After the confrontation between VisualSystem and IBM began, life continued day by day, but there was still a lot of good news during this time.

In mid-May, Mak Ka Chun miraculously became the owner of the One Bridge Group, and quickly split and sold its assets, Zhang Lexing's Oriental Holdings won the long-coveted Shueisha, White Springs and Shogakukan's animation assets, and the rest of the One Bridge Group was also carved up by other predators who heard the news, and in less than half a month, the prominent One Bridge Group became yesterday's yellow flower.

In early June, after unremitting efforts, the negotiations between the Red River Fund and Jobs reached a final result, and Pixar was won at a cost of $25 million, which was a mutually satisfactory result. Jobs got rid of the quagmire of continuous losses and gained certain benefits, and Zhang Lexing also won a future gold mine at the lowest cost. Not long after taking Pixar, Disney came to the door and invited Pixar's animation team to work with them on a real 3D animated movie, and Pixar's spring finally came.

On Independence Day on July 4th, DreamWorks' first film after its establishment, James Cameron's "Terminator 2" was released, with its ups and downs of the storyline, full characters, profound themes, rich connotations and epoch-making movie special effects, it attracted millions of audiences into the theater to watch, setting off a whirlwind of summer box office, and it swept up $120 million in two weeks after its release, and the liquid robot T-1000 in the film is even more talked-about and has become one of the hot spots of the whole movie.

At the end of July, Zhang Lexing, who was reading materials in the office, received a transatlantic call from Hong Kong, which was from a game console development team that had not been heard from for a long time.

Chen Zhipeng, who was on the phone, was very excited, and he said excitedly: "Boss, the prototype of the new host has come out." ”

Zhang Lexing was very happy after hearing this: "Great, the prototype is not large, is it easy to pick up?"

"It's not too big, a big suitcase is all in it, and it's not difficult to bring it back. Chen Zhipeng replied.

"This is too big!" Zhang Lexing was very surprised.

"When it comes to full-scale production in the future, it will be much smaller, and now many parts can only be put together. Chen Zhipeng explained a few words.

"Nacheng, you can arrange it, find someone who is familiar with the situation and send the machine over, so that I can also take a look. Zhang Lexing was in a good mood.

"Okay, boss, I'll come back with the machine myself. ”

"It won't delay normal work. ”

"No, I'll arrange the follow-up work and come back, it won't be affected. ”

……

In the days of waiting for Chen Zhipeng to return, the busy people of VisualSystem found that the chairman was in a very good mood every day, and he also caused all kinds of strange speculations behind his back. Yang Xinxin, who was puzzled, grabbed Zhang Lexing into her office and prepared for interrogation, only to learn that she was just happy for a game console that was still in the design stage, and immediately rewarded Zhang Lexing with a blank look. But it doesn't matter, now Zhang Lexing is in a good mood, so he doesn't care about such trivial things.

After waiting for almost a week, Zhang Lexing finally met Chen Zhipeng in his office, and he was carrying a large suitcase in his right hand. After taking a sip of water and resting for a while, Chen Zhipeng, who had recovered his breath, began to take his treasures out of the suitcase one by one like a robot cat, and introduced them while taking them.

"Boss, this is the game console......" Chen Zhipeng took out a large metal box from the box, the surface of which was silver-gray.

"This is the disc reading device...... Chen Zhipeng took out a dongdong that looked like an optical drive, pulled out a cable from the front host and connected it to the two-core power cable.

"This is a gamepad...... Chen Zhipeng took out two handles with a super style and connected them to the interface in front of the host.

……

Under Chen Zhipeng's busyness, a game console gradually took shape. After connecting to the TV that had been prepared a long time ago, Chen Zhipeng took out another disc and handed it to Zhang Lexing: "Boss, this is a game demo disc used to show the performance of the console, and the effect is very good." ”

Zhang Lexing started the game console and put the disc just now into the optical drive, the front light of the host flashed a few times, and a huge logo composed of three discs appeared on the TV screen. With the prompt of "Loading......" on the TV screen, the optical drive began to read the disk hard, and after about seven or eight minutes, the picture finally appeared on the TV screen.

