Rebirth 1984: Starting with the development of Hanka

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

Lu Maoshi was the first to speak: "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 CD patent license."

After a pause, he added, "Currently, the sales volume of Qiongqi Game Console has exceeded 2500 million units, and a total of 6 million game cartridges have been sold. We at Wujiang Group achieved such amazing results in just 8 months! Wujiang Group's second-generation home game console is a 16-bit game console, which is more competitive than 8-bit game consoles, so sales are bound to be higher! It can be seen that Wujiang Group's choice of CD will definitely promote the development of CD. As far as Philips is concerned, there will be no harm at all! "

When Philips negotiators heard this, they couldn't help but look shocked.

The Wujiang Group is so awesome. The sales of game consoles and game cartridges are so high!

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

Hank Wells, the president of Philips, looked moved, nodded, and said: "There is no problem with CD patent licensing, and the price is easily negotiable. Generally speaking, for every recordable CD produced, you only need to pay Philips a patent fee of US$3.5. However, considering the strength of Wujiang Group, the patent licensing price can be cheaper! For every recordable CD produced, you only need to pay a patent fee of 2 cents!"

With the strength of Wujiang Group, selling 10 billion game CDs is not a problem, that’s 2000 million US dollars! In fact, game CD sales should be far more than this. In addition, Wujiang Group is the first to use CD as a game storage medium, and other game console manufacturers, such as Nintendo and Sega, will definitely follow suit. As a result, the global home console game market all uses game CDs, and Philips can make a lot of money just by collecting royalties.

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

"Mr. Hank Wells, we are only willing to pay a one-time patent fee of US$2000 million. If your company does not agree to this cooperation method, then we are sorry, our company will make other considerations and continue to choose game cartridges as our product." Storage media. In fact, at present, CD technology is not yet mature, and using CDs to privately burn pirated copies is extremely low-cost. Wujiang Group has already taken a big risk by choosing CDs as game storage media." Lu Maoshi said solemnly road.

When Philips and others heard this, they immediately looked at each other. Wujiang Group's attitude seemed to be fine with or without a CD. It was a very firm attitude.

As the other party said, game cartridge technology is relatively mature, and the manufacturing cost is high. It requires chips, circuit boards, etc. Even if it is pirated, the profit 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 cartridges, it is also very easy to pirate, and the profits are very high.

Marx said: "Capitalists are afraid of no profit or too little profit, just like nature is afraid of a vacuum. Once there is an appropriate profit, capital becomes bold. If there is a ten percent profit, it is guaranteed to be used everywhere; if there is a hundred percent For 20% profit, it becomes active; for 50% profit, it takes desperate risks; for 100% profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; for 300% profit, it will It dares to commit any crime, even risking hanging."

CD pirates are absolutely rampant!

Hank Wells waved to the people around him, called over, and discussed in a low voice.

"Wujiang Group pays the patent fee in one go. Although we can collect a high patent fee in a short period of time, we cannot continue to exploit the other party in the future. The commission payment method can be a steady stream. I think we still have to strive for commission payment. method, in this case, the profits will be higher!”

"Having said that, Wujiang Group's attitude seems to be very firm. If we don't agree with the other party's payment method, then this cooperation negotiation may fail again."

"It is reported that Japan's Nintendo and Sega have plans to develop 16-bit game consoles, but they continue to 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, it is precisely because CD technology is not mature enough that it is more difficult to develop a CD home game console, and an additional disc reading device must be developed, thus affecting 16-bit machines. development progress. In addition, the reading speed of optical discs is much slower than that of cassettes, and they are easily damaged. RPG games often require shuttling between levels. It takes 20 minutes to read the disc for an hour. Who can bear this? Maybe now As much as our Wujiang Group is willing to take huge risks for this, neither Nintendo nor Sega will choose CD as a game storage medium!"

In fact, there are some things that Lu Maoshi did not say, that is, the production of game cartridges is not transparent. Including Wujiang Group, Nintendo, and Sega can make profits in this link, but the conversion of cartridges to CDs has become a restriction.

All in all, CD as a game storage medium is indeed not technically mature.

However, after Wujiang Group buys 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 games. There is no problem with CD encryption.

Of course, as the optical drive speed increases, the problem of slow transmission speed can be well solved, but the problems caused by the increased speed will gradually become apparent. For example, high-speed rotation will produce vibration, noise and heat energy. The vibration will also make it difficult to position the laser head, lengthen the seek time, and easily collide with the laser head and scratch the laser head; the heat energy generated will affect the laser head on the disc. Chemical media affects the accurate positioning of the laser head and prolongs the seek time; the noise caused can make people mentally unhappy and prone to fatigue.

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

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

There is no way, these technologies were already obsolete in the previous life. Relevant technical information can be found on the Internet, and even CDs are outdated. In 2024, few people use optical discs anymore, and NAND Flash memory cards are usually used.

At this moment, Lu Maoshi's words immediately made everyone in Philips speechless.

They had just thought of the bright future of CDs, but they did not realize how disastrous it would be if the immature CD technology was used in games. Wujiang Group is indeed taking a lot of risks.

As a game storage medium, the only advantage of CD at present is that the storage capacity is very large, with 700MB. Game cartridges are only a few dozen MB at most.

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

Unfortunately, CD also has many shortcomings, so that no game console manufacturer is willing to choose it yet.

After a while, the first negotiation broke up unhappy.

After Lu Maoshi and others left, someone suddenly suggested to Hank Wells: "President Wells, should we quietly reveal to Nintendo and Sega the news that Wujiang Group came to negotiate CD patent licensing? What if? If Nintendo and Sega know about this, they might consider using CDs as game storage media!"

Hank Wells thought for a while, shook his head and said: "It's best not to do this. If this matter is exposed, it will seriously damage the credibility of Philips, and it is very likely to lead to another negotiation of cooperation between Philips and Wujiang Group. Failure. In addition, I don’t think Nintendo and Sega will consider using CDs as game storage media. Currently, CD technology does have many problems. If Wujiang Group wants to develop CD home game consoles, it will definitely further develop more advanced CD optical drives. Perhaps, our two companies can cooperate in depth and jointly promote the development of CD technology!"

PS: Monthly tickets are doubled, please give me monthly tickets