Chapter 375 Fate
That's right, in addition to Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo, there is another game company that also wants to enter the home game console field.
This company is Sega, a game company that has participated in most events in the history of video game art but has repeatedly failed.
Although the current headquarters of Sega Games is in Neon, its founders are actually three Americans.
Before the war, the company was engaged in slot machine business in the United States. In the 1950s, with the promulgation of the Gambling Device Transportation Act in the United States, various states stopped the slot machine business one after another.
There was no other choice but for Sega, which made its living from this, to move its headquarters to Neon and start providing slot machine services to the US troops stationed in Japan.
However, although it withdrew from the United States, Sega was retaliated against by the U.S. government in the 1960s because it continued to provide related services to the U.S. troops stationed in Japan.
After a series of bankruptcy reorganizations, Rosen established a new SEGA in 1965: SEGA Corporation.
After nearly 20 years of development, Sega is now ranked among the top three in the arcade field in both North America and Japan.
Last year alone, revenue reached $350 million, or 87.5 billion yen in profit.
With such a strong ability to make money, Sega is naturally unwilling to limit its business to the arcade field.
Last year, Sega decided to expand into computer games and home game console businesses. After all, capital expansion is an instinct.
Especially in the North American market in the past few years, Atari made huge profits, which made Sega jealous for a long time.
So after nearly a year of development, Sega's SG-1000 is ready to go.
However, due to the turbulent situation in the North American video game market at that time, there is now a lot of controversy within Sega about the SG-1000.
Last Christmas, Yada used 5 weeks to develop the "explosive" game "ET", which really dealt a heavy blow to the majority of game enthusiasts.
Taking advantage of the popularity of Spielberg's movie, Warner announced early on that Atari had obtained the game development license for "ET".
This game has received much attention from the media since the very beginning, after all, the IP is so famous.
With Warner's extensive publicity, retailers placed orders for as many as 4 million copies before the game was released.
However, facts have proved that the louder the hype is at the beginning, the harder the fall will be later.
After being tasted by players, Atari's "E.T. " was indeed recognized as a piece of shit.
It’s a bit of a stretch to think that a game that took five weeks to develop could be considered an excellent work.
So at the beginning of the new year, a storm has already begun to blow in northern Mexico.
As the first to be affected, the home game console has a terrible reputation at the moment.
Players angrily hated all home game consoles, which directly led to the plummeting of the North American game console market.
Also because of this public opinion environment, Sega's expectations for SG-1000 were very contradictory at this time.
One group firmly believes that the situations in North America and Japan are different and cannot be generalized.
One group was so worried that they were even considering canceling the release of SG-1000.
Most of the staunch faction are Japanese localists headed by Nakayama Hayao. They are very familiar with the habits of Japanese people and believe that the impact of North America will not affect the local market.
At that time, Japan didn't even have a switching home game console, so how could it be affected by North America?
The retreating faction consists of Americans headed by Rosen.
They are used to looking at the global market from a North American perspective and believe that home game consoles will not be popular among the Japanese people.
In the end, it was the vice president, Hayao Nakayama, who single-handedly secured the launch of the SG-1000.
In order not to fall behind, he set the release date of Sega's SG-1000 on the same day as the launch of Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo home game consoles.
I have to say that this action is very obviously a sniper move.
But Nakayama Hayao doesn't care about these at all. In his opinion, Sega is no less powerful than anyone else in the field of video games.
Even because he was dissatisfied with Rosen's retreat from home game consoles, he had been quietly brewing the old tradition of the Neon people and overthrowing the strong with the weak.
Changes within Sega were also accumulating, but the release of SG-1000 was a foregone conclusion.
Soon the public discovered that overnight, the neon streets were filled with advertisements for home game consoles.
Shirakawa Electric, Nintendo, and Sega, everyone was dazzled.
All major media, especially computer-related newspapers and magazines, were as lively as the Chinese New Year.
Neon has three home game consoles at once. Who will benefit the most?
Of course, it’s the game enthusiasts as consumers.
There is progress only when there is competition, and the ultimate beneficiaries will definitely be those who pay for the game consoles.
These game or computer magazines also analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the three game consoles one by one from the perspective of the general public.
After all, it will be released in about a month, and the three companies have also revealed some basic parameters through their cooperating media.
For example, the first thing that was compared was the CPU chips used in the three home game consoles.
Shirakawa Electric's SIC8089A, Nintendo's Ricoh2A03, Sega's Z80.