The interior of a church slowly appears on the TV screen, not a flat background as is often seen in previous games, but a true three-dimensional picture. The tall hall is topped by a typical ribbed vault, with straight columns that accentuate the height of the space, and the walls around it are inlaid with relief icons. Directly in front of him was a large stained glass of glass, through which the bright sunlight shone in, and a man in red was bathed in colorful light.

"It's the interior of a Gothic church, you can see the light and shadow effects, and the man in red can control it with a handle. Chen Zhipeng picked up the handle next to him and began to demonstrate.

Under Chen Zhipeng's control, the man in red began to run around the church, and as the perspective changed, more scenes inside the church appeared. The man in red came to an empty room, and with Chen Zhipeng's operation, he began to show various character movements, jumping, rolling, and even pulling out a big sword that he carried with him and wielding it.

"These are actually generated by real-time calculations, relying on a powerful CPU and a dedicated 3D graphics processor to achieve such beautiful images, which is at least ten times more powerful than the current Super Nintendo. Chen Zhipeng sighed.

"What else is special about this host?"

"We choose a disc with a relatively low storage cost as the game storage medium, which is conducive to reducing the cost of game release, but the current optical drive speed can only reach 150K bytes per second, which can be seen from just reading the disc for a long time, and now this optical drive speed affects the running effect of the game. At first, our data was read directly from the optical drive, but as long as we moved the optical drive a little in the game, it seemed that the game was very unsmooth. Later, we designed a large cache for the optical drive, and the data was reasonably scheduled through a dedicated processing program, although it was not very helpful to read it at the beginning, but it was basically not felt during the subsequent game process. Considering that the disc cannot store the data generated during the game, we also designed a memory card interface, using SanDisk's flash memory technology, which they call CompactFlash. ”

"The graphics still look smooth, and the controls on the controller are flexible. Zhang Lexing took the handle and tried it himself, "If it enters the mass production stage in the future, can it still have such an effect?"

"It's no problem at all, it only needs to be adjusted slightly, and the cost of this host will be very low when it really enters the mass production stage. We have estimated that if all aspects of production are well controlled, the cost may be reduced to less than 500 US dollars, considering that the integrated circuits and production management are likely to be improved in the future, the cost should be reduced in the future. Chen Zhipeng thought for a moment and replied.

In fact, the effect shown by this console is not a little shocking to Zhang Lexing, and he has seen the movie-level game pictures of the new era, how can he have too much reaction to the picture of the opponent's arms and legs, but this effect should be more than enough to shock the Japanese.

"It's a pity that there is no real game to play yet. Zhang Lexing said with a little regret.

"Boss, does our company want to produce this kind of host by ourselves?" Chen Zhipeng said with a hesitant face

"Oh, what's the problem?"

"I think that with the company's current situation, it does not have the production capacity to mass-produce this kind of game console, and if it is rashly launched, I am afraid that it will not be conducive to the development of the company. ”

"I've thought about it, you don't have to worry about wasted research, and you don't have to worry about our company going into areas that we're not good at. ”

"Then is it still useful to research this host?" Chen Zhipeng was confused.

"How can it be useless, I already have a good goal. I smiled, "I heard that you are familiar with Sony's Ken Kutaraki. ”

"yes, I worked with Nintendo before. Chen Zhipeng's expression looked even more confused.

"Ever heard about what's happening at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago?"

"Ah...... I haven't heard of it, what's the matter?" Zhang Lexing's jumping question made Chen Zhipeng feel a little overwhelmed.

"To put it simply, Nintendo and Sony originally planned to jointly develop a new console, but at this exhibition, Nintendo announced cooperation with Philips, which can be regarded as throwing Sony off. Sony originally wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to delve into the game industry, but now it is in vain. I heard that because of this incident, Ken Kutaragi was also very devastated. ”

"Boss, do you want to sell this host to Sony?" Chen Zhipeng seemed to suddenly open his mind.

