game trailblazer

Chapter 58 Nintendo's First Heart Meeting ([-])

With the announcement of the number of game pre-orders, scenes of human tragedies and comedies kicked off, and Zhang Lexing sat in his seat and watched with cold eyes.Those who should go have gone, and those who should stay have also negotiated and signed contracts with the channel wholesalers. Zhang Lexing got up and was about to go back to his room to rest. At this time, Masayuki Uemura from the second development department of Nintendo appeared in front of him.

Uemura bowed and asked to stay: "Mr. Zhang, hello, please stay."

Zhang Lexing asked, "Is there anything else?"

"President Yamauchi has something important to discuss with you, please come with me." Uemura made a gesture, signaling Zhang Lexing to go to the elevator.

Zhang Lexing thought to himself, this time the initial heart meeting is really not that simple, this time I am afraid it is the main topic, so he nodded, and walked to the elevator with his entourage.Following Uemura Masayuki to the elevator, the group went up five floors, and soon came to the door of a small conference room.

"Mr. Zhang, this is it." Uemura made a gesture to welcome in.

Zhang Lexing opened the door and walked into the meeting room, and found that there were still a few people waiting inside, most of whom were unknown, but judging by the sign on the chest, they should also be from Nintendo, and Hiroshi Yamauchi, who hadn't shown his face today, was also among them.

Seeing Zhang Lexing and others coming in, Yamauchi Pu bowed and greeted enthusiastically: "Mr. Zhang, I have been busy these days and have not been able to spare time to greet him. I am really rude. Please forgive me!"

After a few words of politeness, Zhang Lexing sat down with his entourage to the right of Nei Pu, who was next to the conference table.

Today's topic seemed very important. Yamauchi Hiroshi did not exchange a few words as usual. Seeing that everyone was sitting down, he directly introduced today's topic.

"Today we are going to discuss the possibility that Sega will launch a new generation of consoles. What countermeasures do we have..."

Listening to Hiroshi Yamauchi's introduction, Zhang Lexing finally fully understood Nintendo's thinking.Sega can be said to be Nintendo’s old rival. In the initial arcade era, the two did not have a big collision. However, after the success of Nintendo’s Game&Watch handheld, Sega also tried to use its own Game&Go handheld to get a share. Unfortunately, The selected materials were not good enough, and Nintendo took the opportunity to completely beat them to the ground. Since then, the two families have become feuds and started a long road to choke each other.

Not long after Nintendo released the FC game console, Sega was not to be outdone, and took out the SG8, which is also an 1000-bit console, to directly fight against it. However, because it was new to the home console market and lacked experience, it set a high price. Caught in the vicious circle of less console sales and less software.In the next few years, Sega was not reconciled to failure, and successively launched improved models such as SG1000II, MARKIII, and MASTER SYSTEM, trying to defeat Nintendo's FC game consoles by relying on the improvement of console performance.But what is funny is that, within a few years, Sega has launched 4 kinds of consoles, and they all lost to the FC game console without exception.If it were any other company, I’m afraid they would have given up on this market a long time ago, that is, Sega’s perseverance (to put it bluntly, it’s thick-skinned), and they have lost four times in a row. If you count the earlier battle for the handheld, it has already been five It’s true that they are still persevering in formulating a new host plan. It’s really a bit of the courage of someone who fought repeatedly during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.But this time Sega has obviously learned some lessons and is more prepared. They plan to give up 8-bit game consoles directly (FC, the ruler of the past few years, and the new PC-E launched by NEC last year. consoles, these are 8-bit game consoles), and directly launched a new generation of 16-bit game consoles. In their view, small repairs can no longer solve the problem, and the strongest blow must be issued directly.

Although Sega is secretive, and the details of the new host are not announced, Nintendo is already very nervous about this part of the public information. After all, it has spanned a generation, from 8-bit to 16-bit. leap.According to some technical details disclosed by Sega, the new host will use Motorola's MC68000 chip as the main processor, and its main frequency is about 7.16Mhz, and this 16-bit CPU is also used by most arcade motherboards today. The processing core of the new host is the Z80 dedicated audio processor, which is also used by many arcade manufacturers, and the combination of dual CPUs is also the biggest gimmick in the promotion of Sega's new host.Considering Sega's status as a major manufacturer of arcade machines, its future game software development strategy is almost ready to come out.If a large number of arcade-quality or even similar games are ported to Sega's new console, it will be a disaster for Nintendo, and the current ordinary FC games alone cannot compete.Hiroshi Yamauchi was full of worries. He felt that some cracks were beginning to appear in Nintendo's dominance of the world. If he could not come up with appropriate countermeasures, his country might fall apart in the near future.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was in a different mood, had a gloomy expression on his face after introducing the current situation, but when he faced Zhang Lexing again, he returned to his usual smile and said, "Mr. Zhang, we Our company also has a new console development plan, but unfortunately the progress is still behind, in this case, if we want to check and balance Sega's new strategy, we must adopt some extraordinary measures."

