game trailblazer

Chapter 73 Decoy Program Launch
After the confrontation between VisualSystem and IBM kicked off, life is still going on day by day, but there is still a lot of good news during this period.

In mid-May, Mai Jiajun miraculously took over the Yiqiao Group, and quickly split off and sold its assets. Zhang Lexing's Dongfang Holdings got his wish and won the long-coveted animation assets of Shueisha, Baiquanshe and Xiaoxiaoguan. Yiqiao Group The remaining part was also divided up by other big crocodiles who heard the news. In less than half a month, the once-prominent Yiqiao Group became a thing of the past.

At the beginning of June, after unremitting efforts, the negotiations between Red River Fund and Jobs came to a final result, and Pixar was won at a price of 6 million US dollars, which was a satisfactory result for both parties.Jobs got rid of the quagmire of constant losses and profits, and Zhang Lexing also won a future gold mine at a minimal cost.Not long after taking Pixar, Disney came to the door and invited Pixar's animation team to work with them to make a real 2500D animation movie. The spring of Pixar finally came.

On July 7th, Independence Day, the first film after the establishment of DreamWorks, "Terminator 4" directed by James Cameron was released. The epoch-making special effects of the film attracted millions of viewers to watch in theaters, setting off a summer box office whirlwind, with $2 million raked in two weeks after its release, and the liquid robot T-1.2 in the film made even more People talked about it and became one of the hot spots of the whole movie.

At the end of July, Zhang Lexing, who was reading materials in the office, received an overseas call from Hong Kong, from the game console development team who had not heard from him for a long time.

Chen Zhipeng on the phone was very excited, he said excitedly: "Boss, a prototype of the new mainframe has come out."

Zhang Lexing was very happy after hearing this: "Great, is the prototype machine too big? Is it convenient to carry it?"

"It's not too big. A big suitcase can fit it all. It's not difficult to bring it back." Chen Zhipeng replied.

"It's too big!" Zhang Lexing was very surprised.

"When it is officially produced in the future, it will be much smaller. Now many parts can only be regarded as put together." Chen Zhipeng explained a few words.

"Well, you can arrange it. Find someone who is familiar with the situation to send the machine over, and let me have a look." Zhang Lexing was in a good mood.

"Okay, boss, I'll come back with the machine myself."

"It won't delay normal work."

"No, I will arrange the follow-up work and come back, it won't be affected."

……

During the days waiting for Chen Zhipeng's return, the busy people in VisualSystem found that the chairman was in a very good mood every day, and also caused all kinds of strange speculations behind his back.Puzzled, Yang Xinxin took Zhang Lexing into her office and was about to interrogate her. When she found out that she was only happy for a game console that was still in the design stage, she immediately rolled her eyes at Zhang Lexing.But it doesn't matter, Zhang Lexing is in a very good mood now, so he doesn't care about such trivial matters.

After waiting for almost a week, Zhang Lexing finally saw the busy Chen Zhipeng in his office. He was indeed carrying a large suitcase in his right hand.After taking a sip of water and resting for a while, Chen Zhipeng recovered his breath and began to take his treasures out of the suitcase one by one like a robot cat, introducing them while taking them back.

"Boss, this is the game console..." Chen Zhipeng took out a large metal box with a silver-gray surface.

"This is an optical disc reading device..." Chen Zhipeng took out something that looked like an optical drive, pulled out a flat cable and a two-core power cord from the front host, and connected it.

"This is a game controller..." Chen Zhipeng took out two Super Nintendo-style controllers and connected them to the ports on the front of the console.

……

With Chen Zhipeng busy, a game console gradually took shape.After connecting to the TV that had been prepared earlier, Chen Zhipeng took out another CD and handed it to Zhang Lexing: "Boss, this is a game demo CD to show the performance of the console, and the effect is very good."

Zhang Lexing started the game console, put the CD just now into the CD-ROM drive, the front lights of the console flickered a few times, and a huge logo consisting of three discs appeared on the TV screen.Accompanied by the "Loading..." prompt on the TV screen, the CD-ROM drive began to read the disk hard. After about seven or eight minutes, the picture finally appeared on the TV screen.

