In the past, a small number of traditional car manufacturers had been skeptical of video games and even looked down on their influence. Some believed that licensing their brand to a video game would "cheapen" it. But now, they were paying the price—especially after seeing their competitors gain greater brand recognition through partnerships with video games. These companies could no longer sit back.
To demonstrate their sincerity, some of those once-dismissive automakers offered extremely generous licensing fees, hoping to gain the approval of Gamestar Electronic Entertainment. They even decisively fired the management staff who had previously led the brand licensing decisions.
Matsuhiro, of course, welcomed such benefits with open arms.
This was the battlefield of business. It didn't matter if you looked down on me before. Once I've grown to a point where you have to take me seriously, you'd better bow your head and offer better terms just to be considered. That's the price of underestimating someone.
While Takayuki was organizing teams for an all-out development assault, Matsuhiro spent two months traveling across Europe and successfully negotiated licensing deals with all the major car manufacturers.
Matsuhiro held a position akin to vice president within Gamestar, so having her personally handle these negotiations conveyed the highest level of sincerity. The car companies were thrilled, and the whole process went smoothly.
She immediately informed Takayuki of the good news—and even better, many of those car manufacturers were willing to provide detailed tuning data for each of their car models to make them more appealing in Need for Speed.
Being crafty, Matsuhiro would casually mention during discussions that "other carmakers" had already submitted their model data. She'd emphasize that the more detailed the data, the more complete the in-game tuning features would be—and since most racing game players enjoyed customizing cars, those with more customization options would naturally be more attractive.
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Hearing this, the car manufacturers that hadn't yet provided data quickly called their technical departments and handed over everything—eager not to fall behind.
One by one, Matsuhiro played this strategy, and soon the car brands were competing among themselves—practically begging to submit every possible spec to Gamestar.
Of course, these were all publicly accessible specifications and had nothing to do with corporate secrets. The manufacturers weren't foolish enough to hand over confidential information to a game company.
Still, this data—while technically obtainable by buying and testing the cars—would have taken considerable manpower and time to gather. The automakers providing it directly saved Gamestar a great deal of effort.
Takayuki was in high spirits. The development time for Need for Speed, which was initially projected at 18–24 months, could now be shortened by three to four months thanks to this.
The U.S. team responsible for Need for Speed was thrilled as well—their efficiency had received a huge boost.
With car brand licensing completed quickly, the next step was to negotiate the football-related licenses.
As for gun licenses, that wasn't a big issue. Most people couldn't accurately name or recognize all firearm models anyway.
For example, in the original world, there was a popular battle royale game where a bolt-action sniper rifle called the 98K became iconic. Once that game went viral, players started referring to any vintage bolt-action sniper rifle as "the 98K"—a reflection of how rarely most gamers encountered actual firearms.
Even in countries where guns weren't banned, average citizens still had limited exposure. And even if they did, they were usually only familiar with a few popular models.
So there was no rush to license guns. In fact, there were clever ways to sidestep licensing altogether: just tweak the appearance slightly and give it a name that's vaguely similar. That was usually enough to avoid legal risk.
But with football stars, tournaments, car brands, and sports leagues, that wasn't possible. These were widely recognized, mass-market properties. Unless licensing negotiations failed entirely, it was best to secure the rights properly.
Takayuki handed over the development of Need for Speed, FIFA Football, and Counter-Strike to the U.S. teams. Because of this, those teams had to expand again—many talented people scrambled to join Gamestar Electronic Entertainment. The company had become a kind of industry holy land; countless people dreamed of working there.
Meanwhile, the media heavily reported on the situation, which made Suri Electronics nervous. They suspected Gamestar was preparing to launch a new arms race—expanding manpower and simultaneously developing multiple big titles to compete.
Suri had no choice but to respond.
Their game division was still performing well, which was why it had survived this long. But if they suffered repeated setbacks at the hands of Gamestar, it would surely provoke dissatisfaction among shareholders.
As a result, Hayakawa Ueto once again urged their partner studios—especially YOO—to ramp up their development efforts. Suri even offered to temporarily reduce their revenue share from game sales to motivate partners to produce more content.
However, aside from YOO, many studios showed little enthusiasm. They had already settled into a stable development rhythm, and disrupting it for Suri's sake seemed unwise.
External discussions and rival panic did nothing to affect the operations inside Gamestar.
The U.S. teams quickly expanded, eventually growing to more than 1,300 staff. They were then split into three groups, each dedicated to one of the "gun, car, ball" titles. The U.S. branch itself also expanded.
It wasn't that Takayuki didn't trust Japanese teams with the development—it was just that for Western-style games, it made more sense to let Western developers take the lead. The cultural gap between Asia and the West was significant, and while he could force Japanese teams to adopt Western styles, it would ultimately feel awkward and lower team morale.
Besides, it was all under one roof—whether domestic or international, it was still the same pot of meat.
Need for Speed and Counter-Strike quickly entered full-scale development. The FIFA football game was progressing slightly slower—not because of licensing, but because football games required a massive amount of motion-capture data, making them more complex than the other two titles.