Atari has opened up the barriers to entry for its Atari 2600 and Atari-5200 home consoles, because it wants to keep its consoles appealing to players with a steady stream of new games.

But the rampant presence of a large number of low-quality games is gradually destroying the image that Atari has built up among players over the years. When worse and worse word-of-mouth reaches a critical point, the market begins to crash. And the trigger was a middle school student who bought a cassette game called Comet Strike.

But the poor image quality of this game made him unbearable, so he went to the game store and asked for a return. But the owner of the game store refused, so in a fit of rage, he went home and took his Atari-2600 game console and dozens of cartridges to the door of the game store and smashed them all.

Soon a second person followed suit, and within two days five Atari consoles were smashed in front of the game store. The news quickly made it to the lace news section of the Los Angeles Times. As a result, countless players seemed to have found an outlet all at once, and fragmented Atari game consoles that were smashed by hands, stepped on, and crushed by cars began to appear in front of countless game stores.

The outrage of the gamers led to a panic among the game store owners, who refused to purchase any Atari-related products, and even demanded the return of the consoles and cartridges in stock. The collapse of the sales channel directly led to the collapse of the entire Atari game industry chain.

Atari itself bore the brunt of the blow, and countless third-party companies that relied on Atari consoles to issue game cards also suffered a catastrophe. Even the sales of FC consoles. It was also implicated in a slight decline. It's fair to say that all North American gamers have questions about home consoles.

Oriental Games, which had been following the collapse of Atari on the side, immediately took action and allocated $10 million in additional publicity expenses. The money was invested in a massive advertising campaign on television and newspapers across the United States.

In this advertising war, Oriental Games did not invite Hollywood stars to star. There is no literary promotional film with a warm vein, but a simple and direct list of FC game consoles and various game cartridges, and the sales figures of the past year.

Everyone's choice is your choice, and the huge sales represent the quality of the full score. When there is a loss of confidence in the market, this kind of simple and crude advertising is the best way to win back the trust of consumers. In the first 11 months of 1982, global shipments of FC consoles totaled 9.75 million units. With nearly 10 million families voting a vote of confidence in FC consoles, what are you waiting for!

The market that vacated after the collapse of Atari. It was quickly occupied by the FC console of the Oriental Games Company. The trend of FC consoles dominating the home console market in the United States and even the world is still irreversible. In fact, because of the appearance of Li Xuan's butterfly, Atari's collapse this time was not as tragic as in another time and space.

in another time and space. In 1982, when Atari was at its most proud, the company's executives paid a sky-high price of $20 million to buy the game adaptation rights of "ET the Extra-Terrestrial". But because the negotiations between Atari and Universal Pictures dragged on for too long, the company did not want to miss the peak sales season before Christmas.

As a result, the game developers were in a situation where there was not enough time. Came up with a very bad quality game. However, Atari is bent on making a fortune by taking advantage of "ET the Extra-Terrestrial". Before the sales of the game cartridge came back, mass production had already begun ahead of schedule.

As a result, the poor quality of the cartridges of the E.T. Aliens game sparked a huge outrage among fans. The countless game cartridges that were produced at full capacity in the early stage have become a backlog that cannot be sold. And these products around him consumed a lot of Atari's book funds, and eventually led to Atari's bankruptcy.

Now, Atari's glory has long been stolen by Oriental Games, and it can only survive by constantly launching new games. Even Atari itself isn't sure which of these new games will be approved by players. Therefore, we have been implementing a strict sales-based production system.

So the current Atari company, although in the home game console market, has been hit almost devainly. But the large amount of cash on the books at least allowed the company to retain the opportunity to transform. It's just that in the future, it will be difficult for Atari to be qualified to become a competitor of Oriental Game Company.

Aikang's dream of monopolization in the personal computer industry was first realized by Oriental Game Company in the home computer market. Together with the GameBoy, which occupies almost 85% of the global handheld game console market, the Oriental Game Console Company showed its domineering dominance in 1982.

The collapse of Atari has also made countless third-party game development companies desperate, and they have accepted the recruitment of Oriental Game Company. Of course, Oriental Games did not put forward too harsh requirements because of their fall.

For the current Oriental game company, for a long time in the future, the only one who can defeat them is themselves, or the U.S. Department of Justice. As long as Oriental Games does not make arrogant mistakes, it continues to be modest and cautious in strictly controlling the quality, and continues to launch high-quality games. Other competitors will have a hard time breaking into the home console market.

Another aspect that Oriental Games needs to pay attention to is the antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. It is precisely because of this sword of Damocles hanging over their heads that Oriental Game Company needs to carefully exploit other third-party game companies.

To this end, Oriental Games has also set up a strong legal department in the United States, and has also invited well-known law firms in the United States as legal counsel. At the same time, all the terms of the contracts signed by Oriental Games and other companies have been carefully considered by professional lawyers, and they are resolutely not left with the US Department of Justice.

At the same time, one Atari fell, and other competitors of its own appeared. And the new competitors that have emerged this time are actually old faces in the PC market. Before the ABC-1 computer was launched, the company swept the entire low-end PC market with a VIC-20.

And this time it also offered a low-cost magic weapon. The slogan of the new Kemodo-64 computer is that you can learn and play games at the same time. Spend the same amount of money. Do two things!

And this new Kemodo-64 computer is the same as the ABC-1 computer, using a 6502 processor as the core. But it's priced at just $595, nearly $100 cheaper than the ABC-1 computer, which has already been cut in price several times.

It can be said that the company is using this computer, and it is competing with the FC game console and the ABC-1 computer at the same time. In fact, the FC home game console of Oriental Games Company does not feel a lot of pressure. For starters, the FC console retails for just $199 in the U.S., which is only one-third the price of the Grammodo-64 computer.