The interior view of a church slowly appeared on the TV screen. It was not the flat background picture that was common in previous games, but a real three-dimensional picture.The tall hall is topped by a typical sharp-rib vault, and the straight columns set off the towering and handsome space, and the surrounding walls are inlaid with relief icons.Right in front is a large piece of stained glass, through which bright sunlight shines in, and a man in red is bathed in the colorful light.

"This is the interior of a Gothic church. You can see obvious light and shadow effects, and the man in red can be controlled by the handle." Chen Zhipeng picked up the handle and started the demonstration.

Under Chen Zhipeng's control, the man in red began to run in the church. As the angle of view changed, more scenery inside the church appeared.The man in red came to an empty room. Following Chen Zhipeng's operations, he began to show various movements of characters, jumping, rolling, and even took out a big sword that he carried with him and waved it.

"These are actually generated through real-time calculations, relying on a powerful CPU and a dedicated 3D image processor to achieve such a beautiful picture, which is at least ten times stronger than the current Super Nintendo." Chen Zhipeng sighed.

"What other features does this host have?"

"We choose CDs with relatively low storage costs as the game storage medium, which is conducive to reducing the cost of game release, but the speed of the current CD-ROM drive can only reach 150K bytes per second. It can be seen from the long-term reading of the disk. Now this kind of The speed of the optical drive greatly affects the running effect of the game. At the beginning, our data was directly read from the optical drive, but as long as the optical drive was moved a little in the game, the reading continued, and the game was not smooth. Later, we specially designed a large-capacity cache for the optical drive , and reasonably scheduled data through a dedicated processing program, although it is not very helpful at the beginning of reading, it is basically not felt in the subsequent game process. Considering that the CD-ROM cannot store the data generated during the game data, we also designed a memory card interface, using SanDisk's flash memory technology, they call this portable flash memory (CompactFlash)."

"The picture still looks very smooth, and the control of the handle is also very flexible." Zhang Lexing took the handle and tried it out for himself. "If it enters the mass production stage in the future, will it still have such an effect?"

"No problem at all, just need a little adjustment, the cost of this host will be very low when it actually enters the mass production stage. We have done an estimate, and if all aspects of production are well controlled, the cost may drop to 500 US dollars Next, considering the possibility of improvement in integrated circuits and production management in the future, there should be a possibility of lower costs in the future." Chen Zhipeng replied after thinking for a while.

In fact, the effect shown by this host is not shocking to Zhang Lexing at all. He has seen the movie-level game screens of the new era. How could he react too much to the screen of the opponent's arms and square legs? However, if this effect is used to shock RB, people should Still more than enough.

"It's a pity that there is no real game to play yet." Zhang Lexing said with a little regret.

"Boss, does our company want to produce this kind of host by itself?" Chen Zhipeng said hesitantly

"Oh? What's the problem?"

"I think the current situation of the company does not yet have the production strength to mass-produce this kind of game console. If it is launched rashly, it may be detrimental to the development of the company."

"I've already considered this issue. You don't have to worry about the research being wasted, and you don't have to worry about our company randomly entering fields that we're not good at."

"Then is this host still useful after research?" Chen Zhipeng was confused.

"How can it be useless, I already have a good goal." I smiled, "I heard that you are familiar with Sony's Kutaragi Ken."

"Yeah, I've dealt with them before when I was at Nintendo." Chen Zhipeng looked even more confused.

"Heard what happened at CES this year in Chicago?"

"Ah... I haven't heard of it, what's the matter?" Zhang Lexing's jumpy question made Chen Zhipeng feel a little overwhelmed.

"To put it simply, Nintendo and Sony originally planned to jointly develop a new console, but at this exhibition, Nintendo announced that it would cooperate with Philips, which is considered to have left Sony behind. Sony originally wanted to use this opportunity to go deep into the game industry, but now It’s gone. I heard that Ken Kutaragi was also hit hard by this incident.”

