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June 12, 1983.

The new arcade platform "Phoenix" of the new start-up electronics company was officially unveiled, and the platform's first arcade game "1941" was also launched on this day.

As the vane of the arcade market, Xinchuang Electronics has long established a good cooperative relationship with mainstream arcade dealers around the world.

The world's top arcade sales companies have basically set up branches in Hong Kong or sent specialists to Hong Kong to follow up on the new products of new start-up electronics companies.

The release of the "Phoenix" platform and "1941" naturally invited mainstream companies in the industry to come and learn about it.

"1941 is a game with a new concept...... We borrowed the concept of RPG games, as well as real planes, battles, including attacks and explosions in the movie...... "Mark Serney, as the designer of the game, also learned the style of the company - the designer of every game project should also be a good salesman, at least to convince the distribution channels in the industry to make them willing to try the game, "of course......' Phoenix' platform, but also our company's internal research and development of a new arcade hardware platform, in the future, our arcade unified use of 'Phoenix' arcade motherboard, there is no need to buy the whole arcade machine, only need to replace the game program memory card!

"Excuse me, how much is the arcade machine and how much is the game software on the Phoenix platform?" asked a dealer.

"$10,000 a machine!" Mark Sayney shrugged, "and the game software includes a hard drive, and it's $800!"

"So expensive!"

"It's a money grab!"

"It's not very expensive!" said Mark Selleney, "You know, our arcade performance is comparable to that of a small machine for 3~50,000 dollars, which is definitely cheap." Not to mention...... After you buy an arcade machine, you don't necessarily need to return it in the future, you only need to buy software to replace the new game!"

Mark Sellney added in his heart that according to Moore's Law, the hardware performance should be doubled in 18 months, and even if the new machine is not replaced in 18 months, then, in 36 months, at least the more powerful arcade machine must be replaced.

At most, the actual operator of the arcade machine bought a less popular arcade game, and then changed to a new game at a lower cost.

In short, the goal of new startups is to use new games with higher and higher hardware requirements, forcing the entire industry to upgrade arcade machines, otherwise, everyone has not changed to new machines, how can they continue to grab profits?

"Is it reasonable to sell software for $800?" said the dealer sarcastically.

"Quality speaks...... "Marc Cerney says, "and if you don't think it's worth it, then I have nothing to say!"

Of course, the quality of the game "1941" really amazed the channel businessmen present!

In addition, the arcade machine of the new venture electronics company has always been the industry benchmark, and it is known for its high-quality products, if the arcade machine of the new venture electronics company is not easy to sell, it means that the entire arcade market is finished.

Therefore, the game "1941" has received orders for 20,000 units in just half a day, and if it weren't for the double of the arcade machine, I am afraid that the order list will be more!

……

Although the "Phoenix" platform borrows from Pangu, it is not fully compatible with Pangu. After all, one is an arcade machine and the other is a home console platform.

The biggest difference may be the anti-piracy means, the arcade software of the Phoenix platform is bundled with hard disks, but not any hard disk can run on the Phoenix platform. The anti-piracy program is written into the hardware of the Phoenix platform, which will read whether the hard disk data is genuine, if it is genuine, it can be run, if it is pirated, it will destroy the hard disk data, and it is difficult to repair the data by technical means. In addition, the hard disk itself bundled with software is also anti-cracking, as long as it is found that it is cracked, it will quickly generate a virus and completely destroy the entire game program.

Of course, in terms of performance, the Phoenix platform is far more powerful than the Pangu host. The Pangu host is a single-core XRM16 chip. However, the "Phoenix" platform uses an 8-core XRM16 chip, which is also a helpless thing, after all, the chip design ability can indeed rely on technical information and spending money to avoid some detours.

However, the capital required for the semiconductor process is by no means something that can be improved by the current new start-up electronics companies alone.

The performance of the CPU, in addition to the design, is more critical to the process. For example, a 3-micron process reduced instruction set chip may exceed the performance of a 1.5-micron complex instruction set chip. However, in any case, a single chip cannot be more than five times more powerful than the chips of competitors of the same era......

But this is a problem that cannot be solved by single-core chips, and multi-core chips are not enough, so when Lin Qi asked for more than five times more powerful than the 68000 chip produced by Motorola, a high-performance chip commonly used in the arcade market, the hardware designers of the arcade department quickly came up with a solution - 8-core XRM16 chip!

