Tokyo, Japan.

Pangu multi-core hosting has also quickly become the darling of the market.

Of course, there are many multi-core consoles that are tried out, but there are still very few that are actually bought.

Because, the price of $998 and $1998, even in the developed market, is very unaffordable.

The real shaking of Japanese consumers came a few years later when the yen, the property market and the stock market skyrocketed, which greatly increased Japan's ability to consume some electronic products and luxury goods.

At present, the best seller in the Japanese market is the Pangu single-core host, because its price does not increase at the same time, the memory is upgraded to 128KB for free, which greatly improves its overall performance.

Previously, the memory of the Pangu console was only 64KB, and most game and software developers, in order to get the best sales of their products, naturally did not make games too memory-hungry.

Most games can be run within 64KB, and the larger the memory, the better the experience.

It is precisely for this reason that the 128KB of memory has made many players feel that the performance has been greatly improved. For example, the host computer boots up faster, and the graphics operating system switches between different programs, which is also more handy.

Of course, dual-core and quad-core are more powerful, but many consumers do not plan to buy them now, but are ready to use the single-core one first, and then consider buying a higher configuration after the hardware price drops in the future!

……

As the boss of Nintendo's technology research and development department, Gunhei Yokoi is also more than 10,000 people under one person in the entire company.

However, Nintendo has been living in the shadow of a new start-up electronics company in recent years.

Nintendo makes handhelds, and new startup ideas also make handhelds, and because the game levels on the two platforms are not comparable, Nintendo's handheld will always become the foil of new startup electronics.

Later, the two sides coincidentally entered the field of arcade and console games, and compared to Nintendo, which only wanted to improve a cheap and easy-to-use 8-bit game console on the basis of the cheapest 6502 chip on the market, Xinqiye Electronics developed its own high-performance 16-bit CPU from the beginning, and launched the Pangu console with XRM16 as the core.

Although the price of the Pangu console is more expensive than Nintendo's FC, it relies on the advantage of being one era ahead of the times to crush FC in terms of experience. As a result, even if FC becomes the cheapest home game console ever, it still can't sell as well as the Pangu console.

What's even more tragic is that Xinchuang Electronics has occupied the mid-to-high-end game console market, but it still refuses to let go of the low-end 8-bit console market, but has launched Xiaobawang, which exterminates manufacturers including FC.

Of course, FC also made a corresponding strategy, reducing the price to an unimaginable level of $25. The margin of loss of hardware was further expanded, and profits were made by selling software.

Although, the disadvantages of the FC hardware platform, the game software cannot be compared with the Pangu console, but it is comparable to play against Xiaobawang. Although the performance of Xiaobawang has a slight advantage, however, FC's display chip and pseudo-sound card are also unique among 8-bit game consoles.

In addition, Nintendo FC has the super IP of the "Mario" series, and just relying on this exclusive game, it has attracted a large number of fans.

Despite this, the number of FC sales worldwide is only 10 million, and the current monthly sales have been reduced to 300,000 units. And Xiaobawang has come from behind, with cumulative sales exceeding 11 million units.

Not to mention, the real flagship of Xinchuang Electronics is the Pangu platform, and the current Pangu named host has sold more than 30 million units worldwide. And the Pangu platform has long been not taking Nintendo seriously, but is eyeing more powerful competitors such as IBM, Intel, Compaq, and HP.

Although New Venture Electronics no longer regards Nintendo as an equal existence, Nintendo has to regard New Venture Electronics as an opponent.

For example, Yokoi Junhei, the chief technician of Nintendo, has become a "new fan" in the past few years, and many media have photographed Yokoi Junhei visiting the brand experience store of Xinchuang Electronics many times.

This time, Xinchuang Electronics advocated multi-core, and Junhei Yokoi went to the Xinchuang Electronics Experience Store for the first time to feel the new products of his biggest competitors.

"It's a little bulky...... "Yokoi Junhei skillfully opened a four-core Pangu host, and as the boot screen appeared, he couldn't help but shrink his gaze, and the boot speed was faster!

Obviously, the 1MB top-of-the-line large memory, as well as the quad-core CPU, are indeed a huge improvement over the previous product.

In addition, the 256MB hard disk also surprised him. A large number of applications can be installed directly in the hard disk, and applications can be quickly called up when they need to be used.

