Rebirth 1984: Starting from the development of Hanka

Chapter 135 CD Game!

In the conference room, the delegation of Wujiang Group and the negotiators of Philips sat on both sides of the rectangular conference table.

Lu Maoshi took the lead and said: "Mr. Hank Wells, Wujiang Group is developing the second generation of home game consoles, and plans to use CDs as game storage media. Therefore, we plan to invest in the purchase of CD patent licenses."

After a pause, he added, "Currently, the sales volume of "Qongqi Game Console" has exceeded 2500 million units, and the total number of game cartridges sold has reached 6 million.Such an astonishing achievement, but our Wujiang Group only took 8 months!Wujiang Group's second-generation home game consoles are 16-bit game consoles, which are more competitive than 8-bit game consoles, so sales will inevitably be higher!It can be seen from this that Wujiang Group's choice of CD will definitely promote the development of CD. For Philips, it will benefit and not harm! "

When Philips' negotiators heard this, they couldn't help but show shock.

Wujiang Group is too powerful, the sales of game consoles and game cassettes are so high!

If it is selling game CDs, wouldn't Philips be able to make a lot of money by relying on patent licensing fees?

Hank Wells, president of Philips, changed his expression, nodded, and said: "There is no problem with CD patent authorization, and the price is also negotiable. Generally speaking, for each recordable CD disc produced, you only need to pay Philips a patent fee of US$3.5. However, considering the strength of Wujiang Group, the price of patent licensing can be a little cheaper! Every time a recordable CD is produced, the patent fee is only 2 cents!"

With the strength of Wujiang Group, it is not a problem to sell 10 billion game CDs. This is 2000 million US dollars!In fact, sales of game CDs should be much more than that.In addition, Wujiang Group took the lead in using CD as a game storage medium, and other game console manufacturers, such as Nintendo and Sega, will surely follow suit.As a result, game CDs are all used in the global home console game market, and Philips can make a lot of money just by collecting patent fees.

However, Lu Maoshi frowned when he heard the words. 2 cents is still too expensive, which is not in the interests of Wujiang Group.

"Mr. Hank Wells, we are only willing to pay a one-time patent fee, and the asking price is 2000 million US dollars. If your company does not agree to this cooperation method, then I am sorry, our company will consider it differently and continue to choose game cassettes as the Storage media. In fact, at present, CD technology is not yet mature, and the cost of using CDs to burn pirated copies privately is extremely low. Wujiang Group has already taken a great risk in choosing CDs as game storage media." Lu Maoshi said in a deep voice. road.

When Philips and the others heard the words, they immediately looked at each other in blank dismay. Wujiang Group's attitude seemed to be ok with or without a CD, and their attitude was very firm.

As the other party said, the technology of game cassettes is relatively mature, and the manufacturing cost is high. Chips and circuit boards are used. Even if they are pirated, the profits will not be too high. At least in Western countries, no company will take risks.

However, CDs are different.

The manufacturing cost of CDs is much lower than that of game cassettes, piracy is also very simple, and the profits are very high.

Marx said: "The capitalist is afraid of no profit or too little profit, just as nature is afraid of a vacuum. Once there is a proper profit, capital will be bold. If there is a ten percent profit, he is guaranteed to be used everywhere; there is 20.00% If there is a profit of 50.00%, it will be active; if there is a profit of [-]%, it will take risks; for a profit of [-]%, it will dare to trample on all human laws; if there is a profit of [-]%, it will dare to commit any crime , even at the risk of being hanged."

CD pirates are absolutely rampant!
Hank Wells waved to the people around him, called them over, and discussed in a low voice.

"Wujiang Group pays the patent fee once. Although we can collect a high patent fee in a short period of time, we can't continue to exploit the other party in the future. However, the commission payment method can flow for a long time. I think we still have to strive for the commission payment. In this way, the profit will be higher!"

"Having said that, Wujiang Group's attitude seems to be very firm. If we disagree with the other party's payment method, then this negotiation and cooperation may fail again."

"It is reported that Japan's Nintendo and Sega have plans to develop 16-bit game consoles, but they still choose to use game cartridges as storage media without hesitation, and have not contacted us!"

"..."

At this moment, Lu Maoshi continued: "Oh, by the way, because CD technology is not mature enough, it is relatively difficult to develop CD home game consoles, and an additional CD reading device must be developed, which will affect the development of 16-bit consoles. In addition, the reading speed of optical discs is much slower than that of cassettes, and they are easily damaged. RPG games often have to shuttle between levels, and it takes 20 minutes to read the disc after playing an hour. Who can bear this? Maybe now As long as our Wujiang Group is willing to take huge risks for this, neither Nintendo nor Sega will choose CDs as game storage media!"

In fact, there are still some things that Lu Maoshi did not say, that is, the production of game cassettes is not transparent, including Wujiang Group, Nintendo, and Sega can profit from this link, but the conversion of cassettes to CDs has become a restriction.

All in all, CD as a game storage medium is indeed technically immature.

However, after Wujiang Group bought the CD patent license, Zhao Ye will lead them to develop a high-speed optical drive. The data transfer rate of the first-generation optical drive is only 150KB/s, but after the speed is increased, it can meet the requirements of the game. CD encryption, no problem.

Of course, as the speed of the optical drive increases, the problem of slow transmission speed can be well solved, but the problems caused by the speed increase will gradually appear.For example, high-speed rotation will generate vibration, noise, and heat. Vibration will also make it difficult to locate the laser head, prolong the seek time, and easily collide with the laser head, scratching the laser head; the heat generated will affect the laser head. The chemical medium affects the accurate positioning of the laser head and prolongs the seek time; the noise caused by it will make people feel uncomfortable mentally and easily fatigue.

However, in response to these problems, Zhao Ye also has corresponding improvement technologies, such as installing suspension-type shock-absorbing rubber on the four corners, or using suspension technology and banana shock-absorbing brackets, or Lite-on using suspension bearing technology, advanced dual Dynamic suspension system...

For others, technology is difficult, but for Zhao Ye, it is so easy!

There is no way, these technologies have been rotten in the previous life, and relevant technical materials can be found on the Internet, and even CDs are outdated. In 2024, few people use optical discs, and NAND Flash memory cards are usually used.

Right now, Lu Maoshi's words made everyone in Philips speechless.

They only thought about the bright future of CDs, but they didn't realize how much disaster the immature CD technology would bring in games.Wujiang Group is indeed taking a big risk.

As a game storage medium, CD has the only advantage at present, that is, the storage capacity is very large, with 700MB.The game cassette, at most tens of MB.

With such a large capacity, better games can of course be developed.

It's a pity that CD has many shortcomings, so that no game console manufacturer is willing to choose it.

After a while, the first negotiation broke up unhappy.

When Lu Maoshi and the others left, someone suddenly suggested to Hank Wells: "President Wells, should we quietly disclose the news that Wujiang Group came to discuss CD patent licensing to Nintendo and Sega? Nintendo and Sega know about this, and maybe they will also consider using CDs as game storage media!"

Hank Wells thought for a while, then shook his head and said: "It's best not to do this, if this matter is exposed, it will seriously damage the reputation of Philips, and it is likely to cause the cooperation negotiations between our Philips company and Wujiang Group to resume again. Failed. In addition, I do not think that Nintendo and Sega will consider using CDs as game storage media. At present, CD technology does have many problems. Wujiang Group wants to develop CD home game consoles, and will definitely develop more advanced CD drives. Perhaps our two companies can cooperate in depth to jointly promote the development of CD technology!"

PS: The monthly ticket doubles, ask for a monthly ticket

(End of this chapter)