Secondly. The real core competency of FC consoles is those that are excellent. At the same time, the FC console is positioned as a family console, so it is simple to operate. You can use it when you connect it to your TV.

The Kemodo-64 is positioned as a computer that can play games, and if you want to play games, you must at least learn to operate the computer skillfully. This leaves a large part of the users of the console, teenagers and children, out of the equation.

Compared with. The pressure felt by Aikang was much greater. Previously, the VIC-20 from Kemodo was targeted at the low-end market. It does not compete with the products of Akon. But this time, the new release of the Kemodo-64 computer is clearly aimed at the mid-range market.

The price butcher of the Kemodo company, the retail price of the new computer of $595, directly disrupted the market order. What's more, the management of Kemodo is indeed very resolute in its attitude towards this price war. In order to reduce the cost of purchasing parts for new computers, they directly acquired Zilog, the company that manufactures the 6502 processor.

If Aikang Company follows the price reduction, the ABC-1 computer will enter the low-profit mode. As a result, Aikang is already considering phasing down the production of ABC-1 computers, except for the educational computer market. Slowly exit the sale. Then focus more energy on the more lucrative ABC-2, ABC-3, ABC-P4 and other models of computers.

There will be no shortage of competition in any market. And Dongfang Electronics has never been afraid of competition. None of these things affected Li Xuan to bid farewell to 1982 and step into a brand-new 1983 with a full good mood.

In the first week of the new year, the U.S. semiconductor industry ushered in its first heavy transaction. Oriental Holdings took over Fairchild Semiconductor from France's Schlumberger for $300 million.

Schlumberger spent $350 million on Fairchild Semiconductor in the summer of 1979 and left the market for $50 million in just three and a half years. In fact, the U.S. industry was generally not optimistic about this deal at the beginning, and no one thought that a foreign company operating in the oil service industry was capable of saving the aging Fairchild Semiconductor.

The acquisition of Dongfang Electronics Company has also caused heated discussions in the US semiconductor industry, and there are many differences of opinion. Many people think that Dongfang can play with digital chips, but not necessarily with analog chips. But more people believe that Dongfang Electronics, the newly rising semiconductor dark horse, can inject fresh vitality into Fairchild Semiconductor.

It is normal to have bullish nature and bearish outlook, and every acquisition is actually a risk. And Li Xuan's several heavy acquisitions so far can be regarded as relatively successful. Another thing that makes him happy is that at least no one in the industry believes that Dongfang Electronics is not qualified to buy Fairchild Semiconductor.

You must know that two years ago, when Schlumberger acquired Fairchild Semiconductor, it was overwhelmed with doubts from the industry and the media. There are even extremists who have written to the White House asking the president to intervene to stop the French from tarnishing the US semiconductor industry.

But now, relying on the ERM architecture and MIPS architecture, Dongfang Electronics has successfully established its position in the American semiconductor industry. In the field of high-tech, technological innovators are always admired.

Dongfang Electronics has qualified to become a heavyweight player in this competitive game. What Dongfang Electronics lacked most before was technology accumulation, and after the completion of the acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor, Dongfang Electronics made up for a lot of shortcomings.

According to Li Xuan's combing of the development history of Fairchild Semiconductor in the past ten years, it is found that the company's mistake in the first half of the company lies in the parent company's continuous blood drawing. At that time, the profits of Fairchild Semiconductor were not used to continue investment and research and development, and further consolidated its advantages when it was in an advantageous position, but stagnated and was constantly caught up or even surpassed by other opponents.

In the second half, Fairchild Semiconductor was lost in catching up with others. When the memory market was booming, it began to invest in memory research and development. When the processor market began to explode, it turned to processors and even developed a game console product.

This changeable way of thinking not only did not bring any change to it, but made it lose its advantage in the field of analog semiconductors step by step, and finally degenerated into a mediocre company.

What Fairchild Semiconductor needs most now is not change, but persistence. For example, after the acquisition of Fairchild, Schlumberger of France invested a lot of money in the field of artificial intelligence. Li Xuan will not cut these projects, but will set up an independent intelligence research institute under Fairchild. We will continue to invest a lot of money to carry out research on intelligent industrial machines and lay the foundation for entering the field of automation in the future.

Fairchild's focus in the semiconductor field has shifted back to the field of analog semiconductors. In addition to the field of semiconductor discrete devices, which Fairchild still has advantages, it focuses on two subdivisions: amplifiers and power supply ICs.

At the same time, with the support of the Oriental Research Institute, Fairchild Semiconductor will also carry out research on digital-analog hybrid semiconductors. Li Xuan did not ask how much profit Fairchild could contribute in the short term, but first formulated a forward-looking long-term scientific research plan.

With Li Xuan's strong financial resources, he doesn't care about the losses of Fairchild Company in three or even five years, as long as he can regain the lead in technology, he will not worry about no profits in the future. Taking power IC as an example, with the advent of the era of electrical intelligence, power IC has an extremely broad market in the future in the fields of computers, home appliances, and automobiles.

Li Xuan believes that the only thing that Fairchild Semiconductor needs to change now is the recognition of the value of technology R&D personnel. This is also a stubborn problem of Fairchild, which cannot give R&D personnel a salary commensurate with the value of the zào they create, so that the talent continues to lose.

Although the name of Silicon Valley's "West Point Military Academy" is an affirmation of Fairchild's technical strength, it is not a kind of irony. Fairchild is a commercial company, not a public school, and should not be tasked with developing talent for other businesses.

Therefore, the only change that Li Xuan has to make after taking over Fairchild is to comprehensively adjust the company's salary setting standards, keep up with mainstream companies in Silicon Valley, and give strong R&D personnel generous treatment. (To be continued......)