1. On August 1, 1985, according to the statistics of the Arcade Division of Xinchuang Electronics, the game software of "Court of Avalon" received 20,000 orders.

In addition, "Court of Avalon" also drove the sales of graphics cards and memory. Among the 20,000 sales orders for game software, half of them chose old machines to upgrade their hardware, spending $2,000 to buy graphics cards and memory for the Phoenix arcade platform.

In addition, some operators and arcade game publishers directly choose to buy the new platform of 10-core Phoenix.

After all, according to the trend of the Phoenix platform, sooner or later it is necessary to upgrade the whole machine, so some arcade business channels with better operating benefits choose to buy 10 core new arcade platforms for 10,000 US dollars.

As a result, although only 20,000 copies of the Avalon Court arcade game software were distributed, the game sold only $20 million. However, due to the mandatory upgrade of hardware, this quickly drove $110 million in hardware sales.

This is just the beginning, and more hardware upgrades to the Phoenix Arcade platform will bring more room for revenue growth.

With the successive listing of "Court of Avalon" in the global arcade industry, the arcade industry around the world has quickly entered the era of "arcade LAN". These "LAN games" started out as RPGs, but later added new elements such as gunplay, fighting, real-time strategy, and so on. It is precisely because of this that the arcade industry has been gradually distorted by new entrepreneurs, and in a few years, there will be no market for arcades without LAN functions!

……

"What do you play after school?"

"Court of Avalon, this game is fun!"

"But there's no queue at all! "Court of Avalon" is so popular, the game hall is full of dozens of people waiting for one machine. ”

"yes, yes! It's so hot, it's never been on line!"

"It's fun just to watch other people play. ”

"The picture is so powerful, it's like watching a blockbuster!"

"I originally thought that the "Legend of Sword and Fairy" on the Pangu console platform was already very strong, but compared with the "Avalon" on the arcade platform, it is still a lot inferior!"

"Of course, technology has always moved forward. Sword and Fairy is already a game from a few years ago, and Avalon is the latest. ”

"You said, will the Pangu console upgrade the graphics card and other hardware in the future, and after that, it will be able to bring games like "Avalon". ”

"Even if the console version is released, it is definitely affordable for high-end console players. For the normal version of the host, the configuration should still not work. ”

For video gamers in the 80s, the shock of "Court of Avalon" was beyond everyone's imagination.

It's not just a real-time battle mode with a lot more freedom than the turn-based RPGs of Legend of Sword and Fairy. Moreover, the game is also very particular about operation and brain, and the picture is 2.5D, compared with 2D games, it has a more gorgeous and shocking display effect.

Although it is not a real 3D game, it is enough for players to feel shocked.

If you want to launch a game like this on the PC platform, you have to wait at least until the end of the 90s, when CPU performance gradually improved, and the discrete graphics card market gradually became active, and gradually became able to play this kind of game again.

This is not because the technology of new startups is ten years ahead of Intel, but because Intel's X86 platform did not consider the gaming experience in the early stage, nor did it want to compete with the console game platform, so the optimization in this area is insufficient.

In the hardware design of the new venture electronics company, the optimization of game performance is the top priority, and other experiences can be a little worse, and the game software must not be sloppy.

It is for this reason that the arcade gaming performance of the Phoenix platform is equivalent to a high-end PC with a Voodoo2 graphics card installed in the late 90s!

The original Voodoo 2 graphics card, with only 12MB of video memory, has become a god card that vibrates players all over the world. It can be seen that the development of graphics cards will be ignored for a long time. It wasn't until the 90s that due to the demand for entertainment such as audio-visual games, the graphics card industry was upgrading its configuration at a speed far exceeding that of CPU, memory and other technologies. This is not to say that the development of graphics cards is faster than Moore's Law, but simply because, in the past, video memory was not valued in a market, so there was not much investment in research and development, and small companies that did not enter the stream were developing this thing, and the processing technology naturally did not have a top-level process, but a production process that was far more backward than the processing technology of CPU, memory and other semiconductor hardware.

