Video Game Empire

The construction of the main board factory was already within Li Xuan's plan, but Hong Kong's industries are mainly light industries such as textiles, clothing and toys. The electronics industry is not developed, especially the high-end electronics industry, Li Xuan is unable to start even if he wants to poach.

Therefore, if it can cooperate with Epson, Dongfang Electronics can quickly gain a firm foothold in the arcade industry. As long as it has its own motherboard factory, the weakest short board of Dongfang Electronics will be filled. For the rest of the game ideas with Sega and Atari, Li Xuan has his own aura of rebirth, which is not false at all.

As for whether Epson is willing to cooperate with Dongfang Electronics, Li Xuan is not worried at all. If Dongfang Electronics Co. produces 200,000 arcade machines per year, it needs at least 5 million processors and memory. If Epson's fab can sign such a large and stable order, it will be enough to get through the difficult initial low yield.

For Seiko Epson, the survival of a wafer fab is not only about whether the investment of tens of millions of dollars can be recovered, but also about Epson's overall development strategy and choice for a period of time in the future. The fab is an industry with obvious scale effects. Low operating rate often affects the yield rate, and the superimposed cost of the two will increase significantly.

If the fab continues to lose money, Epson can only reluctantly close down, which means that Epson's ambition to enter the semiconductor industry has completely failed.

Therefore, after Li Xuan offered to continue purchasing Epson chips, he was not worried that Epson would refuse at all. There is no direct competition between Dongfang Electronics and Epson. Although it helps Dongfang Electronics to set up its own motherboard production factory, Epson will lose part of the profits of arcade boards.

However, after fulfilling the contract for 20,000 game console motherboards, Dongfang Electronics has no obligation to continue to purchase motherboards produced by Epson. If you give up some of the profits that may not be able to eat your mouth, you can take orders for the core chips in the motherboard. Epson will definitely make a win-win choice as long as it weighs a little.

Of course, Kenshin Hattori is only a director, so he has no right to answer such a major cooperation issue immediately. He needs to report it to the company's board of directors, and he can make a decision only after discussion by the board of directors of Epson. Li Xuan is also very clear about this, he did not continue to retain Kenshin Hattori.

The new semester has just started, but Li Xuan is not easy. Compared with the college entrance examination results when he entered the school, his performance in the first semester has significantly deteriorated. After all, academic performance is directly proportional to the time investment.

Li Xuan's purpose in entering the university was not to become an outstanding graduate, but more to start contacting and integrating into the high-end academic circle in Hong Kong through the platform of the university, and to accumulate technical contacts for the future development of the company.

He himself was a little half-hearted about his attitude towards class, but some people who paid attention to him began to worry secretly for him. In the last two months of the first semester, Li Xuan was busy with the development of new games on the side of Dongfang Electronics Company, so he could escape many compulsory courses, not to mention the audition courses he used to show up for.

Professor Zhao Weiming began to pay attention to this special freshman majoring in electronic computing research as early as Li Xuan attended the weekend salon at his home. Although Li Xuan went to audit Professor Zhao's classes less often, he regularly took time to attend the weekend salon at his family.

From Zhao Weiming's point of view, Li Xuan is a student who has a good talent but is somewhat lost in the colorful life of the university. After discovering that after the new semester started, the situation of skipping classes still did not converge much, Zhao Weiming finally decided to talk to him as the deputy director of the Department of Electronics, hoping to save this misguided student.

"Professor Zhao, are you looking for me?" Li Xuan knocked on the door outside Zhao Weiming's office. After hearing the answer, he pushed the door open and entered the house.

"Li Xuan, you sit first, I'll finish marking these documents first!" Zhao Weiming raised his head and smiled genially at Li Xuan.

Li Xuan watched his nose with his eyes and his heart with his nose. He sat quietly like this, as if he was not distracted. Zhao Weiming secretly observed Li Xuan a few times, and when he saw that he was calm and calm, he couldn't help but nodded secretly in his heart.

Zhao Weiming finally put down the pen in his hand, stretched out his hand and pushed the glasses that had slipped on the bridge of his nose, and said to Li Xuan, "I heard that you missed class on the first day of school, what happened?"

"I'm sorry, Professor Zhao, for making you worry!" Li Xuan stood up and made a sincere confession, "I started a company by myself some time ago, and I have been busy with the company's affairs during this time. I will do it later. Try to separate the courses of the company and the school, so as not to affect the learning!"

Zhao Weiming's originally stretched brows began to wrinkle. He didn't like students starting businesses while they were studying. In his view, university is the time to study and lay the foundation. If the foundation is not solid, it is by no means a correct arrangement to rush to make money.

"What does your company do?" Although Zhao Weiming was a little unhappy, he was not willing to make preconceived judgments.

"It's in the business of large-scale video game machines! During this time, the company went to San Francisco to participate in the Western Electronics Show. I personally led the team there, so I missed the courses a few days before the start of the school!" Li Xuan didn't hide too much, and he was quite satisfactory. said.