In this way, the floating point operation performance of the Phoenix arcade platform can reach more than 10 million times per second, and it is equipped with 512KB of memory and 512KB of video memory...... Of course, most of this hardware is ordered in bulk from major international semiconductor manufacturers.

For example, in terms of memory, China is currently able to produce 1KB of DRAM, and 8 DRAM cores on a memory module, which means that domestic manufacturers can provide 8KB of memory modules, and this level of technology is impossible to become a supplier of Pangu platform or Phoenix platform.

The Pangu platform adopts dual memory module slots, each memory is 32K, even if the speed development of domestic manufacturers is Massage Law, it will take 3 years before it has the opportunity to supply DRAM memory modules to the Pangu host.

Of course, the new venture electronics company still provides a large number of DRAM technology to domestic semiconductor manufacturers, and this technology has actually passed the patent protection period.

The memory commonly used in computers in the semiconductor age is mainly DRAM, a technology invented by Intel Corporation in the late 60s.

Strictly speaking, Fairchild Semiconductor had similar technology at the beginning, but because this project was not taken seriously, the founder of Intel left Fairchild with the technology, and after that, he relied on DRAM patented technology to become a new frontier in the semiconductor industry.

Of course, in the 70s, Intel's memory business was not challenged by a bunch of competitors, and its market share gradually dropped from 90% to 40%! In the 80s, the price war of Japanese manufacturers made Intel's market share, the original memory boss, gradually decline to a negligible level. At the same time, for Intel, its memory business accounted for two-thirds of the company's R&D costs, and at the same time, contributed only 5% of Intel's operating income, and finally, in 85, Intel decided to cut the memory project and focus on making CPUs that contribute more revenue! After surviving the huge loss in the transition period of the 80s, after that, in the era of 386 chips, IBM once did not use 386 chips, however, other compatible machine manufacturers have adopted them, and the PC compatible machine camp is mainly anti-customer, and it is determined that the core technology of the entire camp is X86 chip, not IBM.

In this way, becoming the de facto boss and the biggest vested interest in the PC camp, Intel's later profits will naturally rise. At one time, with the growth of the PC market, Intel's market value even surpassed IBM.

For a long time, Intel has often bragged about how much it was the right thing to do to abandon DRAM in the first place. However...... After many years, Intel began to regret that the profits made by the CPU alone were not enough, so it kept trying to extend its tentacles to the motherboard, memory, ...... In the field of motherboards, Intel has done a relatively successful job, motherboards and chips are bundled and sold, and the standards are also formulated by Intel.

However, in the fields of graphics cards, memory, mechanical hard disks, etc., Intel does not have the final say, because it has given up the right to speak in this market......

New start-ups are not quite the same as those in the PC camp, where IBM set the technical standards at the beginning. But later, IBM messed up itself, lost the right to interpret the standard, and became the entire market software and hardware giants negotiated, and everyone explored a set of technical standards that were beneficial to everyone, and compatibility became the first. In addition, since various hardware, including CPU, motherboard, memory, mechanical hard disk, and graphics card, are not developed by a single company, and will not be negotiated during the research and development process, the performance is actually greatly reduced after assembly.

It's just that everyone has been bound by this system for a long time, and no company has the ability to change the long-established rules of the PC industry, and in the end, the technological progress of the PC is getting slower and slower. Because, with the development of time, the accumulation of problems is more and more, a better way, in fact, a company to acquire all other companies, after that, the technology is completely shared, research and development of mutual coordination, so that the development of the whole machine, in fact, the performance will be better.

Of course, Lin Qi will not let go of DRAM technology, and before the patent protection period has expired, he has obtained a large amount of DRAM information through Dr. Yu. Well, in fact, this is not a secret technology, there are a bunch of international DRAM manufacturers, and most of them are Japanese manufacturers.

At the same time, Samsung is also about to lay out this technology when DRAM is about to expire its patent protection period, poaching Korean engineers from the United States, and letting them take the technology to South Korea to open DRAM factories. Later, the memory business of South Korea's Samsung Company was the foundation laid in the 80s. Japanese manufacturers always say that Samsung steals the technology of Japanese manufacturers, LCD, lithium batteries, etc., but DRAM is actually to pick up cheap in the United States, and the Korean engineers in the United States are re-dug up in the country, and naturally the technology is packaged and brought over, in the 80s, the DRAM basic patent expired, and Intel gave up because it lost its moat, but Japanese manufacturers and Korean manufacturers rushed to the top after the patent expired. Later, this piece of the market cake was basically occupied by Japan and South Korea, and this advantage continued to the mobile phone era, and the flash memory of the larger market cake was also occupied by Japanese and Korean manufacturers.

