Game Development Giant

Finally, after Nintendo announced that they had also begun development of the next-generation console, Sega finally publicly admitted that their 16-bit console had entered the experimental stage and began to welcome game developers to join their new console games. Development Plan.

And the conditions they offered were much more favorable than Nintendo.

After Jester learned the news, he separated from Claudia just after the New Year and immediately rushed back to the United States from the UK.

In fact, Nintendo's royalty policy is no longer as strict as it was at the beginning. In October last year, Nintendo saw many developers originally under its own company jumping to Mars Entertainment, especially Capcom. The defection of Nintendo is definitely an extremely heavy blow.

Therefore, Nintendo simply re-established the royalty policy, making their new royalty almost the same as the one Jester made based on Nintendo's royalty, which appeased some people's hearts.

＊No＊Error＊ .s.

However, recently, Namco and Hudson, two of Nintendo's most important developers, have been at odds with each other. Originally, these two companies would submit a game to Nintendo's review department for review at the end of the previous year. In fact, For these two companies that enjoy Nintendo's biggest discounts, the review is just a formality. Originally this was just a small matter, and people at Nintendo didn't take it to heart. Wasn't it because they didn't submit new games as usual? Which company has nothing to delay after the end of a fiscal year, but after New Year's Day, these two companies seem to have no signs of submitting new games, and some newspapers said that they saw the presidents of these two game companies talking to After news broke that an executive of ne appeared together at a famous restaurant in Ginza.

Nintendo could no longer sit still.

For the current Nintendo, it has finally managed to capture a lot of share in the North American market with the help of two consecutive shooting and air combat games from K Company that are very suitable for American tastes. However, it was immediately launched by Mars Entertainment during the Christmas period. "Super Contra" has moved back. Moreover, in the Japanese local market, "Phantasy Star" released by Mars Entertainment has also grabbed a large market share.

Coupled with the advent of Sega's 16-bit home console, it feels like misfortune never comes singly for Nintendo.

But this time, Namco and Hudson came together with Nippon Electric. You must know that Nippon Electric is a veritable giant, spanning many fields, whether it is scientific research or other, it is the world's top. Even After hearing the news, Yamauchi Hiroshi couldn't sit still. The two families began to talk about him.

This gave Hiroshi Yamauchi an instant bad feeling. Nintendo had encountered too many things during this period, and he could not help but think about bad things, so he wanted to be on the safe side. Hiroshi Yamauchi still asked people to investigate ne's recent behavior to see if they could find any clues.

A few days later, the report of this investigation was in the hands of Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Reading the above content almost word for word, Hiroshi Yamauchi's face became gloomy. It's almost dripping. Although this report does not clearly indicate that nes will develop home game consoles, they have recently deployed personnel from within, especially circuit engineers in hardware development to establish a new department.

Because the department has just been established. Even within nes, there is not much news about this newly established department. We only know that it was a decision made after a high-level meeting of the group, and those who fell into this new department are also elites from other departments.

There have been several transfers of this magnitude within the group before. Basically, it is necessary to concentrate on researching a certain product.

Taken together, this information shows that ne is really working on a certain product.

"what is it?"

This is the biggest question on Hiroshi Yamauchi's mind at this time. The answer he least wants is a home game console. If ne has begun the development of a home game console, then the betrayal between Namco and Hudson will basically become a foregone conclusion.

When he thought of this, Hiroshi Yamauchi did not dare to continue thinking about it, because Namco and Hudson are now too important to Nintendo.

Moreover, it is impossible not to worry if a behemoth like ne enters the market brazenly, but Hiroshi Yamauchi is not so afraid. ne - Nippon Electric, no matter how powerful and outstanding his ability is in other industries, but They are also complete novices in terms of game development, if they have two senior game companies in the industry to guide them.

So, the situation is very not optimistic.

Especially for Nintendo, which regards the Japanese market as its basic base.

Just when Hiroshi Yamauchi was at a loss to deal with the current difficulties facing Nintendo, Jester also returned to Costa Mesa.

