When you are hiring people, they have a Contract Fee. This can be a problem when you are hiring a high-stats person: They usually have fees that go over 1M or 2M.
So, here’s something to help you out: Fill in ALL you positions as soon as you get a new office using the Word of Mouth option to hire people with lower stats (and lower fees). As soon as you get those positions filled, go for the employees you really want (using Open House or Hollywood agent hiring option). By doing so, you will have to fire someone to hire the higher person. And guess what? You will not have to pay the fee. :D
So, just go there and be a boss. Hire to fire. Save up some millions. Conquer the world.
It’s actually easy to develop your own console. You will not fail, basically. If you have a “lame” team, you’ll just take longer to develop it. My first console took around 5 months to be produced. It had 450 of each attribute (it’s defined by the Game A.I., not you) and sold around 12M copies. I’m looking towards my second console right now (64-bit chip, Bluray and Console, of course) and I’ll just wait and see how well it sells. Something that I noticed that helps A LOT to sell your consoles is to delivery sequels to them. Pick up one of those top selling games of your Hall of Fame and develop a Sequel to it, using your own console. Not only the sequels, of course, but also the games, if they’re fun enough, help to boost your console sales. The console will be sold until you decide to develop a new console. When you get tired of it, your last developed console will be the one to be sold forever and ever.
Some friends of mine asked me if I ever got a Grand Prize. Well, in fact, I’ve got Six of them the first time I played. :P Lucky me, I guess. So, this time, I payed some more attention to the stats I’ve managed to develop my games to. Here they are.
The Stats
The Review (37 pts), cost to make etc…
The award
So, how did I get it? Well, I’m guessing that you need over 150 pts in ALL stats. The review pts seems to have no effect on the awards and I’m not sure about the console either. I’m trying to reproduce more games like this using my own developed console to see if I get any bonus or something like that. I’ll let you guys know if I get any more tips on this :)
posted by filipekiss
As @guifig discovered, Mister X is not the only way to get a Hardware Engineer on your team. You may get lucky enought to hire one through the Hire option under the Staff Menu (Staff > Hire). I just don’t know yet which option you should pay for (I’m guessing from Open House or above).
You don’t hire him as a Hardware Engineer. You hire another character able to level up unitli he/she reaches Hardware Engineer. So you just have to look for characters with high stats (usually Coders)
posted by filipekiss
Pay attention to what your Secretary says. She will give you tips on where and wich consoles you should invest your money on.
posted by filipekiss
Produce games. I know I am sounding silly, but it’s an important advice. The revenue you get from the sales is a more effective way to generate capital to your studios than the contracts. Contracts are good to rise capital to make a game or to boost it a little to get the next license, but the main revenue of your company must be provided by game sales.
posted by filipekiss
To turn Mister X into a Hardware Engineer: Buy the book to change jobs from the salesman (you will obviously need more than one. 5 or 6 — I can’t remember). You will need to upgrade EVERY job of Mister X to Lvl. 5. After that, Hardware Engineer will be available.
posted by filipekiss
Do hire Mister X. He’s very important later, since he is the only character (so far) I’ve managed to turn to a Hardware Engineer and develop my own consoles.
