"Due to the limitations of computer performance, computer games cannot be comparable to arcade machines and home game consoles in terms of graphics and sound, so they can only work on the game structure.

In our arcade games, players can only be like marionettes, according to the game progress designed by the programmer in advance, to clear the level in the same way. For example, in "Mario Bros., the only characters that players can choose are the brother in red and the brother in blue.

In order for each player to clear the level, the operations required are exactly the same. As a result, many gaming magazines have even compiled tips on where to use the gamepad to press the buttons when telling the player where to go on the map. This greatly limits the player's fantasy space and sense of substitution.

In contrast, computer games are more open and autonomous. First of all, the gameplay is very rich, with faction selection, race selection, and class selection, and different classes have different attributes and skills. This greatly enriches the playability of the game. And the game map is also very open, different players destroy a group of monsters in the same place. The former may receive a two-handed sword, and the latter may receive an armor. This uncertainty can greatly attract the player's desire to explore!"

Du Wenqiang's eyes were bloodshot, he obviously didn't have a good rest last night, but his spirit was still excited, and he continued to talk eloquently in the face of Li Xuan: "Whether it's "Genesis" or "Witchcraft", they all rely on playing to win. As PC configurations continue to improve, hardware will become less and less restrictive for PC gaming.

When the graphics of computer games catch up with arcade and home game consoles, their advantage in playability will be fully reflected. And with the global PC sales continue to climb. The potential market for computer games is also expanding rapidly!"

Li Xuan nodded with satisfaction, Du Wenqiang was able to summarize these points in a day's time, which was already very good. The medium of computer games is the computer, computer games in the early seventies. Originally, it appeared on the mainframe computers of various universities, and it could only be regarded as something for the self-amusement of teachers and students. But with the gradual formation of the personal computer industry in the late seventies, computer games slowly began to shift towards commercialization.

In fact, most of the most popular games on personal computers today are text adventure games. Because today's personal computers, especially low-end computers, generally lack graphics processing power. Another time and space in which computer games really came to prominence was in the mid-to-late eighties. Because at that time, the game quality of personal computers finally began to gradually catch up with home game consoles.

In fact, the first graphical adventure game was released as early as 1980, and this game called "House of Fans" was popular with many players as soon as it was released. So the founders of the game couple. A company called Xuele Hill was founded to specialize in making computer games.

Domestic game fans may be relatively unfamiliar with this game company, which has since dissipated into the clouds of history, but it was one of the most famous game companies in the United States in the eighties and nineties, and the famous Blizzard was also acquired by it at one time.

But Li Xuan was not in a hurry to enter this market a few years ago. Because of the computer game market now. For a giant crocodile like Oriental Game Company, it is really not worth mentioning. Oriental Game Company's biggest move in the field of computer games, that is, to transcribe some arcade and FC game console games into computer software for sale, and the sales performance is even better than that of most computer game companies.

Now, Li Xuan suddenly began to pay attention to the computer game industry, in addition to preparing to lay out in advance in this field and seize the consideration of seizing a favorable position. In fact, there is a bigger plan.

As early as 1981, after the advent of the ERM-1 architecture, the Institute of Oriental Studies did not relax for a moment. The follow-up research and development of the ERM-2 architecture began non-stop. Li Xuan, the butterfly, has changed the history of the original ARM architecture research and development beyond recognition. If the previous ERM-1 could only be regarded as an enhanced version of the ARM-2, the ERM-2 is by no means just an ARM-3 in another time and space.

ERM-2 not only adds 4K cache like ARM-3, but also adds a 16-bit subset of the instruction set, Thumb, on the basis of the original 32-bit instruction set. The design of ERM-2 has added assembly line technology, which greatly improves the processing power of the chip. In another space-time, pipelining technology did not appear until the ARM-7 architecture, and it was not until the ARM-7TDMI architecture that a subset of Thumb was added.

In another time and space, the R&D team of ARM Technology Co., Ltd., which developed the ARM architecture until 1995, had only about 50 people. As early as last year, the number of R&D personnel in charge of the ERM project exceeded 500, and the various teams involved in the R&D are located in multiple R&D centers of the Oriental Research Institute in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Taipei and other places.

