Compared to Nagao's high-profile responses, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment was also not lacking.
Takayuki remained calm, not planning to make any response. After all, everything would be proven with results. Since Nagao had been constantly mocking them, it would be best to wait and see whose game would be more attractive in the end.
Use reality to slap your face.
Not aiming for a small victory, but when someone's already aggressively challenging you, Takayuki wouldn't hold back. He decisively made the development of the football game the top priority. Resident Evil, Monster Hunter 2, and other games that he had been supervising were temporarily put aside. The next day, he flew back to the U.S. to meet with his team.
He was going to personally supervise the development of the football game.
Since they didn't have FIFA's authorization, Takayuki simply used the unified brand name from their sports series.
There was "Super Baseball League" for baseball, "Super Basketball League" for basketball, and now, the same for football.
But their previous football games were merely testing the waters, filling a gap and allowing the team to familiarize themselves with the sports game development process.
...
...
Now, it was different. Now, he had to show his real skills.
Upon arriving in the U.S., Takayuki went straight to the development team for "Super Football League."
There were a few team members with experience in developing football games, and now they could finally put that experience to use.
Originally, the team planned to give Takayuki a warm welcome when he arrived, but as soon as Takayuki entered the company, he simply told them to get to work and not waste time on any formalities.
The employees looked at each other in confusion.
They had never seen Takayuki so serious before.
They realized that this development project was clearly different.
"Everyone, this game development will be slightly different from before. In addition to developing the game, we'll need to use outsourced teams to handle repetitive and simple programming tasks. Our focus will be on these specific gameplay elements."
After sending everyone off to work, Takayuki held a small meeting with a few key members of the development team.
He was going to directly explain the development concept for the future game. He wasn't going to give these people the chance to slowly grow; now was the time to show results. If they didn't defeat YOO now, more people like Nagao would keep provoking them.
This wasn't just because of Nagao's provocation—Takayuki had recently noticed that YOO seemed to be experiencing significant financial fluctuations. It looked like YOO was heading toward a collapse.
He didn't mind giving YOO a push toward a faster demise.
As long as Nagao remained CEO, this impulsive person would surely respond with the same strategy—spending more money to fight back.
But now, Nagao couldn't afford to spend recklessly anymore.
In fact, this seemed to be the case.
Not long after Nagao had loudly announced his plans to invest huge sums to develop the FIFA football game, he was called by several major investors and had a brief meeting.
What exactly happened in the meeting wasn't clear, but what was evident was that Nagao looked rather displeased after it was over.
When he came out, he gritted his teeth and instructed his subordinates to maintain FIFA's investment, but to monitor the flow of funds and keep records of every transaction to avoid unnecessary expenditures.
Previously, he hadn't cared much about such things, but it seemed that the investors behind him had finally had enough. Nagao had been spending recklessly for a long time, and although the company's valuation kept rising, there was little profit to show for it. Some investors had lost patience. They needed some guarantees.
But now this was starting to affect Nagao's development plans.
He had more grand plans for his media group, intending to consolidate multiple channels to expand YOO's influence.
But now, the investors were starting to slow him down.
Of course, it wasn't the investors' fault. Ultimately, they wanted to see their investments generate returns.
Several large investment firms had already injected nearly $20 billion into YOO, artificially pushing YOO's stock price to over $50 billion, making it a leader in the internet industry.
But this leader still had very few sources of profit, which was frustrating.
They didn't want to continue being a money-losing machine. They wanted to see at least some signs that YOO could generate profits.
All of this matched Takayuki's guess—YOO was spiraling out of control.
If Nagao didn't take action soon, YOO might completely collapse.
Of course, that was business. Takayuki just needed to influence YOO within his limited scope of control.
And that scope of control was the football game.
"Super Football League" was the name Takayuki had decided to use.
Thanks to Matsubashi's later cooperation and licensing agreements with several European events, Takayuki could easily secure the rights to use multiple league brands. The lack of FIFA was really no big deal.
FIFA sounded nicer and would provide long-term benefits, but that was all.
But that didn't matter. Long-term benefits could come later. For now, he needed to focus on conquering players with the gameplay of the football game.
On Takayuki's whiteboard, he forcefully explained the basic development rules for the football game to the team.
"Our football game isn't really about letting players play actual football, so we can't just copy the real-world football gameplay. Instead, we need to make the game more aggressive—shorten the original 90-minute football match to under 10 minutes, and make every player's abilities stronger than in real life. They should be able to kick the ball harder, and the goal rate should be higher. Also, for special shots, I want to add a slow-motion feature, just like in real football broadcasts. This will significantly increase immersion."
"These are the basic rules of football, but beyond that, there are some equally important details. We need to make every football player come alive in the game. They should show frustration or anger when the referee gives them a yellow or red card, and even their performance on the field should affect their efficiency and goal-scoring ability."
"Also, we need professional voice actors. We need to record professional football commentary and try to get as many different commentary audio clips as possible, leaving nothing out."
Takayuki explained every detail, and the team members' eyes were lighting up.
This was content they had never had the chance to experience before.
Takayuki had previously wanted them to figure things out on their own, but now he was directly laying out the perfect version of the football game.
As long as they followed these rules, the football game wouldn't have any problems.
This was Takayuki's confidence.
Meanwhile, Nagao and his development team seemed very amateurish by comparison.