However, with the gradual expansion of the video memory market and the gradual wealth of some manufacturers, R&D investment has become more and more huge, and the process technology adopted has gradually upgraded to the world's top. It is this positive cycle that caused the discrete graphics card technology to be upgraded at the end of the 90s, even faster than Moore's Law.

As far as the current Phoenix platform is concerned, the graphics card performance will definitely not lag the CPU back, and in addition, the game "Court of Avalon" is self-developed, which has some advantages. Therefore, the effect shown by the game is naturally too much beyond this era!

……

Hong Kong, a game arcade.

Its game hall has introduced more than 20 Phoenix arcade machines, and it has become the most popular game hall on the whole street.

At present, 8 of these arcade machines on the Phoenix platform have been upgraded to become magical machines that can play "Court of Avalon".

There are a large number of players waiting in line every day.

"Dude, let me, you've died so many times. ”

"Brother Jean has coins, and he will never let them. ”

"However, you have invested dozens of coins, and the progress cannot be delayed, which is not only a waste of money, but also a waste of time. Why don't you let me come, after I pass, you can learn some experience. ”

"If you don't brag, you'll die, and you were the same yesterday!"

"Don't be impressed for one night. Today I have seen the experience of some masters, and I feel that I have mastered the skills. ”

"Fart, even if you know how to remember the details of the level, you have to keep up with the operation!"

"Avalon" is a game with many advantages, but for many rookie players, the biggest problem is that it is easy to die, and if you die, you have to put coins to live. Therefore, some really rookie players can invest once in a few minutes.

Even for some masters, it is already difficult to not die for an hour. As for the players who have cleared the level for one coin, sorry - there are really no players who are so godly. Perhaps in the future, some players will be familiar with all the tricks of the level after clearing the level several times, and there may be a super god player who has cleared the level with one coin.

But now, players who can invest 10 coins to pass are already very powerful masters.

It is precisely because the game is very difficult that the arcade arcades that have been put into operation are happy.

It is also realized that the revenue of this game has far exceeded previous expectations. Therefore, the subsequent orders are also growing rapidly.

And the game software is good to say, just a piece of data copied in the hard disk, 512MB mechanical hard disk, Xinchuang Electronics is not only provided to the arcade platform, but also to the Pangu console, PC, Apple computer, and even supercomputer. Therefore, there is a large amount of inventory in the HDD warehouse, and there is no shortage problem.

The problem is that high-end graphics cards and memory, these configurations are still too advanced compared to the current computer industry. So, not only is the inventory limited, but the capacity of the factory is also limited.

Even if the order is received now, the new venture electronics company cannot provide the spot, but needs to give the factory a production task, and wait until the factory produces the product before handing over the product to the customer.

At present, these graphics cards and memory are too advanced in technology, so they can only supply 20,000 sets per month.

And as the spot has been sold out, a large number of arcade publishers and arcade operators can only accept the futures model of paying a deposit upfront and waiting for the factory to produce and then deliver. After that, the orders increased further, on the one hand, the reputation and operation of the game, which were gradually known to these operators. On the other hand, if you don't join the queue now, you don't know how long you will have to wait to get the goods.

……

When "Court of Avalon" was on sale, Nintendo in Japan also released an arcade for "Mario Adventure" with great fanfare.

It is worth mentioning that the "Mario Adventure" game platform actually uses 4 XRM16 chips as the big core, and in addition, 4 Nintendo-designed chips NRM16 as auxiliary small cores.

Of course, the production of these large and small cores is undertaken by Ricoh Semiconductor. Even, industry insiders suspect that Nintendo's self-developed CPU also has great moisture. In fact, it's true, although the small core is named NRM and seems to be a Nintendo product. However, the ownership of patents is basically in the hands of Ricoh. To put it simply, the NRM16 chip is a new CPU developed by Ricoh!

Although Ricoh had no experience in independent research and development of CPUs in the past, it has successively obtained the production authorization of 6502 chips and XRM16 chips. In the production process, it is natural to accumulate a large number of professionals and technical reserves.

