This is the final Office level and will give you two more employee slots (for a total of 6 employees and one manager). You'll have to have $16M in cash, four employees, and pass Y13. It may not happen immediately and you may have to wait a little bit but that's ok, Just keep making awesome games until it comes. You may be required to also have one of your employees hit the training cap of 700 points for a skill before you can move.
Hiring More Staff
This time, it will be different. You're going to spend far more (1M+) and you'll want to hire two specialists, one for Tech and one for Design. The number 1 priority is definitely to top 700 points in their respective specialty and if you can't manage that either reload the game or get as close as possible. The reason for this is that you can now open up your R&D Lab and Hardware Labs once you meet the requirements and one of the requirements is a staff person for each of those skills with over 700 points.
Once you have them over 700 points, train the Design person to be a Design specialist and the Tech person to be a Tech Specialist. Once the Design Specialist is trained, you should shortly be able to open up the R&D Lab. Open it up if you can afford it. Once it is opened, you'll be able to research a variety of topics including Hardware which, along with a Tech Specialist, is required to open your Hardware Lab.
Once you have your staff trained as specialists, continue to train them as you would your other staff. Increase your Research skill and then whatever skill they are weakest in.
Finally, when you hire these two people, you'll end up with two employees whose vacations are different from the rest of your staff so you'll want to try and line those up with your other employees as soon as you can.
R&D Lab
The R&D Lab has some interesting Research options that aren't otherwise available to you. These include more intense research such as researching internet opportunities. You can increase or decrease how much money you spend on in your Lab but if you can afford it, you want to spend as much as possible. Since you're up against the clock trying to get as much done by the end of the game, you want to research these items as quickly as possible. However, when not researching anything, feel free to drop the budget to zero because the Research Points you get for use by your staff are negligible compared to the amount of money spent.
If you've been particularly diligent about improving your graphics skills and have been using the 3D Graphics v5 for a while then you may already have access to 3D Graphics v6 for research in the lab. If not, keep improving your graphics until you've reached at least level with 3D Graphics v5. This will unlock the graphics for research in the lab. This is your top priority once you have it so if you have it already, start researching it so you can get it into your next game.
After graphics, research Internet Opportunities which will unlock Project: Grid and MMO research. Do Project: Grid first which will give you additional income and increase the market share of your start platform, the PC. If you've had the chance to make Large games and have had a particularly successful game (9.5+) then you may have already unlocked AAA Games research. If you did, at this point you can research that and then finally MMO.
The last big research is Engine Licensing. To get this unlocked for research, you must first make 10 Custom Games Engines. You can make them with nothing but graphics engines to speed the process up if you like. Creating small junk engines shouldn't take too much time or money and the ability to license your Engines will bring in additional revenue. However, it's not great money so it's really up to you.
When you've researched MMOs and Licensing Game Engines, you'll have to then research support for them using your normal employees. Once those have been researched, it can be included in your next Custom Game Engine (MMO Support and Software Development Kit). Including those in your engine allows you to use it for MMOs and license it out for money.
Finally, research Hardware. This isn't as high a priority because Consoles are costly and you do want to have AT LEAST 3D Graphics v6 (and ideally v7) before you make a console. The rest of the options aren't really necessary. In particular, holding your own Convention would replace the G3 convention but the return isn't really much improved. It'll cost you aroung $7.5 Million to research it (nearly 4x more than the G3 convention) but I've never noticed any difference in returns at all. It may only be worth it if you have both an MMO and a Console on the market.
The second useless option is the AAA Special Marketing Campaign. It's not entirely useless as it does increase your Hype somewhat but if you run it for the entirety of your AAA game development, it'll cost you about $30M which is no small chunk of change. If you participate in the G3 conference with a Large Booth and a Large Marketing Campaign then it will run you under $4M for probably over 600 Hype (at that point) where as running your own convention and special marketing will cost you $37M and gain you little more Hype.
Hardware Lab
The Hardware Lab is pretty simple. Once you've researched it in the R&D Lab and have a Tech Specialist, you can open this lab. After that, you can create your own console. Creating your own console requires quite a bit of money. For a top quality console, you're looking at $100M+.
When you choose to create a console, you'll have to choose the features including the highest level of 3D Graphics it can use, if it's capable of Stereoscopic 3D, the sound technology (up to Surround Sound) and so forth. Not all technology is included so once you have these key features (at least Graphics v6 but preferably v7) then you are ready to go.
Go through the menus to design your game console and then put money into the Hardware budget. This will be used first for developing the console and then later for repairing broken consoles to keep customers happy. For repairing consoles, you can likely get away with $500K and perhaps later as much as $1M but likely little more than that unless you go very late into the game.
After creating your console, you can remove it from the market (just like an MMO) by clicking on the chart for it. The costs of maintaining your console install base is connected to how many consoles you've sold total but if you pull it from the market you don't need to fix them any more. Once sales decline, remove it from the market so you don't lose the money in upkeep.
Finally, there's one additional thing that the Hardware lab can do. When developing a AAA game, you can start a special hardware project. Doing so will increase hype for the game similarly to the Special Advertising Campaign. It is also equally useless and not recommended.
The returns for making a solid console are quite lucrative, especially if paired with good games or an MMO. The cost of making one is also rather high though so you want to ensure that the console will remain on the market for quite some time. In other words, if you're just on the cusp of unlocking Graphics v7, just wait to make your console.
