Hong Kong Island's New Rich Era

Chapter 96 Orange Technology New Engine

When they returned to the city, subtle changes began to occur in their work and life.

Yang Minli began to care about Liu Zhicheng's daily life. She was eager to know what Liu Zhicheng was doing every day.

This was the thing Liu Zhicheng least wanted to see, so Liu Zhicheng did not let her have her wish and decided to set some rules for her to avoid endless trouble in the future.

But she was very smart and immediately changed her strategy. She would visit Liu's house for dinner after get off work, and would accompany Liu Yanxin and Yin Huifen shopping and watching the Horse Racing every now and then.

She was determined to become the daughter-in-law of the Liu family, and Liu Zhicheng couldn't stop her. He would occasionally accompany her as a reward for her.

Recently, there is a young man around Liu Zhicheng, the new assistant Yuan Tianfan.

When he learned that Yuan Tianfan was teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he immediately sent someone to recruit him and train him by his side.

After a simple renovation of the Federal Building, Liu Zhicheng's headquarters office has moved here.

The entire 31st floor, apart from him, is occupied by the assistant team. The finance and investment teams work on the 28th floor. The sales team of the entire group occupies the th floor, and Tiantian Newspaper has also moved to the th floor.

The rest of the team is still working in the Orange Technology Industrial Park, including Wang Xingfa and Huo Haiqing, who have not moved here either.

Now Liu Zhicheng's office conditions have been greatly improved. When he just arrived at the office, he saw Han Chunxi, Yuan Tianfan and Lina standing at the door to greet him.

From now on, Han Chunxi will be responsible for work matters, Yuan Tianfan will assist, and Lina will continue to serve tea and water.

As soon as Liu Zhicheng sat down, Yuan Tianfan brought him a work briefing, and asked with concern: "Tianfan, are you used to the work?"

"Boss, I'm studying hard." Yuan Tianfan replied in a low voice.

Since he is still a young dragon, all his work at present is still mainly focused on learning.

"Well," Liu Zhicheng picked up the work brief and started reading it. There hadn't been any major moves in his companies recently, so he read the briefing in one glance.

Only two things successfully caught Liu Zhicheng's attention. The first was the pre-sale of Huangpu City Phase I on Christmas Day. The second was the technology transfer agreement between Orange Technology and Yalida.

After seeing these two pieces of news, Liu Zhicheng tapped his fingers on his desk again. People who are familiar with him know that he was thinking about something.

In the previous life, this year Yalida was acquired by Warner, but no news about this has been received so far. Could it be because of the emergence of Orange Technology?
In the afternoon, Liu Zhicheng came to the office of Juzi Technology to listen to the report on home game consoles.

Assistant Yuan Tianfan sorted out the information that He Guoyuan brought back from the United States and distributed it to Liu Zhicheng and others around the conference table.

Han Chunxi sat next to Liu Zhicheng and explained to him the cooperation process between Orange Technology and Yalida.

Liu Zhicheng heard that the entire cooperation process cost 50 million Hong Kong dollars and extended the life of Yalida Company.

Sure enough, it was because of the emergence of Orange Technology that the butterfly flapped its wings and caused a small tornado.

Liu Zhicheng picked up the information in front of him and started reading it. It was an introduction to a home game console produced by Atari.

Liu Zhicheng glanced at the information and saw that He Guoyuan had brought a color TV, plugged it in and turned on the TV.

Then there was a briefcase-sized electronic machine placed in front of the TV. This should be the first generation of home game console developed by Atari.

It has a data cable at the back end that can be connected to a TV, allowing the home TV to be used as a game console display.

He Guoyuan personally plugged the data cable into the TV interface, and the picture suddenly appeared on the TV screen, but the picture was not very clear and flickered a bit.

He Guoyuan began to explain to Liu Zhicheng and others: "Atari engineers have developed a TV adapter processing chip. Through this data line, home TVs can be used as game console displays, allowing everyone to play games while sitting at home."

Then he picked up the controller and continued, "This is a world-first design that separates the control panel from the console."

"This controller is connected to the data cable on the side of the console, which is specifically used to operate and control the game."

Liu Zhicheng thought that this was like the Subor learning machine in his previous life, except that the machine was a little bigger now.

Home game consoles were able to conquer the world before computer games became popular, and then they changed the concept and conquered the world again. Their future is really promising.

But looking at the machine in front of him, it was far worse than the Famicom in his memory. Liu Zhicheng wrote the three words "Famicom" on the paper.

He Guoyuan glanced at his boss and continued, "The first consideration of this design is the comfort level during the game. Players can play the game in any posture and in any position."