After the failure of a semiconductor company that produced a large number of CPUs in Japan and stopped producing CPUs. Ricoh no semiconductor not only did not stop production, but also lived very moisturizing, and gradually became the main business of Ricoh Group.

This is mainly because of its company's chips, which are mainly supplied to game companies. The 6502 chip was first supplied to the cube machine of Xinchuang Electronics. Later, the handheld of Xinchuang Electronics abandoned this kind of chip with backward performance, but Nintendo and other Japanese game manufacturers gave orders again, allowing Ricoh's chip manufacturing business to further expand.

Subsequently, Ricoh found a very good opportunity to obtain the production authorization of the XRM16 chip.

Although the new startup did not allow it to improve the architecture, Ricoh also benefited greatly and gained a deeper understanding of the reduced instruction set.

Since then, Ricoh has been poaching in the United States, and has recruited many semiconductor design experts who have published papers on reduced instruction sets to join the company. Therefore, the company actually has the ability to develop a CPU independently. And this chip, released in the name of Nintendo, is also to avoid stimulating the new entrepreneurial electronics group.

Of course, the NRM chip is a brand new chip after all, and there is no market at all in the first place. Therefore, Ricoh accepted Nintendo's suggestion and used this chip as an auxiliary chip to manufacture Nintendo's company's new arcade platform.

"The arcade machine jointly created by Nintendo and Ricoh is codenamed the "Ninja" platform! Ninja is a symbol of our Japanese culture, and we believe that as long as we persist in forbearance, sooner or later we will hope to become the final winner! This new platform is close to the Phoenix of the largest game company, Shinsei Electronics!" Any platform has 8 core chips, and the four cores use the XRM16 chip produced by Ricoh, so we have four chips that are the same as Phoenix, in addition, we believe that Ricoh's process level is better than that of Chinese manufacturers, so in fact, these four chips will definitely not be worse than those produced by Xinchuang Electronics. In addition, the performance of the four small cores and the architecture of the chip is close to that of XRM. The two are mixed on the same platform, the division of labor and cooperation is not chaotic at all, and the overall performance is even better than 8 identical chips...... Plus, our ninja platform has powerful 3D acceleration capabilities. Therefore, it is far more advanced than the Phoenix platform, which can only display 2.5D...... And, of course, the price you have to consider, our Ninja Arcade is far cheaper than the Phoenix Arcade from Startup Electronics, and you can get a Ninja 8 Core Arcade for just $5,000!"

Even if it is not as good as the Phoenix platform of the new venture electronics, however, Nintendo will not admit it, and will only slap a swollen face and become fat. Moreover, it is a little too early to boast of 3D performance in this era.

It's not that New Venture Electronics doesn't want to make 3D games, but it finds that the hardware limitations are too great. The barely made experience effect is very scummy, and it will only feel like a garbage game. In the end, it is for the sake of the player's experience to make a 2.5D effect.

Nintendo is very good, in fact, although it is not as powerful as it blows, but it can also be called a platform with good performance.

However, the Ninja Arcade platform, with an 8-core design. Relying on stacking hardware, the performance is indeed much better than the single-core arcade platform on the current market.

Originally, the semiconductor industry was relatively honest and only knew how to bury their heads in the soaring frequency and performance of single cores. However, since the new venture electronics has made a multi-core bully for a single core, it has also been bought by the market. The entire technology industry is gradually starting to learn badly.

At least, now Nintendo has copied a lot of the ideas of the new start-up electronics throughout the company. Moreover, Nintendo has realized that the console cannot become bigger and stronger, so it began to choose the arcade machine as a breakthrough.

Obviously, Nintendo's calculations succeeded, and the ninja arcade platform and Mario Adventure can't compare to the Phoenix arcade machine of the new startup electronics. However, it also obtained more than 4,000 orders in just over ten days. And, over time, its orders have been steadily rising.

This is also a turning point for Nintendo, the original generation of console manufacturers. But it has become a large arcade manufacturer, although the unit price of arcade is high, but compared with the market development space of the console platform, it is still a lot weaker.

However, smashing the pot and selling iron to create a ninja arcade platform, and survive, is enough to make Nintendo cry with joy.