game trailblazer

Chapter 59 Technical Reserve

Negotiations on the future of Sega lasted for a long time, but the pleasant atmosphere of the talks left both parties with a sense of unfinished business.It was almost dinner time when the action plan was finalized. As the host, Nintendo arranged a RB-style dinner in the banquet hall downstairs. Only those strong men from the United States ate for more than an hour, even half a day. I didn't mix it up when I was full.After eating the meal arranged by Nintendo, Zhang Lexing felt that his stomach was still very empty, and it seemed that he had to go out to fill up some food. He called his entourage, and the group rushed to the elevator in a mighty manner.Unexpectedly, I ran into two guys, Dijing and Sakaguchi, in the elevator. The two were completely drunk, talking about the hearts of men without restraint, and laughing wildly when they talked about their pride. It seems that they are from Square today. The pre-orders for several games are good, and the two guys are going out to have fun again.I definitely can't count on these two guys when I go out. Fortunately, Yuko still followed, and under her leadership, I found a delicious restaurant, had a good meal, and finally went back to bed satisfied.

In the following days, Zhang Lexing stayed in Kyoto for a few more days. During this period, on the one hand, he communicated with Nintendo on some future actions and signed an agreement to jointly develop a new console. Representatives from Square Enix communicated on matters that require collaboration in the future.When communicating with the representative of Square, Zhang Lexing also presented a meeting gift - the game script, which was picked up when Zhang Lexing acquired a small American game development company last year. In this script, he conceived a round with a new idea It is a strategy game, set in the Middle Ages of Europe, the plot is the old-fashioned prince returning to the country, because KF-Panda (USA) has a relatively full development task in the next few years, and Tianzhiyuan is not strong enough for the time being. To avoid wasting creativity, Zhang Lexing decided to hand over the development to Scowell. Of course, the copyright of the game developed according to the usual practice will be kept in the hands of FCSource, and Scowell can only be regarded as an OEM.

……

After everything was settled in the capital, Zhang Lexing and his entourage returned to the United States by plane.

This month has been very busy, and Zhang Lexing plans to give himself a few days to take a good rest when he returns to the United States.I didn't think about it, before I had time to mention the rest, things came to my door first.This is a story from Honghe Fund. Back then, in order to prevent good ideas from being missed, Zhang Lexing specifically told the investment managers in charge of the fund to give him a copy of any application that failed the approval, so there were always some surprises. A weird application was handed over, and I picked up an application for supercomputer development from it last year, but this time I don't know what kind of idea I will encounter.

Holding the sealed application materials, Zhang Lexing secretly guessed in his heart, then opened it and looked at the cover, and sure enough, it was not approved again.Zhang Lexing casually flipped through a few pages. It turned out that the application came from a former Intel employee named Ali Harari. He invented a non-volatile semiconductor memory chip, which is said to be superior to similar technologies on the market. The higher efficiency, the smaller the area of ​​the storage unit, the smaller the area of ​​the die, etc., Dr. Harari also gave this technology a name NAND flash memory.In the data, Dr. Harari believes that a world of flash memory is coming, and firmly believes that his newly developed flash memory chips will replace hard disk drives, so he hopes to apply for an investment to establish a company and continue to improve this technology. technology, and promote this chip.It seems that the experts in charge of the review did not believe this kind of fantasy prediction at all, and directly gave a "not approved" comment.

Flash memory, this thing Zhang Lexing knows. In another ten years, with the advent of the digital age, flash memory will be popularized rapidly. At that time, many people will always carry one or two small things that use flash memory, U disk, Memory cards, PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, digital video cameras, even some notebooks, and of course portable game consoles.The future of this technology is great, but I don't know how strong the technical team is, so I decided to arrange a meeting and ask professionals to evaluate it. Zhang Lexing secretly made a decision.

Thinking of this, Zhang Lexing picked up the microphone and dialed a few numbers. Naturally, professionals from Honghe Fund will handle such things as arranging a meeting. Zhang Lexing himself just needs to be by the side and listen.Soon, the meeting was arranged, and the time was set at three o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday next week.

It was still early, and Zhang Lexing could finally have a good rest. He made an appointment with Allen, who knows how to enjoy life the most, and flew to Curacao Island in the Caribbean Sea together to enjoy the blue sky, blue sea and beach beauty for a few days.Happy time always flies by quickly, just found some vacation feeling, the meeting time is coming soon, Zhang Lexing had to leave and come back.

On Tuesday afternoons, the coffee shop at the end of the company street...

When Zhang Lexing and the two assessment experts walked into the coffee house, Dr. Harari and two other people were already drinking coffee in a corner and waiting.The two parties greeted each other after meeting, and soon got to the point. Dr. Harari began to introduce his flash memory chip and future development plan.The two experts asked some technical questions from time to time, and Dr. Harari answered them very well. Sometimes the two people who came with Dr. Harari would also interject a sentence or two.According to Dr. Harari's introduction, one is Sanjay Rotella, who also worked at Intel. At that time, he and Dr. Harari were colleagues. The other is Jack Yuan, whose Chinese name is Yuan Ziji. Dai Chinese, used to work in Texas Instruments.The three-person team gave Zhang Lexing a good impression, and the results of the expert evaluation were also very satisfactory. Soon, the two parties reached a preliminary agreement in this coffee house. Zhang Lexing planned to invest 300 million US dollars in this project, and he will continue to make plans in the future according to the development of the project. Assess the need for additional investment.

