnt.
And he didn’t want to ddle anyway, because it would be aningless.
For example, in a shooting event, the equipnt Japan provided for athletes didn’t et 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 ho 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 beco yet another failure.
The Japanese Pri 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 beca a platform for showing off ugliness.
The Sumr 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 ti 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 Gas 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 ti.
Later, the only things people rembered were the breathtaking opening ceremony—and the frustrating, hard-to-accept ss of how the Gas were run.
After that ca a series of scandals involving the Olympics preparation committee, but that had nothing to do with Gastar Electronic Entertainnt.
Gastar had already gained enormous attention from the opening ceremony. Now it was ti to reap the harvest. As for which direction the Olympics drifted afterward—who cared?
Maybe one day, so 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 Sumr Olympic events ended, it was ti for the closing ceremony.
That segnt was once again led by Gastar Electronic Entertainnt, 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 announcent 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 sowhat, restoring a bit of face for the organizing committee.
Once the Sumr Olympics ended, Gastar imdiately began compiling statistics.
The first thing they analyzed: sales of the gas connected to all the ga 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 ant 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 gas to try out—they wouldn’t be satisfied with just one or two.
That created an opportunity for Gastar, and for the entire video ga industry.
Next ca 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" entertainnt channel.
Now, playing gas on PC had beco the cheapest option.
The growth in BattleNet platform users showed that clearly.
And the gas that happened to be on sale during that ti saw their sales surge right along with it.
Those newly arrived players often didn’t even know what gas were good.
But when they opened BattleNet and saw highly-rated gas 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 newcors.
Only after buying did they start seriously evaluating whether the gas were actually fun... and by then it was already too late—they were gradually falling into the pit.
The developers of those discounted gas 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 gas.
If they had known earlier, they would have prepared more—like putting even more of their gas on sale during that window.
anwhile, 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.
Sotis 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 ford clear preferences yet—any genre could attract them if the discount looked good.
A big discount campaign at this mont would be an excellent choice.
Seeing the situation, Gastar simply launched an event:
Olympic Discount Season.
The Sumr 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 sa ti, 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; gas were only an add-on.
Now, watching Gastar expand its user base through BattleNet and further enlarge the player population, so Mikfo executives felt terrible.
The head of the ga developnt departnt even wondered what would happen if Mikfo’s gas were released on Morgan’s operating system. Maybe they’d sell well too.
After all, the gas they made were good quality.
But Myron Case obviously would never agree to that.
So they could only watch as Gastar, Suri Electronics, Brown Entertainnt, and the others ate the at—while Mikfo drank soup.
Suri Electronics had previously collaborated with Gastar and gradually began pushing so of its older gas 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—aning their plan to open up more exclusives would be carried out even more steadily.
Gastar Electronic Entertainnt was the company that benefitted most.
BattleNet was theirs. The biggest sales increases were theirs. The best cut of at was essentially monopolized by Gastar.
Other ga companies seed to have largely made peace with it; they didn’t have much appetite left to fight Gastar.
Only Suri Electronics still didn’t seem to have given up. They were just waiting for the mont Gastar showed fatigue—so they could rush in and take a savage bite. Because of that, Gastar 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 gas, we should still do very well."
At Gastar’s weekly eting, the departnt in charge of statistics delivered the report. The managent team all looked relaxed.
Not long ago, user growth had slowed and ga sales had dipped slightly, and many people had been worried.
They worried it might be a sign that video gas—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, Gastar 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 gas? Fine—they had other industries. Just reduce investnt in gas.
Not a big deal.
But Gastar was different. They were a company that had always stayed focused on gas.
If the video ga 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 imdiately asked:
"Speaking of new gas—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 sa. Progress is solid. Honestly, Cyberpunk 2077 left behind such a huge legacy—later developnt 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 developnt was incredibly suitable.
Cyberpunk 2077 was, in a sense, a technical summary for Gastar Electronic Entertainnt.
Takayuki had pushed to include every usable technology and every conceivable gaplay feature, while still building a rich ga with no catastrophic holes.
In Cyberpunk, most things players could think of existed. So people could even find plenty of fun just wandering the streets.
And that didn’t end when developnt ended.
After developnt, Cyberpunk 2077’s technical accumulation beca an imnsely 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 developnt 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 developnt could be shortened by at least one-third, simply because technical problems were easier to solve now—terrifyingly so.
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