Yang Weining followed Zhou Yun and Lu Yuan into the villa with his luggage, and as soon as he entered the house, he saw a round-faced boy of seventeen or eighteen years old wearing glasses sitting cross-legged in front of the TV in the living room playing the game "Pac-Man".

"Atari 2600?"

Looking at the black game console in front of the TV, Yang Weining's eyes lit up.

The round-faced young man turned his head, looked Yang Weining up and down a few times, and said in a thick accent: "Mainland boy, do you also know Atari?"

Lu Yuan, who was on the side, suddenly straightened his face and said, "Wen Bin, this is your brother Wei Ning, don't scream nonsense." ”

Lu Wenbin rolled his eyes and muttered, "Brother Wei Ning, is there a game console in the mainland?"

Yang Weining smiled slightly, and said disapprerovitically: "Yes, yes, but there are very few, I have only heard of this brand of game consoles before, and it is the first time I have seen it in reality." ”

Yang Weining didn't lie, the oldest game console he had ever come into contact with in his previous life was Nintendo's red and white machine, and the Atari 2600 was an older existence than the red and white machine, so it was naturally the first time he saw it.

Despite this, Yang Weining knows the legendary status of the Atari 2600 in the game industry.

Before the launch of the Atari 2600, the first generation of game consoles did not have the concept of game carriers, nor did they have the concept of console-display separation, which meant that a game console was equivalent to a full PC, and games could not be changed at will.

In this case, gaming consoles are so expensive that they become a luxury that only a very small number of wealthy families can afford.

The advent of the Atari 2600 changed that.

Atari 2600 uses the cassette technology implemented by HP in 1972, which perfectly solves the problem that the game cannot be ported, and is equipped with Atari's self-developed TV signal interface and sound effect chip, so that as long as the family has a TV, you can use the Atari 2600 to play high-quality video games.

It was this change that made the Atari 2600 one of the most successful machines in the history of video game consoles.

In 1980, Atari had a 44% share of the U.S. market and became almost synonymous with home consoles.

At the same time, Atari has successively launched classic games such as "Exploding Comet", "Adventure", "Missile Command", and "Storm".

In 1981, Atari set a record $1 billion in revenue, driving the entire gaming industry to grow exponentially, earning more than twice as much as Hollywood and three times as much as baseball, basketball, and soccer tickets combined.

In 1982, on the occasion of Atari's 10th anniversary, Atari had annual sales of $2 billion, making it the fastest-growing company in U.S. history, accounting for 80 percent of the gaming market and 17 percent of U.S. households.

However, the rapid development of the company also made Atari's top management confused by short-term interests, and actually came up with a brain-dead strategy of "quantity over quality".

Under this policy, in 1982 alone, nearly 10,000 games appeared on the American market.

The damage to the market caused by a large number of homogeneous garbage games is obvious, and Atari's parent company Warner spent 6 weeks to make "ET Extra-Terrestrial", the most famous IP bad work in history, which became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

During the Christmas season of 1982, E.T. Aliens sold 150W copies, and Atari prepared 4 million copies.

The extra 250W cartridges ended up in the Alamogordo Junk Town, New Mexico, along with some other unsellable inventory.

The spurning of players left a large number of games to rot in warehouses, and Atari's prestige fell to the bottom, and its parent company had to spin off and sell a generation of overlords, which is known as the "Atari Collapse".

Later, Nintendo learned the lessons of the impact of the Atari crash and established a "royalty system" on the "red and white machine" FC to control the quality of game software.

The history of the rise and fall of Atari flashed in Yang Weining's mind, and the round-faced young man smiled and said, "Brother Wei Ning, then you put your luggage first, and then we will play Pac-Man together." ”

"Okay!"

Yang Weining smiled and nodded.

Yang Weining naturally has little interest in playing games, and although Lu Wenbin's video games are fashionable, in his opinion, they are not as good as later web games.

But the emergence of the Atari 2600 gave Yang Weining a new idea for future development.

Should you consider taking advantage of the impact of the Atari crash on the gaming market and getting a piece of the gaming market?

Yang Weining knows very well that don't look at his development in 611, but these are only short-term glories.

Next, with the gradual deepening of the country's basic line centered on economic construction, the country's investment in the national defense industry has deteriorated, and the aviation port is naturally no exception.

Even if the 611 Institute got the J-10 project from the Air Force, but the initial R & D funding is only a drop in the bucket, according to historical development, J-10 will make its first flight in 1998, and officially equip the troops in 2003, the progress is comparable to the American fourth-generation fighter F22 "Raptor", in the next 20 years, the gap between the domestic aviation industry and the developed countries in the West has not been shortened, but is expanding step by step.

The general trend of history is mighty, and those who follow it prosper and those who go against it die.

Although Yang Weining knows the future development direction of the aviation industry, it is difficult to change all this with his own strength.

But this does not mean that Yang Weining is willing to go with the flow and be a bystander of history.

The answer to the problems that cannot be solved within the system may lie outside the system.

The information technology industry is undoubtedly an excellent entry point.

At present, the computer industry is still at the dawn stage of the technological revolution, and the technical reserve has been completed.

In the U.S., the competition between complex and compact instruction sets is settled, and in the coming decades, X86 instruction sets and Intel will be among the biggest winners in the CPU market.

Although Microsoft is still a toddler, the success of DOS has laid a solid foundation for Microsoft, and in the case of limited computer hardware technology, Yang Weining knows that the graphical interface is the mainstream of the future development of operating systems, and it is difficult to compete with Microsoft.

Perhaps the only opportunity is in the computer game market.

The Atari crash at Christmas this year shrank the $3.2 billion gaming market in 1982 to about $100 million in 1985, a drop of more than 97%.

It wasn't until 1985 that Nintendo's red-and-white console debuted with "Super Mario Bros.", which set off a frenzy in North America and brought the game market back to its peak.

And this time is Yang Weining's opportunity.

On this trip to Xiangjiang, Yang Wei would rather not just apply for a patent for AutoCAD, the domestic information is too closed, he needs to use the window of Xiangjiang to carefully examine the international economic form in the 80s and find the entry point for future development.

It's just that he didn't expect that as soon as he arrived at Lu Yuan's house, he found the direction of future development.