"President Yamauchi, just tell me, if you can help, our company will definitely consider it."

"Mr. Zhang, according to our evaluation, the current Famicom games developed with ordinary technology cannot compare with the new Sega consoles that use arcade processors in terms of graphics, music, etc. If you want to check and balance, you can only start from a few aspects. The first is to enrich the connotation of the game and make the game more attractive to players. I believe everyone is working hard on this. The second is to develop a game that surpasses the expression of ordinary FC games. This is thanks to your company’s development the year before last. Now we believe that there should be finished products for the enhanced technology of FC. The third is that we speed up the research and development, so that our own new consoles can be launched earlier.”

"President Yamauchi, our company's "Super Mario 3" has been completed, and the application has been submitted this time. I don't know why it didn't appear in this promotion list?"

"Mr. Zhang, we consider that the launch of Sega's new console is scheduled for October 10, so we want to release special games like "Super Mario 29" in the second half of the year, which can just suppress Sega. I hope there will be no bothering you."

Zhang Lexing smiled inwardly: "This is indeed the trick that came from the old mountain. It seems that the people from Sega are still a little young, at least they can't afford to make big waves in the RB market."

As Nintendo's ostensibly staunch ally, Zhang Lexing certainly had to make a statement. Since Hiroshi Yamauchi had clearly made this request, he naturally wanted to echo it.

"Since President Yamauchi has such an idea, our company must of course fully support it. However, the delayed release of this game will have a great impact on us. Many of our development plans have to be adjusted, which is very troublesome..." Zhang Lexing said at the same time, In order to look at Hiroshi Yamauchi with a sad face.

"Mr. Zhang, we apologize for the inconvenience caused to your company. I wonder if there is anything we can do to help?" Hiroshi Yamauchi smiled and looked friendly.

"President Yamauchi, since my hardware engineers developed the FC performance enhancement chip, there has been little progress in this area, and now basically they are almost a group of idlers. In the end, the final defeat of Sega still depends on the new host , anyway, these hardware engineers are also idle, why not come and participate in the research and development of Nintendo's new console. I don't have any other thoughts, I just hope that the new console will be developed as soon as possible, and that our company will adopt the same technology for the new console as soon as possible. If you understand the technology, it will be more efficient to distribute games in the future. President Yamauchi, we can all rely on your consoles to make money.” In fact, the hardware engineers under Zhang Lexing are not so idle now. I have been busy researching FC performance enhancement chips, and now I have achieved the fifth generation of MMC5, but the cost of this chip is still relatively high, so I will still focus on MMC3 for the time being, but as the research comes to an end, I will indeed slowly relax Down, need to find something new to do.Zhang Lexing’s goal is not actually to use the development tools of the new console as soon as possible. Although he can indeed make money with a gadget, Zhang Lexing’s ultimate goal is actually to cultivate his own game console design team. As for this, of course he will not say from.

Zhang Lexing's request may have been a little unexpected to Yamauchi Pu, he has not spoken, his face is cloudy and uncertain, probably he is weighing the pros and cons in his heart.

"Of course, the living expenses and accommodation expenses of these engineers who came to help, I hope Nintendo can bear it, and it can be considered as helping me to reduce the burden, President Yamauchi, do you think it's okay?"

It seems that it is more important to fight against Sega. Of course, maybe Hiroshi Yamauchi did not expect that there was anything that would be detrimental to Nintendo. He finally nodded and agreed. As for the details of the next cooperation, there will naturally be more professional people. Responsible, there is no need for Zhang Lexing and Yamauchi Pu to continue to worry about it.Now that the deeper cooperation plan between the two companies has been preliminarily finalized, the relationship between the two parties will of course go further, and the atmosphere at the venue has become more harmonious.

Under the leadership of the treacherous and cunning Hiroshi Yamauchi, the participants continued to discuss how to check and balance Sega's specific actions. Even the new console promotion plan that Nintendo originally planned to undertake independently was opened to Zhang Lexing's company. I joined a computer CG production company established by Zhang Lexing in Hong Kong, hoping to produce something shocking when promoting it.Under the secret planning of a group of big and small foxes, Sega's new host has not yet been launched, but many huge barriers have been erected in front of it, and the future of Sega has become bumpy again.

(End of this chapter)