In the past, computers had very limited hardware, and many of them only had one or two applications. For example, office computers only install word processing and chart software, because the hard disk on the computer is generally less than 10MB, and not too many things can be stored. Because of the low configuration, users need to insert floppy disks to store information on the computer into the floppy disk, rather than a hard disk with extremely limited capacity. Therefore, it is still troublesome to deal with a lot of work, one floppy disk after another, which needs to be marked and arranged in an orderly manner, otherwise, it is very difficult to find out which disk the information is stored on a bunch of floppy disks.

Now it's different, with a 256MB hard disk, a lot of important data can be processed more conveniently directly on the computer hard drive.

Well, even some games with a small capacity are stored on a hard drive and run much faster than a disc.

Previously, the single-core Pangu host could run programs, but the multi-core was fully compatible and smoother!

After experiencing it for a long time, Yokoi couldn't help but feel a huge setback.

Other people's hosts, graphics operating systems, multi-core processors, large memory, large hard disks...... It is both beautiful and easy to use, in addition to meeting the functions of home game consoles, it is also a multi-functional general-purpose computer platform. The bigger gap may be the core technology of the hardware of the new venture electronics, which is completely its own!

FC ...... at home From the beginning of the R&D project, it is a product that should be eliminated!

Japan's scientific research strength is not as strong as imagined, and most of the top innovative talents are not available in Japan. Japan's advantage was that its workers were more patient and could accept more brutal exploitation than in Europe and the United States, and at the same time, after the war, Japan had fewer and fewer restrictions on purchasing advanced machinery and technology from Europe and the United States. In this way, Japan has introduced European and American technology and equipment to improve and optimize and catch up with international competitors at a faster pace. At the same time, the Japanese are better managed, which makes the production costs of their enterprises easily lower than those of Europe and the United States, which in turn strengthens their competitive advantage.

Nintendo's advantage is not R&D, you know, before the development of game consoles, Nintendo was only a toy manufacturer, and there were very few technical talents who understood semiconductors. However, these technicians can only purchase the original parts existing in the market and integrate and design a complete machine. And you can't design your own high-performance CPU. Even the sound card and display chip are entrusted to Ricoh to design, and its main semiconductor components are basically designed and manufactured by Ricoh, so Nintendo does not have the bargaining power of hardware. At the same time, Nintendo, which lacks core technology, is unlikely to lead the upgrading of the hardware platform on its own.

For example, when a new venture electronics company upgrades its hardware platform, it is completely possible to design a new generation of CPU that is compatible with the previous generation of products, and then start to upgrade products with low risk and low loss.

If it weren't for the new venture electronics that brought the game console into the 16-bit era in advance, maybe Nintendo would have developed a little better.

However, the host of Xinchuang Electronics is 16-bit as soon as it is listed, and with the development of time, users are more and more accepting of 16-bit host. Many manufacturers who are ready to develop game consoles have decided to skip the 8-bit console and go straight to the 16-bit!

For example, the world's Sega company is currently focusing on arcade machines on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is concentrating on building a 16-bit game console. Therefore, there is no console war scene between Nintendo and Sega in this era.

Nintendo is miserable, the 6502 chip and its improved version are all 8-bit chips, and there will be no upgraded 16-bit and 32-bit chips in the future. Therefore, unless Nintendo is not ready to upgrade the product, the next generation of products is destined to be incompatible with the current first-generation products, and some game programs need to be redeveloped.

After a sigh, Junhei Yokoi decided to grit his teeth and make a bold suggestion to President Yamauchi Pu - Nintendo develops its own CPU as soon as possible, and moreover, to make a reduced instruction set chip, the design of the reduced instruction set chip is not complicated at the beginning, and the earlier the start, the better. After you have your own chips, you can find a foundry to outsource production, and the bargaining power is completely different from now, and the future products will completely solve the hidden dangers of compatibility!

When Yokoi Junhei was worried and had a draft in his heart. A media reporter snapped another photo of Yokoi at the new venture electronics experience store.

A few days later, news appeared in some Japanese media: "Gunpei Yokoi, the chief technical director of Nintendo, a well-known Japanese game company, is a die-hard Pangu fan, and whenever a new console or game masterpiece of Pangu is released, it is inevitable to rush to the experience store as soon as possible to try it." And, according to media investigations, he owns at least 7 consoles, laptops, and handheld computers for new startups......

After this news report, it provoked ridicule from a large number of Pangu fans. Nintendo is too self-conscious, such a third-rate company, and it has survived until now......