"I'm not saying that you must be opposed to starting your own business during college, but there is a premise that you should not affect your studies. I was very optimistic about your talent. Whether it is a solid professional basic knowledge or a keen eye for prediction, I feel The eyes are bright. But your performance in the recent period has disappointed me a little. You haven't cherished your talent well, and skipping classes is a very bad thing!" Zhao Weiming began to think he had understood enough. Educate your students aloud.

Li Xuan sighed secretly in his heart, his life goal is not to be a scientific research migrant worker. The so-called study hard and improve every day is even more cloudy for him.

"Professor Zhao, I will pay attention to it in the future!" Li Xuan didn't hold back and admitted his mistake very readily, "I know that you are leading a team to do research on processor design. If my subsidiary Dongfang Electronics Co., Ltd. I want to entrust you to improve the 6502 processor of American MOS Technology Company, what do I need to do?"

Zhao Weiming recognized Li Xuan's attitude of admitting his mistake, but when he heard that he suddenly changed the subject, he didn't react for a while. After two or three seconds, he looked at his student with slightly suspicious eyes.

The most famous application of the 6502 processor is as the CPU of Apple's Apple computer and Nintendo's red and white machine. However, Nintendo did not directly purchase the original chips from MOS Technology Company at that time, but only used the 6502 chip, the 2A03NMOS processor, which was authorized and imitated by Japan's Ricoh Company.

This is a processor redesigned and developed by Ricoh based on the original 6502 core. The chip integrates a pseudo-sound processing module, which can save an additional sound effect chip when used as a game console CPU. When Li Xuan originally designed the game motherboard of Hong Kong Box and Tank Wars, he originally planned to use this chip like the later Nintendo, but the answer he got after calling Ricoh was that the other party did not produce this chip product at all.

Li Xuan only remembers that Nintendo's red and white machine was only launched in 1983, but he is not very clear about when Ricoh was authorized by MOS to produce its own 6502 chip.

So after he learned that Epson had obtained the authorization of the 6502 chip, he temporarily decided to use Epson's chip, and simply flew to Japan to persuade Epson to manufacture arcade motherboards for himself.

Li Xuan has already asked someone to go to the United States to discuss the licensing of the 6502 chip with MOS Technology. But after obtaining authorization, Li Xuan does not intend to develop a new chip directly by himself. Developing a new processor is a lot more complicated than designing a gaming motherboard.

Even with the original structure of the 6502 processor as a reference, redesigning a 6502 suitable for game console applications is not an easy task. Although Li Xuan has the aura of rebirth, he is not omnipotent. This kind of work is more suitable for a dedicated processor research and development team to take over, and the team of Professor Zhao Weiming of Chinese University is undoubtedly his best choice.

"Professor Zhao, we at Dongfang Electronics are willing to sponsor 1,000 Hong Kong dollars to support CUHK to carry out related research on processor design, and hope to cooperate closely with CUHK in the transformation of relevant scientific research results!" Li Xuan said his own words seriously and solemnly. plan.

The conditions for Dongfang Electronics to establish its own scientific research team on a large scale are not yet mature for the time being. Cooperation with universities is undoubtedly the best choice. Li Xuan's ambitions are by no means limited to the arcade industry. In fact, the glory days of the arcade industry are very short-lived.

In the late 1980s~www.readwn.com~ North America, the largest consumer market for arcade machines, with the fierce competition of computer games and video games, at the same time, the main venues for arcade machines—grocery stores and small shops on the streets and alleys, were in Wal-Mart. After the emergence of one-stop large chain shopping malls, they have disappeared. Under the superposition of many factors, the arcade industry has shrunk rapidly.

A stark contrast to this is that the semiconductor industry, driven by the wave of personal PCs, has begun to grow exponentially. Li Xuan is naturally unwilling to give up the semiconductor industry, which is known as the cornerstone of the electronics industry.

But his current career has just started. The first thing to do is to expand horizontally and quickly establish a foundation in the game industry. Instead of rushing to expand vertically, he will immediately extend to the upstream and downstream industries, but some foreshadowings can be laid first.

In front of a lot of scientific research funds, Zhao Weiming completely forgot the real theme of looking for Li Xuan today. When Li Xuan introduced the basic situation of Dongfang Electronics to Professor Zhao, and confirmed that Li Xuan was indeed capable and willing to invest a lot of money in his alma mater, Zhao Weiming, who was very stable on weekdays, could not sit still.

This is 10 million Hong Kong dollars. Although it is only 2 million in U.S. dollars, it is natural to be dismissive of world-class schools such as Berkeley and Stanford. But for the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1980, it was already a huge sum of money. The annual tuition income of CUHK is only tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars.

In front of a lot of real money, Li Xuan's skipping class suddenly turned into a trivial matter.

PS: Sorry for the late update! A new book friend has been opened - group 384-198728, those who are interested can join in!