Therefore, although Lin Qi is in the Pangu console and arcade, he needs to purchase memory chips from Japanese manufacturers. However, the same purchase of a chip that can be produced in China, high-performance consoles and arcade machines cannot be used, and it is more than enough for the old-fashioned "China Cube" handheld machine.

At present, the 6502 chip version of the "China Cube" handheld has not been discontinued, and the monthly shipments are still more than one million, but at present, the new venture electronics company has long stopped investing in research and development funds in this old model, in fact, it is not necessary. Arrange production according to market demand, and stop production when there is no need in the market.

At present, except for the 6502 chip, all other components of this handheld are purchased from overseas, and all other components are supplied by domestic manufacturers. Therefore, it has a huge promotion for the development of the domestic consumer electronics industry.

If there are no new start-up electronics companies, then what is the current level of the domestic computer industry - tens of thousands of microcomputers and thousands of minicomputers are consumed in the market every year.

Microcomputers are almost all imported, and half of small computers are imported. Because the output value of the entire computer industry is negligible, manufacturers, including CPUs, memory, graphics cards, and hard disks, have no soil for growth at all.

The biggest contribution of the new start-up electronics company to the domestic industry is to distribute orders to the domestic market when the domestic market is negligible, so that the domestic semiconductor industry has the orders and profits necessary for growth.

In addition, the new venture electronics company is responsible for the research and development of the most core technology, and then through technology licensing, so that domestic manufacturers who have not yet formed an environment to develop products according to market demand will upgrade and develop towards a technical route that should be reliable.

Of course, domestic semiconductor manufacturers also have a big problem - they are both prosperous and lose with the new entrepreneurial electronics. Before the domestic market is cultivated and matured, the leader of Xinchuang Electronics will suffer a collapse similar to the Atari empire in the overseas market, and the domestic industrial chain will also be devastated.

But after the domestic computer market is cultivated and matured, then the entire industrial chain can live very nourishingly by relying on the domestic market, and the PC camp can be regarded as non-existent.

……

In July 1983, Atari closed factories and laid off employees in successive rounds, and nearly 10,000 employees were cut to less than 2,000 employees, but the sales of its products did not improve in the slightest, but continued to shrink. Not only did the Atari 2600 console fail to sell during its period, but the game software of the Atari platform also completely collapsed.

Back in 1982, the Atari platform was worth more than $200 million a month for gaming software. Its market size is far ahead of the personal computer software market, and neither Apple's nor PC software sales can be compared with the sales of the Atari 2600 platform.

But by now, the Atari 2600 platform's software market has shrunk by more than 90 percent, with monthly sales falling to less than $20 million. At the same time, the world is a new game company that relies on the Atari 2600 for survival. Now, whether it is the United States or Japan, the two major game industry powers, more than 100,000 game practitioners, and thousands of game companies, have encountered serious survival problems.

At the same time, the Pangu console released by the new venture electronics company announced that its global sales exceeded 2 million units by mid-June.

At the same time, the Pangu platform's game software sales exceeded $100 million in June, although it was not as high as Atari's peak, but it gave hope to the entire game industry.

After all, the Pangu console has only sold more than 2 million units, and the monthly game software market is already so large, if it continues to grow, it will soon offset the huge losses caused by the collapse of the Atari platform to the game industry.

Competitors continue to collapse, which is undoubtedly the biggest piece of good news. The bigger positive is that while competitors are collapsing, the new start-up electronics companies themselves are continuing to grow......

Moreover, relying on growth, it is possible to gradually dig into the Pangu camp of those game development companies that originally worked for Atari!

Of course, those companies that develop bad games, the Pangu platform doesn't want it. Learning from the lessons of the collapse of Atari, the Pangu platform has paid attention to quality from the beginning and strictly reviewed the games on the platform, which has resulted in less than 20 new games on the entire Pangu platform a month, but almost every new game can make money, and there are a large number of games with a good reputation.

In this way, the Pangu platform relies on the overall game quality, so that the player's consumption on the Pangu platform is much higher than that of the Atari 2600, which attaches importance to quantity.