He did not rush back to the headquarters of Mars Entertainment immediately, but drove directly to his company, which was also located in Costa Mesa and was established for the secret development of handheld mobile phones.

In fact, in the development of a game console, whether it is a home console or a handheld console, the appearance design will not be carried out in the initial stage, because after all, when there is no specific finished product, there are no specific finished product parameters. In this case, the appearance design is a bit superfluous.

For example, the story of how the PS4's appearance design was finalized is a very classic one. The PS4's appearance was not finalized a week before it was officially announced. At this time, Yoshida Shuhei, who succeeded the resigned Kutaragi Ken as the president of SE, asked the designer to The engineer came up with four alternative plans, and all of them were made into actual products and placed in his office.

And he spent a whole day and night looking at these four PS4 consoles with completely different designs in appearance and style before finally making his choice.

However, SE has not announced the appearance of the other three PS4 consoles, so others do not know which alternatives Shuhei Yoshida chose from among the alternatives for the shape of the PS4 that is known to the public. However, in Jester In my eyes, ps4 is indeed much better looking than Microsoft's b.

But this time Jester went in the opposite direction. He was familiar with the classic appearance of later generations of handheld consoles, and there was no need for his designers to think too hard, only to come up with a design that did not suit him.

In fact, an excellent electronic product, especially a consumer-grade electronic product like this, is also very important for the industrial design of the appearance. Look at Apple in later generations, or look at Sony before Apple. From these two companies, they have successively represented electronic products. Companies at the pinnacle of product engineering know how rare it is to have an excellent industrial design team in this industry.

The same product and excellent workmanship can at least increase the sales of this product by 10%. This is definitely not a lie.

After more than 20 years of development, the handheld game consoles of later generations can basically be said to have a variety of shapes, and some of the handheld game consoles are recognized by players as being extremely well designed.

For example, geby at the beginning, Sega's ge-ger, pcengne-gt released after ne entered the game field, and the psp that later swept the handheld industry. Of course, the classic clamshell dual-screen nds series is also indispensable.

Each of these handheld consoles has its own advantages in appearance design.

The design proposed by Jester this time is based on the PSP as the design prototype, with reference to some Sega GG handheld consoles. In fact, his original intention is to directly copy the extremely classic PSP, which is also his favorite handheld console. The appearance is good, but the current craftsmanship is not up to standard. If you want to make a shape like the PSP, the cost is too high, so I have to reluctantly give it up.

As for why we didn’t choose an upright style like Geby, it’s very simple because when operated, this style gives players a far less superior feel than a horizontal handheld model. It’s been used since Nintendo’s GB. This horizontal shape, nds continued to improve on the horizontal shape, it can be seen that they also agree that the horizontal design is much better than the vertical design.

"how is the progress?"

Jester was very pressed for time. As soon as he came to this development company that was selling sheep's heads but selling dog meat, he came to the office of the person in charge of the development of the handheld console. Without greetings, he directly inquired about the specific development progress of the handheld console. Come.

"As planned by our team, we have now built the No. 3 test machine, which runs without any problems. It just needs to continue to be miniaturized. The size and weight of our handheld machine cannot reach what you expect from us. The request was made.”

The person in charge of this project was originally a veteran of the hardware development department of Mars Entertainment. However, due to the lack of manpower for the development of the headquarters, the previous person in charge was also transferred back to the company, and the current person in charge is the previous person in charge. The person in charge recommended it to Jester.

He is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT and his junior brother. He is very interested in hardware development. The previous person in charge was also his senior brother. The two of them studied under the same mentor.

"Actually, bss..." After the young person in charge answered Jester's question, he did not stop talking, but said directly, "I think we can completely use you on the electronic pet machine in Mars Entertainment. The infrared communication function has been introduced into our handheld devices. Compared with two handheld devices using communication lines to communicate with each other, it is much simpler to use infrared communication."

"Infrared communication?"

Jester's eyes immediately lit up when he heard what the young person in charge said.