Video Game Empire

(ps: The first draft, I haven't had time to correct the typos, it will be re-uploaded after the correction, you can wait for half an hour to read it again!)

"Senior Ergang, this is the latest patent information!" Kobayashi Masahi bowed deeply and placed a document on his boss's desk lightly.

His boss, Chihiro Nioka, is a serious man with a straight face all day long. The teacher Ergang looked up at Xiaolin Yaying, nodded at him, and then continued to work with his head down.

"If your Excellency has no other orders, I will go back to work first!" Kobayashi Yaying bowed to the boss again, and was about to leave the office. When Chinese and Japanese are together, they always feel that Yamato is very polite.

We have to admit that Japan has vigorously improved its national education since the Meiji Restoration, which has indeed greatly improved the literacy of the entire nation in the past 100 years. But the Japanese are polite, in fact, the bigger reason is that the Japanese society has a clear distinction between superiors and inferiors and a clear hierarchy. Seniors have great authority over juniors, parents over children, and bosses over subordinates.

"Bell-! Bell-! Bell-!"

Before Xiaolin Yaying could turn around, the phone on the boss's desk basically rang! He saw Section Chief Ergang pick up the phone, and his tone quickly changed to respectful. But after not saying a few words, the serious face of Section Chief Eroka has begun to turn gloomy.

Xiaolin Yaying felt that the atmosphere was not right, and was about to leave quickly, so as not to be affected by Chiyu. But just as he put his hand on the doorknob and was about to push the door, the call was hung up very quickly.

"Xiao Lin-kun, please wait a moment!" Er Gang Hongzhi called out to his subordinates from behind.

Xiaolin Yaying came back to her senses and smiled respectfully at her listing: "Hey! Please instruct me!"

"Are there any patents recently submitted by the Oriental Research Institute about a new type of optical disc player?" Erioka Hiroshi asked seriously.

"Yes! On the fifth page of the material I just submitted to you, the five technical patents of the Oriental Research Institute for this new application product are listed. All of them are in our latest search. I just discovered it!" Kobayashi Yaying replied without any pause.

Kobayashi Yaying is an intelligence collector in the intelligence collection section of the company's technology research and development department. His most important job is to search the latest global patent database, he said. And Xiangdongfang Research Institute, a well-known company in the global electronics industry, is the focus of Kobayashi Yaying's attention.

By analyzing the content of the patent applications submitted by the company's competitors and industry giants, Kobayashi has determined the focus and development direction of each company's research and development, and wrote analysis materials for his boss's reference.

Those through commercial espionage. The means to inquire about other companies' information cannot be said to be completely absent, but it is by no means the mainstream of intelligence gathering work. Under the global patent system, the scientific research direction of each company is actually traceable. This kind of patent search work is not only done by one company, but almost all companies that have reached a certain scale will do it.

And a scientific research achievement such as Apple's mobile phone, from the beginning of the project to the final commercialization, is not an overnight thing. And Apple can't wait until the entire iPhone is fully developed, and then apply for hundreds or even thousands of patents developed for this at the same time.

Because the risk is too great, and if other companies submit the same patent trial application a few days earlier than you, it will cause irreparable serious losses. But develop a patent. Just filing a patent will inevitably reveal its own purpose.

Apple began developing a secret project to disrupt the entire mobile phone industry in 2004, but it wasn't officially launched until 2007. Although Apple has kept a lot of secrecy about the project, in fact, competitors like Samsung have never stopped researching and developing related technologies even if they did not fully understand Jobs' intentions.

So soon after it came out, other manufacturers quickly launched their own smart phone products. In fact, it is not even the earliest smartphone product, but the marketing ability of other companies is far less than that of Qiao Gangzhu!

After listening to the subordinate's answer, Erioka Hiroshi. Immediately took the document on the corner of the desk and turned directly to the fifth page. Then quickly browsed at a glance.

He had just been severely reprimanded by the company's president on the phone, because the overseas marketing department had just received news that the Oriental Group would launch a brand-new CD player to compete with the VCR in the home video market, and their intelligence class had nothing to do with it. aware.

Through years of arduous efforts, the company only recently made Sony admit the failure of the baa format, thus allowing the s format to dominate the global video recorder market. But the company hadn't had time to start complacent. But suddenly another electronic giant crocodile suddenly attacked him.

No company dares to despise the Oriental Group, and no company dares to despise the world's richest man. The rapid rise of Li Xuan and Dongfang Group is not only an entrepreneurial miracle, but also a huge deterrent. Because no one knows where the Oriental Group, which has dominated the game and personal computer market, will target its next target!

Among them, Japanese electronics companies are the most nervous and worried, especially companies like them. Since the Eastern Group annexed the American ra company. Began to gradually shift its manufacturing to East Asia.

It is not that ra company did not build factories in Asia before, on the contrary, it has factories in Taiwan-Taiwan, Malaysia and other places. But Japanese companies are not too worried, because ra, as an American company, is destined to be impossible to shift its focus to distant Asia.

The Oriental Group is different, it is an Asian company itself. Although the efficiency of workers in Greater China, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, still lags behind Japan, Japan's more expensive wages are enough to close the gap.

The development of ra company in recent years also proves this. With the decline of production costs, ra company began to fight price wars with Japanese companies in the North American market, whether it is TVs, radios, or VCRs in the market share. Significant expansion!

The VCR is one of the company's most representative products. In the VCR format war in the 1970s, it was ra's support. It allowed the company to defeat Sony in North America, the world's largest market, and finally established the victory.

Before ra company was acquired by the Oriental Group, it also cooperated very closely with it. RA company's own brand of video recorder products are actually produced by the Japanese factories of the two companies and Panasonic.

