After being corrupted by Ye Kunyi's stern refusal, Gu Wei did not ask her for help for the time being.

Gu Wei just left Ye Kun to have dinner at home, exchanged some boring recent experiences, and then watched Ye Kun leave on his own.

Nothing was said all night.

The next day, Gu Biao first reported back to school, and then reported the progress of the manuscript to Kissinger, and participated in three exhibitions and reports in a week.

At the beginning of the second week, in addition to doing academics, there were a bunch of student activities, including the farewell to Patrick Russell's Ph.D. graduation, and the rest of Kissinger's students got together for a few days to have dinner and socialize.

As an aside, after Patrick Russell graduates, the only doctoral students on Kissinger's side will be Gu Biao and Sarah Sandberg, and Sarah will graduate in May next semester. In Kissinger's last eight months at Georgetown University, there will be only one doctoral student left to take with him.

In addition, there are only five remaining master's students under Kissinger's command after this semester, and some of them will graduate in batches in the next two semesters.

Kissinger's monograph "On China" has now completed the first three chapters, basically completing the analysis of China's diplomatic history before the late Qing Dynasty.

Gu Biao's cooperative research has also entered the "deep water area".

In this case, he did not have the opportunity to leave Watsengton for the whole of September, and could only write books and do his studies, and make remote phone calls to learn about the progress of the company and all parties.

In addition to reporting by phone, his subordinates in the United States sometimes had to fly to Watson to ask for instructions in person.

There is no way to do this, the boss is busy, so he can only let his subordinates break their legs. It's better to reimburse 10 engineers and middle managers for airfares and waste a day's travel time than to let the boss waste time and effort.

……

On this day, it was about the end of September, and the R&D team of Tiankun Entertainment held a regular project meeting in San Francisco to check the R&D progress. Then put the results of the meeting on the phone, and gave a rough report to Gu Biao.

The research and development of PLAY-COMPUTER's hardware group is relatively smooth, and they all say that they will be able to come up with internal test models in the Christmas season, and they will definitely be mature models in next year's awards season.

After all, the hardware team has two years of experience in arcade and PLAY-BOX, and it is not difficult to change the machine that solidifies and burns games into a card machine with an open interface. Although there are some compatibility issues and a lot of additional definitions need to be made, the development effort of the game part is smaller. (The difficulty of hardware development in the game part is thrown to the subsequent game cartridge manufacturer, and there is no need to develop cartridges when developing game consoles, at most a few simple test cartridges)

In contrast, after defining an open, standardized interface, the software group, especially the work of writing the underlying system of the game console, was much more difficult than the original burn-and-burn arcade/handheld machine, and many of the problems encountered by the software team were encountered for the first time.

It is inevitable that the progress is a little behind, and it is necessary to bring in mature engineers poached by Atari, and then the working models of the two sides will be run-in.

Because the implementation did not go very smoothly as planned, Professor Erikson specially arranged for the backbone engineers of the two software groups to fly to Watsangton to report the problem to Gu Biao in person.

Gu Biao also met these two subordinates in his villa after school.

"Old Yang, Xiao Li, sit. You're welcome. "Gu Biao is very casual.

One of these two people is Yang Hao, a veteran backbone who has been messing with Gu Biao for 3 years.

There is also Li Kaifu, who just officially joined the software team this year - this Li Kaifu also graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in computer science at the beginning of the year. He made a friend like Gu Biao through Gu Biao's cousin Lu Guangfu and Gao Pan, so when planning his life route, of course, he also made adjustments.

Before graduation, he worked very hard to help Gu Biao do miscellaneous personal work in software, and after graduation, he observed that Gu Biao opened a company in Silicon Valley, so he resolutely went to Stanford for graduate school from Columbia University, or engaged in computers.

Originally, with the social atmosphere in the United States in the early 80s, graduates of Ivy League schools were still quite reluctant to go to the West Coast for graduate school, even if it was Stanford - even if the Ivy League schools were biased towards liberal arts, they would rather choose MIT nearby.

Obviously, Li Kaifu recognized that there were more opportunities to go to Silicon Valley, so he threw away his view of the door.

Later, while studying at Stanford, he also participated in the final finishing work of some PLAY-BOX handheld development projects by taking advantage of his mentor's introduction and his high-level connections.

After the home machine project was established this time, he was also arranged to go in.

Originally, Li Kaifu's status and qualifications in the project team were lower than the four graduate students brought by Gu Biao from the 77-level committee trainees in China, and even slightly lower than the 78-level undergraduate committee trainees. However, after focusing on the work, it can be seen that there is still a difference in the ability structure between people majoring in computer science at Columbia University and those who are from applied mathematics.

Although Yang Hao and the others have also followed Gu Biao for two or three years, they are all seeing tricks and dismantling tricks, headaches, and rarely have the opportunity to empty the overall vision, and they also lack the vision of exhaustively testing system vulnerabilities.

Li Kaifu is obviously much more professional in writing the system and ensuring the stability of the system, and once the game console changes from writing dead games to defining interfaces and opening cards, his advantages are reflected.

