It's July again, and the annual E3 electronics show is about to be held.

To this end, the world's major electronics manufacturers are gearing up to prepare, and strive to be able to win the first place in this E3 electronics exhibition, so that the world is a little shocked.

Qing Zhiyuan's side is no exception.

After thinking about it for a long time, he decided to ask Sega to prepare a promotional PPT for the DC game console.

"President, but the DC game console hasn't been changed yet." Hideki Sato wondered.

"yes, I know." Qing Zhiyuan looked unusually calm, "Just give me the DC machine you made before." ”

"Oh, good president." Although Hideki Sato was a little confused, since he wanted it, he naturally had to be obedient.

"Who says you can't show it if you don't do it well?" Qing Zhiyuan laughed slyly and gave him a wink.

"Huh?" Hideki Sato was directly stunned.

In fact, Qing Zhiyuan said that he didn't even need a game console that could run, as long as there was an empty shell, but in order to pursue the effect, it was better to bring two game consoles that could be played to participate in E3.

After giving instructions to Hideki Sato, Qing Zhiyuan returned to the Pokeni company.

He called Art Director Taiji Sakata into his office.

And hand him a storyboard.

Taiji Sakata flipped over, and the whole person was not good.

"President, what is this ......?"

"The company's current 3D rendering technology is also relatively mature, you can communicate with Ken Akanishi and them first to see if you can make this animation first."

Taiji Sakata got an animated storyboard about the battle of the 2B little sister.,Seriously, the president's painting skills are very good.,Even if it's just a simple line drawing storyboard.,You can still imagine how explosive the effect is.。

But the problem is that—

"Aren't we going to make a game? It's just made into CG.,There's no game foundation.,Like this? ”

"Yes, what I want is CG," Qing Zhiyuan laughed, "just do it according to my storyboard, and the more explosive it is, the better." ”

With the current level of hardware, you want to let Miss 2B run, how is this possible?

However, in the case of CG rendering, you don't have to worry about the operation, because the final result is an animation, which is the same as watching a movie.

It just so happens that the company is also going to use 3D rendering technology to develop the Matrix, and it will take a little time to make it together.

It may take more than ten hours to render a picture, or even more than a day, and it takes about a week for multiple machines to render at the same time for 20 seconds.

"Okay president."

Although I don't know what the president is going to do, and Taiji Sakata also thinks it's a bit stupid to make a pure game CG without a game, but since it was the president's request, he still did it.

And it has to be done well.

The president should be of great use to this CG.

……

After doing these things, Qing Zhiyuan took Sega and Pokeni's publicity team on the plane to the United States.

……

On July 24, 1998, the fourth E3 electronics exhibition was held as scheduled at the World Congress Center in Atlanta, USA.

This year's E3 is still nominally hosted by IDSA, but the actual business operations are handed over to IDG's World Exhibitions. There are as many as 440 exhibiting companies, and more than 1,600 products will be on display.

The scale can be said to be huge.

Judging from the exhibition, computer games have been able to compete with video games in terms of quantity and quality.

The big three of console games, Sony, EA and Nintendo, all had booths the size of half a football field.

Sony set up a "PlayStation City" outside the venue, displaying several rows of PlayStation consoles and a number of games to attract teenagers who were interested in E3 but couldn't get into the venue, which was very positive for anyone under the age of 18.

In order to highlight their absolute position in sports games, EA even built a real boxing ring at the booth and invited several lightweight fighters to perform with real guns, which was really "arrogant".

However, EA is arrogant because it has the capital to be arrogant.

Last year, EA became the No.2 in the global video entertainment industry with $848 million in video game revenue, surpassing Nintendo and Sony.

Second only to Pokeni, which has sales of $1.4 billion.

From this point of view, it is a miracle that Pokeni can make more than $1 billion in revenue by selling games.

However, as last year's game sales champion, Pokeni's performance was very low-key.

This time, because P Company acquired Sega, the venues of Sega and Pokeni were planned together.

However, what is quite surprising is that-

The venues of these two companies are not as big as everyone thinks.