"By the way, what's the name of your company?" Zhang Lexing asked before leaving.

"Oh, we came up with the name SunDisk because we thought this flash memory chip was the new hope for future storage technology, like sunlight," Dr. Harari explained.

"SunDisk..." Zhang Lexing couldn't help thinking of SanDisk, a well-known flash memory company in later generations, and couldn't help being moved, and said, "Then it's better to call it SanDisk. There are many companies starting with Sun, so don't get confused."

It seems that Dr. Harari and the others didn't have a deep affection for the name "SunDisk", so they accepted their suggestion after a little thought.Zhang Lexing couldn't help sighing in his heart. The SanDisk of later generations seems to have only appeared in 1995. I hope that this SanDisk company that appeared earlier can do better.

After finding the investment, many things will be easy to handle. Soon SanDisk was established in Milbida, north of San Jose. With the efforts of Dr. Harari's three-person team, the curtain of the flash memory era was quietly lifted. Opened a small corner.

Soon after SanDisk was settled, Hawkins' EA company had several new games coming to the market.Among them, MicroProse has achieved the most results, with two games listed at one time.One is F-19StealthFighter (F3 Stealth Fighter), which was created by the company's chief designer Sid Meier based on the F[-] aircraft model at hand, from which players can experience the real feeling of flying, and the amazing thing is the real F[-] has not yet come out at this time.The other is RedStormRising, the first game adaptation since MicroProse signed best-selling novelist Tom Clancy, a modern naval simulation in which the player assumes the role of a submarine captain, Control your submarine with a variety of sonar waves, tracking instruments, etc., and complete a variety of challenging missions (such as foiling enemy ICBM submarines under the ice cap of the Arctic Ocean, preventing the enemy from sending commandos to Iceland) coasts, and even fight to the death with enemy attack submarines, etc.).In addition, there are several role-playing and action games launched at the same time. Although the screens of these games are quite simple according to Zhang Lexing's vision, the designers can show rich ideas from them. The external form of expression is still relatively simple. In order to make the game more interesting, designers can only start by enriching the content of the game.Perhaps it is precisely because the external expressions of later games are too rich, full of gorgeous picture special effects, more and more realistic [-]D effects, and sound effects with rising sampling rates, designers spend too much energy on these, so that they create One game after another with a bright surface and a superficial interior.

After seeing the upcoming game in a flash, Zhang Lexing turned his attention to the company's research institute, which is the foundation of his future sustainable development.

The research institution under the VisualSystem company was established relatively early, and it was developed on the basis of an applied technology research institute established in 82.The goal of the initial establishment was for the sustainable and healthy development of the Kylin system. It planned to conduct research on natural interaction, collaborative technology, application sharing, and operating system microkernel. Of course, the graphical interface operating system was also one of the research goals at that time.

The Institute of Digital Graphics Technology was established in January 83. The main technical support force at the beginning came from Adobe. Later, after taking a share in ArrayTechnology Inc, a company in Toronto, Canada that designs and produces graphics cards, the Institute and ArrayTechnology Inc carried out technical exchanges and achieved a lot. , but Zhang Lexing's own PC game development studio Blue Dragon is the one that makes the most use of this achievement.

The Institute of Audio-Visual Technology was established by taking advantage of the spin-off of Bell Corporation in 84, digging out many audio-video technology researchers from Bell Labs, and spending tens of millions to buy out many patents related to audio-video technology. , which mainly researches digital audio and video processing technology, and has attracted many foreign experts and scholars to join in due to its technical specialization.

Network Technology Research Institute, established in June 85, was jointly funded and established by both parties after investing in Cisco (Cisco), which was headquartered in San Jose with VisualSystem.The main research projects include IOS of network equipment, application of network communication technology in operating system, realization of distributed operating system in network environment, application of network communication technology, etc.

In addition to the four major research institutes, the research institutes under VisualSystem also conduct research on miscellaneous technologies such as sensors and light-emitting LEDs, but most of them are immature for the time being, and there are no tangible results.

In addition to the research institute under VisualSystem, Zhang Lexing also set up a game technology research institute.This research institute was established relatively late, after Blue Dragon Studio was upgraded to Blue Dragon Game Development Company, it was spun off based on the original research and development team of the studio.The funding of the institute is entirely from Zhang Lexing himself. The main research directions include the application of the latest display technology in games, the application of digital audio technology in games, virtual reality technology in games, digital input technology of external data, etc.This game technology research institute was established not only to improve the strength of Blue Dragon Studio's game development technology, but more importantly, to prepare technical reserves in advance for Zhang Lexing's future plans.

(End of this chapter)