"That's pretty much it. How sure would you be if you were to contact Ken Kutaragi?"

"It's not a big problem to convince Ken Kutagi, I believe that the performance of our console is enough to impress him. But if I want to convince Sony, I'm not too sure. ”

"I'll assign you a few of the best negotiators to do the specific business negotiation stuff, you just need to show the performance of the host. I'll also ask Dennis, the president of KF-Panda, to accompany you personally, as a developer with many best-selling game brands, I believe it will be of great help to this negotiation. ”

……

Soon a secret negotiation team was formed, the main members of which included Chen Zhipeng, Dennis Parro, president of KF-Panda, John Roger, the company's business negotiator, professional lawyers and others, and set off for Tokyo, Japan with a suitcase containing a prototype, and the "bait" program was officially launched.

Tokyo, Japan......

During this time, Kutara Kiken's life was very unpleasant, but in fact, two months ago, everything was quite normal. But I didn't expect Nintendo to betray Sony's trust, which made the hopeful Kutaragi Ken a blow to the head, and if it weren't for the support of President Oga, maybe he would have been swept away as a scapegoat.

Although he can still stay in the company, Kutaragi Ken feels that the eyes of the people around him are different from before. But today, Ken Kutara is in a better mood, because a former friend came from far and wide to see him, and this friend met a few years ago when he participated in the development of game consoles. Being greeted by a friend at a darker moment in his life made Kutaragi Ken feel that he was not abandoned by the world. Finally staying up until the end of work, Ken Kutaragi, who had long been impatient, hurriedly left the office building and drove to the tavern that he had made an appointment with a friend.

It has been two days since Chen Zhipeng arrived in Tokyo, and today he finally had the opportunity to meet with Ken Kutaragi. Sitting on the chair by the counter of the tavern, Chen Zhipeng drank a glass of sake mixed with water in small sips, and the people in the tavern slowly increased. By the time Chen Zhipeng drank the third cup, Kutaragi arrived.

"Mr. Chen, thank you so much for coming to see me. Kutaragi Ken found a seat next to Chen Zhipeng and sat down.

"Kutara-kun, in fact, I'm also by the way, it just so happens that the company has something that I need to do here. Chen Zhipeng also ordered a glass of wine for Kuta Ryoki and asked for a few side dishes to accompany the wine.

The two began to chat while drinking, and soon the topic turned to the things that made Kutaragi depressed, and he began to pour bitter water on Chen Zhipeng.

"Actually, two months ago, it was normal, and on June 1st, we announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago that we were going to work with Nintendo on a new console, PlayStation (actually a Super Ren console with an optical drive), and it seemed to be going well. But the next morning, everything was different, and Nintendo announced behind our backs that it would work with Philips to jointly develop a dedicated optical drive for Super Ren consoles. Although Nintendo later argued that this was just a product of the same extension cord and would not affect the contract with Sony, we all understood that this was just an excuse from Nintendo, and they just wanted to play our Sony monkey.

After this incident, our company hesitated to enter the game console business, and some people even proposed to abandon it altogether, and I, as the unlucky person who was the original leader of the joint development with Nintendo, was the culprit in the eyes of many people in the company. I still have the opportunity to sit here and talk to you, and I don't know how lucky I am. ”

Looking at the depressed Kutara Mujian, Chen Zhipeng tried to comfort him, of course, it was nothing more than "the future is bright, the road is tortuous" and something like that. After chatting for a while, Chen Zhipeng excused the tavern to be too noisy and invited Kutaragi Ken to his rented hotel to continue chatting.

Coming to the Tokyo Hilton Hotel where Chen Zhipeng lived, Kutaragi Ken was surprised to find that someone in the guest room was fiddling with a strange machine in front of the TV.

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