It was at this project progress meeting that was manifested.

For this reason, Gu Biao, as the boss, also had to talk to Yang Hao in person and assign future work adjustments.

For this reason, Gu Biao personally poured peach iced tea for his two subordinates, and said very politely:

"Lao Yang, you have been working with me for 3 years, and I know the ability. There are some things, I also believe that you can keep up in the future, before your growth, I was also forced by me, I was anxious to let you do this and that, I don't have time for you to sort out slowly.

In terms of system architecture and risk estimation, Kaifu is more professional, and I think that when the project is restructured, the person in charge of the Chinese side will hand it over to him and let him connect with the relevant professors. ”

Yang Hao was slightly unwilling in his heart, but he was brought out of China by Gu Biao, and he was also the Stanford commission tuition fee from Gu Biao, and he would not resist if he resisted.

"Boss, I know my shortcomings, I will study hard and improve. Yang Hao replied expressionlessly.

"Brother Yang is actually much more experienced than me, I just have a little bit of experience......" Li Kaifu was also afraid of offending people, so he hurriedly said.

"No need to explain, Lao Yang, I didn't want you to learn and improve. It's about finding what you do best. When the company is big, the programmer also has to subdivide the direction, and it is impossible for one person to order everything. Gu Biao interrupted the other party.

His statement also made the horses think.

Twenty years later, this is not unusual at all, because at that time, there were so many programming languages and the division of labor was extremely detailed, and everyone thought that it was natural for everyone to understand only a small part.

However, in 1982, programmers were miscellaneous people, and there was a hodgepodge of what they knew in their heads, and there were many programmers who "knew a little" about everything.

In the final analysis, it is that the industry has developed for less than ten years, the division of labor is not detailed, and there are many generalists in the overall situation.

For example, Atari's suicide masterpiece "ET the Extra-Terrestrial", which is now under development, is written by only one programmer, and there is no cooperation at all, and it is a one-person contractor.

Yang Hao didn't mean to get to Gu Biao for a while, and was slightly nervous.

Fortunately, Gu Biao immediately solved the doubts in his heart: "In the future, you will be responsible for the software of the game cartridge group, and the host will not have to worry about it." Kaifu will report all the interface definitions and data transmission standards to you, and you can develop our first-party game based on the answers they have made, and that's it. ”

Yang Hao breathed a sigh of relief.

It turned out that he was not allowed to develop game consoles and focus on first-party game cartridges.

When Gu Biao set up the game console project two months ago, he did not start any game cartridge development tasks at the same time.

Because the development of game cartridges must rely on game consoles, if the interface standards and data transmission of game consoles are not defined, how can the development of cassettes begin?

It's like how do you write games that run under INDOS if the INDOS operating system is not written well on the computer? What if the computer is installed with the MAC operating system in the future? Don't you have to re-port?

As a result, cassette is launched two to three months later than console projects, which is a normal rhythm in the industry, at least until the interface definition development is complete.

However, if a game console is first launched, there is no first-party game, then it is not good, because the game console has no games to play when it is listed, and it is destined to hit the streets. It's impossible for gamers to wait for a third-party game maker to develop a game before buying a console.

Just as in history, when Sony launched the first generation of PS, it relied on the defection of "Final Fantasy 7" to end Nintendo's dominance of the world for ten years in one fell swoop. And when Nintendo FC was first launched, it also relied on big games such as "Super Mario" to support the scene. (Of course, now Nintendo has not developed the idea of FC because of Atari's awesome and Gu Biao's smoke bombs.) Yamauchi estimated that he would not make up his mind to do anything until he saw the trend of Atari's fall.)

"Boss, I accept your arrangement. When I got back, I started arranging the development of first-party game cartridges and cooperating with the console development team for closed beta. After Yang Hao figured out all the truth, he said so.

He paused slightly, and then didn't forget to ask for instructions: "I don't know what you want from the first games? I don't think it's a problem to run all the arcade games that have been around since '81 with the console we've developed based on '83 chip/memory material technology."

According to Moore's Law, considering that CPU performance doubles every 18 months, the ability of the home machine to achieve at least two years ago is a normal performance. MapleStory and Earth Defenders are both perfectly portable, and Bomberman, Pac-Man, and Tank battles are even less difficult. Give me 3 months and I'll be able to port all five of the best-selling games that we own full rights to, and it's even easier for American Blocks and Snake. ”

Gu Biao nodded with satisfaction, and then nodded: "You can transplant several other games, don't transplant the snake, let's leave some willing psychological hints for consumers who have bought our handhelds, so that this game will always be monopolized by handhelds."

American Blocks can be ported, but not in this year's plan, and you can postpone it as a postponement to a home console's best-selling creation, or make it into a bonus game that can be included in the cartridges of several other mini-games.

However, it's not enough to just have those five arcade games, we need a new home console exclusive game to satisfy the consumer's psychology of 'thinking that this machine is worth it'. ”

Yang proud: "You said, I will definitely finish." ”

Gu Biao sorted out his thoughts and had a comprehensive plan in his mind.

He had already thought about how to find an excuse to ask Stallone to endorse him.