Game Development Giant

Chapter 258 According to the original plan

At this time, Jester also thought about the cooperation incident between Nintendo and Sony in his mind.

This cooperation did not come true because Nintendo unilaterally broke the contract. The biggest impact of this incident was that Sony, who thought it had been cheated, became angry and entered the video game industry with all its strength. Sweeping the world, he ruled for an entire era.

The reason why Nintendo and Sony cooperated to develop the next generation of consoles was because at that time, nec and Sega successively released external CD-RM systems, which are optical disk storage systems, on their home consoles PC-E and Sega MD. Nintendo felt that it was inferior to these two companies in terms of research and development capabilities, so it found Nintendo to cooperate. Nintendo's idea at the time was exactly the same as it is now, mainly for its own CD-RM disc format.

Are they really interested in the video game industry?

Jester doesn't know, because the history in his mind has long been a fantasy, and neither Sony nor Kutaragi have ever admitted that they hid their intention to give up in the initial cooperation. The backdoor left in the agreement, as well as the terrifying power that their CD-RM would possess once successful, made the stubborn Hiroshi Yamauchi finally back down. Later, Jester looked at some information and found a speech by Ken Kutaragi at an internal Sony meeting. This speech comprehensively explained to a certain extent the reasons why they cooperated with Nintendo at that time. It can be said to be profound.

"The market positioning of... is the future digital entertainment terminal for home use. Through joint support with Nintendo, we can fully agree on the purpose of unifying the specifications of home entertainment computers and the final strategic concept. It is a comprehensive implementation of Sony's AV technology." The first phase of its development strategy is to use Nintendo hardware to popularize it. The second phase is to integrate it with CDs, LDs, etc. in marketing, and promote it to third parties, and then extend to other fields such as publishing and education... …As long as CD-RM is established as the leading specification, Sony will be in an invincible position in the future.”

However, Sony, including Ken Kutaragi, insisted on making the ps series consoles into a true digital entertainment terminal for home use. However, the ps3 produced with this goal made Kutaragi resigned sadly. Instead, it was only made as a pure game console. ps. Both ps2 and ps4 have achieved brilliant success, which has to be said to be a kind of irony. Thinking of this, Jester also made a decision. Although in addition to Sony's CD-RM format, Philip also had the CD-L format. Later, Nintendo used CD-L development with Philip as an excuse to completely get into trouble with Sony. turn.

and. What Nintendo did was extremely unfair.

Jester called the person in charge of his home computer development to his office, and Jester first listened to their opinions. In fact, their internal opinions were contradictory, but the conflict was not about whether to use CD-RM. But in terms of what exactly CD-RM is used for, some people think that the cassette system that has failed to keep up with the trend should be completely abandoned, and the CD-RM system should be used directly on the second-generation 16-bit console.

The other part is much more realistic. They also believe that CD-RM's large-capacity storage and low manufacturing costs will inevitably be the mainstream of future development, but now that the second-generation host is almost finalized, what if it suddenly changes to a new reading specification. Then the completed circuit diagram of the entire machine must be redesigned. The previous efforts cannot be said to be in vain, but it is also a waste of a lot of hard work.

The most important thing is that time waits for no one.

Seeing that the person in charge present did not answer his question, Jester also knew that their argument was fruitless, so he directly said: "First of all, I agree to join the cd-rm system, because he compares cassettes The advantages are really great, and this represents the future, but I don’t think now is the best time to launch a pure CD-RM system host.”

Jester didn't care much about the reactions on the faces of the people present, but after saying this, he quickly glanced at the expressions on the faces of the people present, and most of them were happy. , and only one-third of the people showed disappointment, which also made Jester a little happy. After all, in the development team, those who had similar opinions to his own accounted for the majority.

But Jester still planned to explain to everyone that there was a reason why he did this.

"The reason why I did this is very simple, that is, time does not allow it." Jester said very directly. After he finished speaking, he stood up and bowed slightly to everyone, and said apologetically, "Actually, time is so tight. This is all due to my personal judgment. I used to think that our R\u0026D project should be the earliest, so of course it is the fastest. And I think the life cycle of eight-bit computers is at least five years, so for ten The research and development of six-bit machines is not too urgent, but this change was something I didn’t expect.”

The people present were extremely ashamed when they heard what Jester said. What Jester just said was right. They were the first to start developing sixteen-bit machines. Although Sega didn't know when they started the research and development, he It can be seen from the MS game console they released more than a year ago that their 16-bit home console research and development project must be much better than theirs.

But under this circumstance, they took the lead in completing the production of the actual machine.

Rather than saying that he had made a mistake in his prediction, Jester's words were saying that they had no other corporate intentions during this period. Of course, although Jester also said that there is no need to be too nervous about the development of 16-bit machines. , to ensure the performance of the game console as much as possible, the development speed is not the most important, the performance of the game console is the most important.

Jester also saw the slightly ashamed looks on the faces of everyone present. He actually did not mean to accuse everyone, but if everyone thought so, it would also help to improve the combat effectiveness of the R\u0026D team, so he simply did not explain it. , but continued what he said above: "I have said before that the characteristic of our hardware production is to use mature technology to think in parallel. When we just started the 16-bit computer research and development project, CD technology was not Mature, even now, is CD technology mature? Some people say it is mature, but the reality is that no game company has launched their games using the CD-RM system, and have you ever thought about it, CDs are indeed more powerful than Cassettes are much cheaper, but what about CD systems?”

This sentence hit everyone on the head like a wake-up call. Because the controversy broke out suddenly and there was not enough time for discussion, the discussion was limited to a small scope and the members of the discussion were not involved. He had enough time to think about other aspects. At most, he only thought about the cheapness of CDs. The reason why Jester was able to think of this was because when he was thinking about it before, he suddenly remembered the sales volume of MD's CD-RM system. not good.

The reason for the poor sales is not that Sega's production is too inferior, but because the price of the CD-R0m system for external MD is too expensive. At the beginning, the price of an MD was only a little over two hundred dollars, but a CD The price of -RM's external device is as high as four hundred US dollars. At this price, no matter how excellent the game console is, it has no competitive value.

"I often say why we should use mature technology for parallel thinking. I only said before that it is because mature technology is stable. In fact, what is more important is that mature technology is cheap. What we produce is a commodity, and the lower the cost. , the more competitive we become.”

Jester continued to talk. He looked around and saw that everyone was listening attentively. Then he smiled: "Although the price of the external system will definitely be very high at present, I think in a few years In 2018, its price will come down, so we have temporarily given up using CD-RM this time. After our new host is finalized, you will also immediately start the development of our external CD-RM system for the 16-bit computer. , I don’t expect to make money by developing this, but to accumulate technology for our future 32-bit computers.”

When talking about the 32-bit game console, Jester's eyes suddenly brightened, which made everyone present feel a little confused.

Seeing everyone's confusion, Jester felt that it was harmless to say it, and no one might know how powerful the thing he thought of would be in the future, so he smiled and said: "In my imagination, if The processing core of our game console has reached 32 bits, so its new chip with one million integrated circuits is enough to perform extremely complex calculations and simulations. In other words, by that era, games will get rid of the current A 2D plane, or a situation that is faked into 3D through modeling, becomes a real 3D game.”

However, those present were not game developers, but hardware engineers. Even if some of them could understand what Jester said, no one could really understand what Jester really meant. What does gaming mean compared to the video game industry?

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