But after the Oriental Group annexed the ra company, this situation gradually changed. Especially after the first phase of the production capacity transfer plan of ra company has been basically completed, the cooperation with Japanese companies has been gradually alienated. Instead, the OEM orders were handed over to companies within the Eastern system.

Faced with this situation, the company's attention and attention to the Oriental Group has been raised to a very high level. But when the company's overseas marketing department suddenly reported that Dongfang Group would launch a new type of DVD player to replace the VCR, the company's executives were furious!

If Dongfang Group's attempt succeeds, the company will be severely hit, because the VCR is the most profitable project in the entire company! So the company must fight back, and before fighting back, at least get information about the enemy.

This was supposed to be the job of the intelligence services, but it turned out to be their dereliction of duty. Failing to detect Dongfang Group's attempt in advance, the company was caught off guard. Therefore, Nioka Hiroshi, the head of the Intelligence Department of the Technology Department, just suffered the thunderous wrath of the company president on the phone.

Erioka Hiroshi looked at the report submitted by Kobayashi Masahide blankly, but he didn't sprinkle it on the trembling subordinate in front of him. Because the Oriental Research Institute is obviously prepared, it is obvious that some patents that are easy to reveal their intentions are hidden, and the purpose is not revealed until the last moment.

Ergang Hiroshi's analysis is not wrong. In fact, the Oriental Research Institute did spend a lot of thought on the patent submission! certainly. It dared to delay filing many patents until the last minute, and it was well thought out.

The DVD player is actually based on the existing machine. Just add a video decoding circuit. Therefore, the core patent is actually in the video decoding technology. When the Oriental Research Institute submitted a series of patents related to decoding technology, it also carried out various tactical confusions.

For example, the Oriental Research Institute claims to be developing digital videophone products with great fanfare, and video decoding technology is the key technology in the development of videophone. The Oriental Group has continuously increased its investment in the field of communication technology in recent years, and this smoke bomb is indeed very confusing.

Oriental Group is not lying, video decoding technology can indeed be used for future video phones. But this product is still some time away from commercial promotion! When the company obtained a series of decoding technology patents from the Oriental Group, the reason why the company failed to contact him to the DVD player products was actually related to the low technical content of the decoder products developed by the Oriental Research Institute.

The world's first p-1 decoder - 1988 launched by the Oriental Research Institute this time, the resolution of the decoded image is only 240 lines, which is slightly lower than the 250 lines of the s video recorder. It is impossible for companies including Sony to not pay attention to the development of digital video decoding technology. But they entered a misunderstanding, thinking that only products with higher technical content than existing VCRs can replace them.

This is also an important reason why Japanese companies do not develop products in another time and space, but Chinese companies take the lead. Because at that time, including Japanese electronics giants such as Sony and Toshiba, they had already focused their energy on more advanced research and development. So much so that the two companies, Sony and Toshiba, broke out the standard battle again.

This is true for European and American markets. For example, in a report drafted by the American Film Production Advisory Committee in 1990, it was proposed that the image and sound quality of the new generation of video discs should be at least higher than that of video discs.

Now the company sells DVD players on the market, and the image resolution is generally 640480. And the video disc player that Oriental Commercial Company is going to put on the market next has a resolution of 352240 under the ns system of American TV; and under the pa system of Hong Kong, the resolution is 352288.

How could the company's technicians pay attention to a video decoder whose resolution level is not even as good as that of their old products seven or eight years ago. But Dongfang Group just launched an attack on the company with such a product with no technical advantages.

Don't look at the high definition of the DVD player, but it is also ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the price of the DVD player, it is only the price of the disc that is easily $100, which even the Americans with the highest economic income and the strongest consumption are out of sight. The company launched its first DVD player in the early 1980s and ceased production in the late 1990s, with a total sales volume of less than 2 million in the past 20 years.

The biggest users of DVD players are karaoke clubs in Japan and Hong Kong. The big heads of the DVD players are the songs of various singers, for everyone to sing freely when they go to sing!

Although there is a big gap with the DVD player in terms of technical indicators such as images and pictures, its price is also much cheaper. In the promotion plan formulated by Dongfang Shoji, the ex-factory price of the DVD player is about 500 US dollars, which is 10% to 20% lower than that of most s VCRs.

And in the price of disc, its mass pressing cost will not exceed 0.5 US dollars~www.readwn.com~ and the cost of s videotape is much higher. For example, in Taiwan, Southeast Asia and other markets where Hong Kong films are popular, the price of genuine video tapes fluctuates to a certain extent due to the popularity of the film, but the average price is about 70 Hong Kong dollars, and even pirated video tapes usually cost 30 yuan. Yuan or so.

This is still in the Asian market. In Europe and the United States, the price of video tapes will be much more expensive, so everyone rents video tapes instead of buying them!

On the other hand, Dongfang Commercial has reached an agreement with Asia Films, and the retail price of genuine discs will fluctuate within the range of 25-40 yuan according to the film! This price is basically the same as the price of pirated video tapes, but pirated video tapes are synonymous with shoddy production, and the viewing effect is actually very poor!

In a series of layouts of Oriental Commerce, piracy will also be rampant. Because the manufacturing cost is lower, even if the price of piracy is only 10 Hong Kong dollars, there is still a certain profit.

This is already cheaper than the price of movie tickets in Hong Kong, which is an absolute disaster for the film industry! Although pirated video tapes have always existed, their price is much higher than that of movie tickets, so their impact on the box office is limited. But once cheap piracy spreads, many people who were planning to buy tickets to watch in the cinema may simply wait for a while before watching pirated discs at home! (To be continued.)