It stands to reason that if you are the sales champion, the organizer must not be lazy, no matter how you say it, you must plan a big football stadium for you, otherwise it will not be enough to show the style of Pokeni.

That's what the organizers originally planned.

The two venues of P Society and Sega together are equivalent to the size of two Ren Heavens, but in the end they were rejected by Qing Zhiyuan.

Qing Zhiyuan said that at the E3 Electronics Exhibition this time, they didn't need to exhibit a lot of things, probably only 200 to 300 square meters were enough.

In fact, as Qing Zhiyuan said, there are not many things displayed in the exhibition area this time, and the initial experience space is relatively limited.

Mainly relying on the small and exquisite venue layout, coupled with his own excellent products, and the dazzling enough coser invited by Takahashi Kazuma to attract players.

……

3D games are an absolute hot spot at this exhibition, which can be described as "overwhelming".

The PC platform, powered by VOODOO II and NVIDIA GeForce, performs much better than consoles such as PlayStation, thanks to the PC's pre-prescription architecture.

GeForce Gen 2 is divided into the mainstream GeForce 2 MX series, the mid-to-high-end GeForce 2 (GTS, PRO, Ti, Ultra) series, and the world's first discrete mobile graphics processor, the GeForce 2 GO series.

At this time, the GeForce series has basically completed the prototype of the product line, which can meet the needs of different consumer groups.

GeForce 2 GTS is the first product from GeForce's second generation.

Compared with the previous generation GeForce 256, an additional second set of TMUs has been added, and the core frequency has also been greatly increased to 200Mhz, coupled with the second-generation hardware T&L engine support, the game performance is better than that of its predecessors, and the GeForce 2 PRO, Ti and Ultra versions are mainly added in terms of core and memory frequency.

The GeForce 2 MX re-planned the rendering pipeline and frequency on the original architecture, becoming the most mainstream product of NVIDIA at that time.

It seems incredible, but this is the truth, the reason why Nvidia has been able to achieve such rapid development, especially since the GeForce 256 has only been launched for more than a year, and in less than two years, the GeForce 2 MX series has been launched again,

Mainly due to the fact that GeForce is really selling well, and with the strong funding of pokeni, Nvidia has hardly any financial pressure.

More importantly, Nvidia's boss, Jensen Huang, has developed the philosophy.

There is a very famous law in the industry, that is, the "Moore's Law" created by Moore, the founder of Intel Corporation:

The number of transistors that can fit on a chip doubles every 18 months, doubling performance.

On this basis, Huang proposed [Huang's Law]: NVIDIA's core strategy is to upgrade products every six months and double their functions.

Compared to Moore's Law, Huang's Law is updated 3 times faster.

The key is that Lao Huang's cowhide has really been realized: Nvidia launched a higher-performance GPU at the beginning of this year, gradually beating many competitors and becoming NO.1 in the field of visual computing.

And Nvidia's valuation has also been rising, according to a third-party assessment, Nvidia's valuation is now at least more than $1 billion.

In other words, Huang has become a very young billionaire in less than three years, with a 70% stake.

Of course, this is only a theoretical valuation, and the future depends on the development of NVIDIA, and only after the listing will NVIDIA's valuation be fully realized.

……

And looking around, what manufacturer doesn't indicate that it supports GeForce, VOODOO, or TNT 3D on its game products?

According to the organizer's rough statistics, more than 70% of the game works in this exhibition use 3D graphics technology.

All kinds of game genres are desperately leaning on 3D, and even if they can't achieve full 3D instant rendering, they must also advertise that the game scene pictures are made by 3D rendering and coloring.

GeForce is really showing its power this time, making games such as "Delta Special Forces", "Tomb Raider III", and "Need for Speed 3" become dreamlike, real "virtual reality".

On the first day of the pre-exhibition press conference, the publicity of various 3D masterpieces was dazzling.

After suffering a defeat last year, Toby Gard, the game producer of Tomb Raider 3, has learned the lesson of the last time he was completely crushed by Pokeni with Frontier.

Hey?

You know what?

This time, people are directly on GeForce,And it's Nvidia's latest development of GeForce 2 MX400,After using this graphics card,Tomb Raider3The picture quality is called a rubbing up。

The whole thing became a different work.