"Boss, do you want to sell this host to Sony?" Chen Zhipeng seemed to have a sudden insight.

"It's almost like this. If you are asked to contact Ken Kutaragi, how confident do you think it is?"

"It's not a big problem to convince Kutaragi Ken. I believe that the performance of our console is enough to impress him. But I'm not sure if I want to convince Sony."

"I will assign you some of the best negotiators, and let them do the specific business negotiations. You only need to fully demonstrate the performance of the mainframe. I will also ask Dennis, the president of KF-Panda, to accompany you personally This time, as a developer with many best-selling game brands, I believe it will be of great help to this negotiation."

……

Soon a secret negotiation team was established, the main members included Chen Zhipeng, KF-Panda President Dennis Paro, the company's business negotiator John Roger, professional lawyers, etc., took the suitcase with the prototype and flew to RB In Tokyo, the "bait" program was officially launched.

RB Tokyo...

During this period of time, Kutaragi Ken's life was not going well. In fact, two months ago, everything was quite normal.But I didn't expect that Nintendo would betray Sony's trust, which gave the hopeful Ken Kutaragi a blow. If it wasn't for the support of President Ohga, he might have been swept out as a scapegoat.

Although he can still stay in the company, Kutaragi Ken feels that the eyes of the people around him are different from before.But Ken Kutaragi is in a better mood today, because a former friend traveled thousands of miles to see him. This friend was acquainted when he participated in the development of game consoles a few years ago.To be able to receive greetings from friends in the darker moments of life makes Kutaragi Ken feel that he has not been abandoned by the world.After finally getting off work, Ken Kutaragi, who had long been unable to bear it, left the office building in a hurry, and drove to the tavern where he had made an appointment with his friends.

Chen Zhipeng has been in Tokyo for two days, and today he finally had the opportunity to meet Ken Kutaragi.Sitting on a chair by the counter in the tavern, Chen Zhipeng drank a glass of sake mixed with water in small sips, and the number of people in the tavern gradually increased.When Chen Zhipeng drank the third cup, Ken Kutaragi arrived.

"Mr. Chen, thank you very much for coming to see me." Ken Kutaragi found a seat next to Chen Zhipeng and sat down.

"Kutaragi-kun, in fact, I was also passing by. I just happened to be here for the company's business." Chen Zhipeng helped Kutaragi also order a glass of wine, and ordered a few side dishes to accompany the wine.

The two began to chat while drinking, and soon the topic turned to the matter that made Kutaragi Ken depressed, and he began to pour bitterness on Chen Zhipeng.

"In fact, it was normal two months ago. On June 6st, we announced at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show that we will cooperate with Nintendo to develop a new host PlayStation (in fact, it is a Super Nintendo console with an optical drive), and it seems to be going well. Like. But the next morning, everything was different. Nintendo announced behind our backs that it would cooperate with Philips to jointly develop a dedicated optical drive for Super Nintendo consoles. Although Nintendo later argued that this was just a product of the same extension line, it would not affect the relationship with Sony. contract, but we all understand that this is just an excuse for Nintendo, they just want to play Sony like a monkey.

After this incident happened, our company hesitated about the decision to enter the game console business, and some people even proposed to give up completely. As the unlucky ghost who insisted on co-developing with Nintendo, I was the culprit in the eyes of many people in the company.I don't even know how lucky I am to have the opportunity to sit here and talk to you right now. "

Looking at the dejected Kutaragi Ken, Chen Zhipeng tried his best to comfort him, but of course he said something like "the future is bright, but the road is tortuous".After chatting for a while, Chen Zhipeng invited Ken Kutaragi to the hotel he rented to continue chatting on the pretext that the tavern was too noisy.

When he came to the Tokyo Hilton Hotel where Chen Zhipeng lived, Ken Kutaragi was surprised to find that someone in the guest room was playing with a strange machine in front of the TV. He walked over to take a look curiously, but this one glance made him unable to move as if he had been struck by lightning. , It took a long time to come back to God.

(End of this chapter)