They are both 8-bit chips and are theoretically at the same level in terms of computing power.
However, although they are all 8-bit machines, there are still differences between them.
The first is Sega's Z80 chip, which is the most widely used chip in the current era of 8-bit machines and the one that the public is most familiar with.
Sega and Nintendo arcade machines all use this chip, which is why Sega chose this chip for its SG-1000.
Because it's familiar, and also because Sega's home console games are basically ported from its arcade games.
Nintendo's Ricoh 2A03 is actually Ricoh's MOS 6502 with a leather case.
The reason why Nintendo chose it was purely because Ricoh offered a lower price.
Both Z80 and MOS6502 chips have an addressing capacity of 64K, but the former has a slightly higher main frequency of 3.58MHz, while the latter is less than 1.8MHz.
However, in terms of register addressing speed, the cycle of Z80 is longer than that of MOS6502.
In simple terms, these two chips each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Who performs better depends on the programming ability of the game developer.
After all, with the same configuration but different optimization levels, the performance of the game will be very different .
Therefore, the media had different .
However, the media are somewhat confused about the SIC8089A used in Shirakawa Electric's FES.
As SIC expanded in the semiconductor market, people began to understand this chip design company.
According to the parameters published by SIC8089A, many of its data are actually very powerful.
For example, the main frequency of 5.5MHz far exceeds that of Z80 and MOS6502.
The addressing capacity of the register can reach 1M, which is completely different from the 64K of the other two.
However, this can only prove the excellence of SIC8089A in hardware parameters. As for whether its performance can be fully utilized, it depends on the ability of the game designer.
Unlike the widespread use of Z80 and MOS6502, everyone has a general idea of their performance.
However, as SIC8089A is a newly launched chip, its performance has yet to be verified.
So for the general public, the CPU parameters of these three game consoles have their own advantages, among which Shirakawa Electric's FES is slightly better in hardware parameters.
After comparing the core CPU parameters, the media turned their attention to the appearance of these game consoles.
Surprisingly, both Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's game consoles are long boxes about 20 cm long.
Of course, there are some differences in details. Shirakawa Electric's shape is rounder and smaller, while Nintendo's is angular.
In addition, the former is blue and white, and the latter is red and white.
It is obvious that their color matching logic is based on the color of their own logo.
This is interesting.
From the appearance to the color matching, the two seem to be in a fateful confrontation.
Many magazines were instantly excited after discovering this.
Because in Neon, the word "fate" is almost interspersed in the entire history and culture of Neon.
It has the longest-standing monarchy in the world. Neon has never changed dynasties since ancient times, and the throne has always been inherited by someone from the royal family.
From this point we can get a glimpse of Neon’s recognition of blood ties, which corresponds to another point of recognition of fatalism.
Once such culture penetrates into our bones, cultural creation will be automatically brought in.
This will also make everyone feel that this is like a natural law, and they won’t even think of refuting it.
For example, in "Digimon", there are 8 chosen children, and in "Twelve Kingdoms Saga", there is the heroine chosen by Kirin.
There is also the entanglement of fate between Naruto and Sasuke in "Naruto", which even lasted for many lifetimes.
The large amount of fatalism in this kind of literary and comic works is the most direct impression of "fate" that Japanese people have.
So when the outside media accidentally discovered that Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's game consoles were so coincidental and full of correspondence, the word "fate" instantly popped up in the public's mind.
The launch date is on the same day and the appearance is so targeted.
So many coincidences put together, that's fate.
As a result, many magazines published Shirakawa Electric's Nintendo game console on the same page and made a left-right comparison.
It’s no wonder that when these two game consoles are put together, they do have a sense of similarity.
The public also aptly calls the competition between the two the "fateful red-blue showdown."
As for the forgotten Sega game console, to be honest, it seems a bit out of place when put together with the previous two.
Because Sega's SG-1000 was so big, the combined length of Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's game consoles was about the same.
Big means bulky, bulky means backward, so Sega's SG-1000 was ruthlessly ignored by the media.
From a publicity perspective, among the three game console manufacturers, Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo have a slight advantage.
However, unlike the chaos outside, Baichuan Feng's current focus is not on the upcoming home game console.
Because this month, another product from Shirakawa Electric is about to debut.
That is the CD-ROM that caused a sensation at the briefing last year and will soon be officially released to the public.
This product, which is said to be a technological revolution in the storage industry, has finally entered the commercial stage after more than half a year of running-in.