"Secondly, you only need to buy the console, not the monitor, which reduces the cost of purchasing the game console."

"It also allows multiple players to play games at the same time, solving the problem that a family only needs to buy one game console and the whole family can play games together."

Liu Zhicheng stood up and walked to the game console. The first thing he saw was the joystick operation keys. He looked at them carefully and found that they were not the "X" key, but the operation keys similar to those on arcade machines, with a joystick to control the direction and a button for jumping, shooting, and fighting.

Secondly, I won’t talk about the game graphics. Compared with the game console graphics I saw in my previous life, this is just garbage. The picture quality is simply horrible.

But in this era, this is already epoch-making high-tech, after all, it is an electronic game that can be played on TV.

Then he asked, "The game console looks pretty good. Is it ready for production?"

"Not yet. There are still many fatal flaws. For example, playing games for a long time may burn out the TV tube. If it is launched on the market now, it will definitely fail."

"Now that we have obtained Yalida's gaming technology, we should digest it and solve the current problems we are facing."

"The second point is that our games have proven their success on arcades, so now we have to develop consoles around the games we already have."

"If we put these games on home game consoles, they should also be successful. This is also a reasonable use of resources."

In this case, if a home game console is developed for only a few of its own games, the risk and investment will be much smaller, and it can also avoid the big crash like the Atari game console in the past.

After Atari's home game console was launched, it opened its platform to third parties in order to build its own gaming ecosystem.

However, there is no supervision on the quality of third-party games, resulting in the rampant spread of all kinds of junk games.

In the end, Atari's own crappy game became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Otherwise, given Atari's scale, it would not have gone bankrupt just because of a crappy game.

Besides, in recent years, there won’t be any games on the market that can beat several of their own games.

Liu Zhicheng was very particular about every detail and continued to instruct: "There is also the issue of chips. We must prepare in advance. Don't wait until the game console is made before the chips are not practical enough."

Liu Zhicheng has always planned to produce low-end chips on his own, but the current situation still requires waiting. In the development of the chip industry, the existence of games is a very important guiding factor, stimulating the development of the chip industry.

For example, in the 21st century, when the performance of computers can meet the business needs of most people, people’s desire to replace them will be greatly reduced.

Therefore, chip manufacturers' orders will be greatly reduced, and they will not have sufficient funds to carry out iterative production.

At this time, the existence of the game can stimulate a large number of players to purchase high-configuration computers, which require high-end chips, thus completing the business closed loop.

At the end of the meeting, Liu Zhicheng drew a cross key and handed it to He Guoyuan, saying, "It's very inconvenient to control the direction of the current game controller. Let's design a new direction operation key based on this graphic and register a global patent."

Don’t underestimate this small cross-key handle design. It solves many pain points of game consoles. Liu Zhicheng is preparing to use the cross-key patent to reap the world’s game console developers.

Next, Liu Zhicheng also listened to Wang Xingfa's talk about arcade games and Walkman sales.

"Boss, Walkman sales in North America are booming now, with monthly shipments exceeding 10,000 units, and this is despite the limited production capacity."

Wang Xingfa glanced at Liu Zhicheng and then reported: "Including the Southeast Asian and European markets, the monthly sales volume has reached 360 units. The profit has reached million Hong Kong dollars per month."

"In addition, the most popular product is the arcade machine. We have already received orders for 5 units, and the profit will reach 5000 million Hong Kong dollars. We expect the profit to exceed million Hong Kong dollars by the end of the year."

"Excluding various investments, the company is expected to have around HK$2 million left in its account by the end of the year."

It's October now, and although the sales of arcade machines and Walkmans are a bit sluggish, the money in the account is enough.

But as a time traveler, Liu Zhicheng was still somewhat dissatisfied with the current situation. He thought for a while and said, "Walkman must speed up the development of a new generation of products to help with the next sales."

"The same goes for arcade games. You must step up your development efforts and release new games every six months."

"Juzi Technology must also set up an intelligence center for me to do two things: keep a close eye on the research directions of global electronics giants and see which giants are researching similar products to ours. We must be prepared for competition in advance."

“Keep an eye on the latest electronic research results around the world and see which ones we can use.”

Wang Xingfa nodded to show that he understood.

Liu Zhicheng turned to Han Chunxi and said, "Remember to write this down for me."

Liu Zhicheng has been having some fun recently, either playing fancy with his assistant Sun Lina or dating Yang Minli.

Originally, he wanted to take out the 'CD' Walkman and let He Guoyuan and others develop it, but he thought that it was not feasible with current technology and decided to wait a while.

After digesting the current research and development results, 'CD' will be a must.

(End of this chapter)