With such strong intellectual support, coupled with the help of Li Xuan's golden finger, the ERM architecture development process in this life is far faster and more effective than the miserable early stage of ARM in another time and space.

According to the project progress of the Oriental Research Institute, the first commercial ERM-2 architecture processor will be officially launched in January 1984 next year. Focusing on the ERM-2 architecture, the research and development of ABC-5, the next generation of personal computers of Aikang, has also been in full swing for a long time, and it is estimated that it will be on the market within three months after the advent of ERM-2.

This is also where Akon has an advantage over other competitors, although Oriental Research Institute also cooperates with other computer companies to support them in the development of personal computers based on ERM series processors. But after all, Li Xuan has important interests in Aikang Company, so Aikang Company naturally receives the most care.

In the previous ERM-1 era, the Oriental Research Institute had almost no competitors that could compete with it, and directly crushed the entire market with the two major weapons of performance and price. However, the situation faced by ERM-2 is far from so easy, and after Intel suffered a sales fiasco on the 80286 market, it immediately adjusted its strategy and purchased the intellectual property of the RISC project from the University of Berkeley, and began commercial research and development on this basis.

Although Intel does not have a reborn golden finger like Li Xuan, its strong R&D capabilities are beyond doubt. The first commercial processor based on the RISC architecture is likely to hit the market early next year as well. As one of the two RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) architectures along with the MIPS architecture, the University of Berkeley project, which is directly named after "RISC", should not be underestimated.

In another time, Berkeley's RISC architecture was acquired by SUN and developed into SPARC processors, making a name for itself in the enterprise processor market. But now that it is Intel that has taken over, will it develop SARC into a high-end enterprise-class processor like the previous SUN company? Or will it come up with a personal-level processor that competes with ERM-2? Li Xuan has no way to guess!

But no matter what, he has prepared a detailed countermeasure, which is to defeat the other party with product integration. If you talk about performance alone, the MIPS architecture in the hands of the Oriental Research Institute and the RISC architecture acquired by Intel from the University of Berkeley are definitely better than the ERM architecture. However, the real market competition is by no means just a simple technical competition, and there are many cases of technological leadership in history but ultimately failure.

As the first company in the world to develop microprocessors, Intel has accumulated very strong technical experience from the initial 4004 to the later 8008, 8080, and 8086. Even if the Oriental Research Institute has Li Xuan's rebirth golden finger, there is still a big gap with the other party at the technical level. Intel Corporation is a professional semiconductor company, but Li Xuan's Dongfang Electronics Company is not.

Even within the Oriental Research Institute, the processor project is only a part of all the research and development directions. Microprocessors are ultimately used in computers, and success or failure is determined by the sales of computers. Intel may be able to push the limits in the processor world, but it can't control the performance of the rest of the computer.

However, the Eastern Group can, from hardware to software, Li Xuan has designed a set of combination punches for his opponent. If Intel still does not give up on the field of individual processors, what awaits Intel will be a collective group fight of the entire Oriental system.

In terms of hardware, the research and development of sound cards and graphics cards has been initially matured, and will be applied to the next generation of ABC-5 computers. In other words, the internal accessories of ABC-5 will be more perfect, and the division of labor will be clearer, and there will be a prototype of the computer of later generations.

However, the patents for sound cards and graphics cards are in the hands of the Oriental Research Institute, and Li Xuan is ready to bundle them with the ERM-2 processor at that time. Of course, the name of bundling is not good, and the Oriental Research Institute will provide "1+2" system solutions for major computer manufacturers.

If other manufacturers want to keep up with ABC-5 in hardware, it will definitely be too late to re-develop specialized discrete graphics cards and sound cards, and the best choice is naturally to continue to cooperate with the Oriental Research Institute.

In terms of software, the newly independent Oriental Application Software Company also continues to maintain in-depth cooperation with the Oriental Research Institute. They are working on a new version of the East-DOS operating system, which will be highly compatible with the ERM-2 architecture. Although the software compatibility requirements of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) processors are not as demanding as those of CISC (Complex Instruction Set), they are by no means without problems. (To be continued......)