After inviting Ye Su to have a light meal, Gu Wei left Watson that night and flew to San Francisco, where he stayed for a day in the name of transit, and then returned to China.

On this day in San Francisco, in a hurry and hurry, as soon as Gu Biao arrived at the airport in the middle of the night, Shulhoff, the president of Tiankun, sent a special car to pick him up, and he did not go back to the villa in Silicon Valley, but directly sent him to the company to stay.

Early the next morning, all the executives and the person in charge of the project under development will come to the company to report their work, and the whole day will be rotated.

Gu Biao is burdened with tolerances, and his schedule is so unfree, he can only see the stitches.

When Schulhoff sent someone to pick him up, he also left a discussion schedule for the next day for Gu Biao, so that Gu Biao could take a few glances before going to bed to familiarize himself and save some time.

Gu Biao is such a diligent person, of course, he will send his girlfriend to sleep first, and he will soak in the bathtub before going to bed to relieve fatigue and refresh himself, while reading documents at night.

It is said that the Fed of later generations bet on Greenspan, and it has such a habit. It's just that Greenspan is old and frail, and his energy is low, so he has to take a bath to refresh himself, he has to get up at 4 o'clock every morning, and then soak in the jacuzzi, drink tea, eat breakfast, deal with Fed papers, and soak until 8 o'clock to officially go to work.

And many of the Fed's major decisions are said to have not been made by Greenspan after he officially went to work, but the inspiration he had in the bathtub for three hours in the morning, which was like Archimedes.

Gu Biao took a look at the documents, and there are roughly two aspects of the main problems that Tiankun is facing at the moment, as well as the work that needs to be reported.

The first is about the promotion of the "third-party game review system", negotiations, and competitor responses.

The mainstream idea that "games developed by third parties need to be reviewed" was originally not divided within Tiankun.

In fact, Nintendo did the same in history, because whoever you are who sees the tragedy of Atari's "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" will naturally think that you can't let shoddy garbage games damage the credibility of console platforms.

Although Tian Kun thought about doing this last year, because the first-party game library is not large enough, it lacks confidence. At the end of January, Gu Wei entered into negotiations with David Rosen of Sega (USA) Company.

David Rosen also saw the reality that Sega's SG-1000 home machine had completely failed, gave up resistance, and had a wave of interest exchange with Gu Biao. Then he spent some time communicating with Hayao Nakamura of Sega (Yueben), so that Gu Biao got the overall porting rights of Sega's arcade game library.

So since February, Gu Biao has asked his Yang Hao and others to take charge of the first-party game development team, and quickly transplanted a large number of reliable, market-tested arcade games from the first two years, and made cassette/floppy disks into Tiankun home consoles.

After two months of progress, this work is now basically completed, so the number of first-party games on the market has skyrocketed several times compared with the end of last year.

With the backing of a game library of this scale, and Gu Biao has recently worked with Sony to promote the establishment of a compliant after-sales service network in various states in the United States and the sinking of dealer channels, the time to ask for a price with a third party is gradually ripe.

In March, Schulhoff began to officially turn around with third-party developers and strongly promote the "game cartridge review system". Today's problem is mainly friction at the executive level, and Gu Biao feels that it is necessary to listen carefully to the meeting tomorrow morning.

The second part of the report is about the progress of the development of the CD player of Tiankun.

The R&D task of the miniaturized CD player was also a task arranged in January at the beginning of the year, and now it has been 3 months. Considering that there are no complicated application scenarios and compatibility issues for CD players, and there are many mature technologies that are directly licensed from Sony, the development speed should not be slow.

Gu Biao also learned about the market situation, in the fourth quarter of 82, only Sony launched a CD player on the market, that is, the ancestor model CDP-101, and in 83, there were several manufacturers such as Philips on the market to follow up.

With the diffusion of technology and the experience of predecessors can be used for "reference" in reverse, with the strength of consumer electronics solution designers with relatively strong technical strength, it is not difficult to come up with a new player in half a year.

In other words, the tasks assigned by Gu Biao at the beginning of the year will basically produce goods in the summer.

At present, the main bottleneck encountered by the R&D department is still the problem of miniaturization - the R&D department is sure that within half a year, it will make a product with the same functions as Sony's CDP-101, but it will never be small enough, lightweight, and portable enough to be the Walkman.

After all, even Sony itself hasn't done this yet, and it's even more difficult to follow the people behind Sony.

Some of the hard bones and difficulties in miniaturization are also clearly listed in the report that Gu Biao has at hand.

Gu Biao looked at it carefully for a long time, and almost fell asleep in the bathtub, but then Xiao Sui slept more vigilantly and fished him out so as not to be dizzy by the stuffy moisture.

Gu Biao could only continue to make up for countermeasures in his sleep in a daze.

……

The next morning, Gu Biao attended the meeting in a bad spirit and listened to the reports of his subordinates.

Schulhoff began by personally reporting on the progress of the review of third-party game cartridge developers.

“…… Due to the further deepening of our cooperation with Sony since March, the sinking of channels, and the right to speak brought by the transplantation of Sega's arcade game library, the company's implementation of the third-party game review system has not encountered any resistance.