It is equivalent to in the 2nd generation, Tomb Raider Laura was still a cube person, and now she has become a beauty with a comic style, and the levels are quite realistic and detailed, giving players a strong visual impact.

Countless people applauded at the scene.

With a smug smile on his face, Toby Gad finally pulled one back.

What is it called?

It's called joining if you can't beat it.

Since other graphics cards are not as powerful as GeForce, why not just use the best?

"Delta Special Forces" is the same, directly [reproduced] last year's Pokeni's "Border" effect, in terms of picture effect, only the light and shadow and texture of some details are not as detailed as the border, but the feeling to players is actually very close.

These developers have proved one thing with their strength, that is, as long as the hardware can keep up, the software can still catch up.

The Trailblazer 1.0 engine used at the frontier has not yet reached the point where it is enough to widen the generation gap of more than two years.

However, Qing Zhiyuan is not worried about this at all, because the game itself is like this in the loop, and in the future, when the Trailblazer 2.0 comes out, they will know the gap.

……

Due to the crushing of Pokeni's "Frontier" last year, Interplay, the company that produced "Fallout", fell into financial crisis.

Fallout was almost unpopular when it hit the shelves, resulting in huge losses, and the game, which was supposed to shine on another time and space, became a veritable failure in gaming history.

Interplay did not continue to develop a sequel.

In this E3 electronics exhibition, I didn't see radiation again.

Qing Zhiyuan still felt a little regretful.

……

On the first day of the pre-show press conference, game producers, media reporters and some gamers sat in the audience and watched the companies above demonstrate their games.

However, when I look at it, I always feel that something is not right.

"Fack, why are these games all in 3D?"

"And you didn't find it, look at the introduction above, these games seem to use Nvidia's graphics cards."

"The GeForce series, I remember, when pokeni showed "Frontier" last year, it used the graphics card developed by this company."

"That effect can really be described as an explosion, and it directly made the game sky. But today, it doesn't seem to be as exciting as I imagined. ”

"The first time was really shocking, and since this year, major game manufacturers have adopted GeForce, and they have developed games based on the latest graphics cards, and the natural picture quality has followed.

The follow-up is definitely not as shocking as the first one. ”

"Ah...... It's really a full 3D era, and this momentum is so rapid, how can others live? ”

"You don't have to make all games in 3D, do you? 2D also has its own advantages and characteristics, but the key lies in how you do it. ”

"But the 3D effect is getting better and better, and the players are concentrated in these games, and you can see by looking at the works shown by these game manufacturers."

"Hey, there's no way around it, the speed of technological progress is really too fast. Two years ago, the 3D effect was a mess.

In addition to pokeni the year before last, where can other games be on the table? ”

"Well, when it comes to this, I have to admire pokeni, who created the 3D era and can accurately step on the cusp of the era every time.

It's so impressive. ”

……

"Mom! I finally found out! A middle-aged man in a suit let out an exclamation.

Everyone looked back and found that this person was Mr. Masashi Miyamoto, the president of Square Enix.

"What are you doing? Surprised? ”

However, his surprised expression made everyone wonder if this guy had been electrocuted.

"Didn't you find out? Although the content on display has nothing to do with Pokeni, it has not yet appeared in Pokeni.

But if you look at it horizontally and vertically, why is it all the shadow of Pokeni? ”

There was a moment of confusion on everyone's faces, but after two seconds, they finally reacted.

Isn't it?!

Nvidia, in which pokeni has a stake, shines, and all of them are games made with GeForce graphics cards, isn't this obviously no pokeni, but pokeni is everywhere?!

Everyone couldn't help but cast resentful and jealous glances at Qing Zhiyuan, who was calm and relaxed not far away.

Qing Zhiyuan just crossed Erlang's leg and gently swept his trouser leg with his hand.

Isn't it?

Nvidia makes money is pokeni makes money.

He wished that the graphics cards of the GeForce series could be spread all over the world.

……

……

——————————————————————————————

There is one more chapter in the evening

(End of chapter)