About 85% or more of the third-party developers have accepted our alliance and agreed to test the game cartridge before producing it. Less than 15% of third-party developers are hard-line and have chosen not to join for the time being, and they seem to be waiting to see the opportunity to give Sega and Nintendo OEM cartridges in exchange for absolute autonomy in content.

In addition, we started out based on the cost of review, so we set a testing fee starting at $5,000 per third-party game, and if the game is large and complex, we will increase the price as appropriate.

Later, considering that some small manufacturers with unclear sales prospects were unwilling to take this risk and protested the high cost of testing, we adjusted it to be able to charge a test fee based on subsequent sales volume, rather than a one-size-fits-all pre-charge - for the time being, the test fee is 25 cents per cassette for the time being. I think this can also be a source of profit for the company in the future......"

Schulhoff said this, but Gu Biao interrupted him: "Is it currently up to the third-party vendor to choose one of the two charging methods? That is, let them bet on whether their game has a future and is it worth paying a one-time test and audit fee?"

Gu Biao is not resistant to charging fees for audit and testing work, and he feels that this is a natural fee.

BECAUSE IN THE ERA OF WINDOWS SYSTEMS IN LATER GENERATIONS, DOESN'T MICROSOFT ALSO CHARGE "DRIVER CERTIFICATION FEES" TO ALL HARDWARE DEVELOPERS? It doesn't matter if you produce USB flash drives, MP3s, or other USB devices, or graphics cards/memory hardware plugged into the motherboard. As long as you need to install a "system driver", Microsoft will ask you to charge a certification fee called "WHQL Digital Certification".

Fees vary from $500 to $1,500 per driver.

(Note: In the past, especially on the 32-bit X86 system, drivers that have not passed the WHQL digital certification will not be forcibly rejected for installation, but just like 360, you will be given a pop-up window that scares users "Forced installation of drivers that are not certified by Microsoft, which may lead to computer instability".)

However, on the X64 XP system, and even all WIN7 systems, hardware without WHQL digital authentication is forced not to be installed. This is also Microsoft's domineering, which is equivalent to users who want to choose "I am willing to take the risk of system instability", but they have no choice. ）

Microsoft's engagement in this kind of clause is not a bully clause, and Gu Biao's doing this is not a bully clause.

Besides, his scale has always been the same as that of Nintendo in history, that is, only the producer, not the consumer.

After the cassette developer did not get the certification of Tiankun, the cassette used for the Tiankun game console produced privately belonged to the underground cassette, and after being caught, he could sue and be punished.

But if consumers have to like to secretly buy underground cassettes to play, Gu Biao can't control consumers, at most just say, "You play the cassette with unstable quality of the hardware itself, and the game console is broken, I won't give you a warranty."

In a word, on the issue of "the platform side reviewing the software developer", Gu Biao has always adhered to the attitude of "selling is illegal, and drifting is legal". There is absolutely no problem with this, and it is completely different from the lowly apples of later generations.

The relationship between the platform and the developer is contractual, and the contractual relationship can be arbitrarily stipulated. This is one of the three cornerstones of modern human civilization, as long as human beings do not perish, this sacred cornerstone cannot be challenged, and only Jobs's kind of eternal dogs, ghosts, and beasts will want to challenge rampantly, which is simply to reverse the process of human civilization by three hundred years, before Napoleon.

Without further ado, testing a game for prohibited content and harming consumers requires a lot of work, and it may cost a few weeks of salary for one or two test engineers.

Gu Biao thinks that accepting $5,000 from other developers is not black.

Gu Biao just felt that he could be a little more humane.

After soliciting everyone's feedback, Gu Biao cautiously put forward two points:

"I won't say much about the specific business decisions, after all, I don't know the situation as well as the front-line operators, and blind command is not a good thing. I'm just talking about the principle: when setting third-party terms, you must be cautious, and what you say counts. Once the conditions are set, we can only reduce the price or give more favorable conditions in the future, and we can't increase the price for no reason because of the 'big store bullying customers'. ”

"It's as it should be, it's about brand credibility. Schulhoff also agreed and took the lead in praising it.

Gu Biao nodded: "Second, I think we can give my collaborators a more lenient chance to regret it." After all, the game cartridge review fee can't make much money, in case some popular developers who are not confident in themselves are reluctant to pay the $5,000 at first, but in the end, the sales of 100,000 million and the cumulative review and commission are worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it is inevitable that people will say that we look ugly.

So, we set a cap, even if we choose a commission audit fee, we use 200,000 cassettes as the upper limit, and we charge a maximum of $50,000 for the audit fee - that's 10 times the quota system. If the sale is more popular, we will not charge the excess part of the audit fee, which is also an encouragement to the popular manufacturers, so as not to have a thorn in their hearts and not be happy. ”

Schulhoff: "This can be had, and it does take into account the sentiment of our partners, and we will discuss the specific amount - it has only been a trial for a month, and many figures have really not been scrutinized." ”

Gu Biao: "Then this matter is so decided, we can only be more tolerant in the future, not more strict." ”

——

Three more, began to repay the debt. 7 more are still owed