章節 161: Two unexpected advertisements
The panicked employee was referring to two advertisements. They were aired this morning on Tokyo TV.
The two advertisements were about the GB game console and the SFC.
In the advertisements, a child excitedly took out a small box about the size of a matchbox and inserted it into a data interface on the back of the SFC.
Previously, Surui Electronics had also noticed this data interface.
However, that interface seemed more like a universal additional interface, and Odachuan and others thought it was for connecting additional controller peripherals, so they didn't pay much attention to it.
Their company also produced controller peripherals, and with a wide variety of them, so GameStar Entertainment's preparations in this regard were still within their expectations.
However, that matchbox-sized box clearly wasn't a controller.
Because the angle at which the child was standing obscured the view, it was obviously intentional, making it difficult to see what the box was for at first.
After plugging the box into the back of the SFC, the child happily turned on the SFC. With a familiar startup sound, the child sat in front of the TV seriously.
Then, a prompt screen appeared.
'Device detected to be connected to the network. Would you like to connect to network services?'
Without hesitation, the child selected the 'Yes' option and entered the main menu for game selection.
In the upper right corner of the main menu, there was already an icon resembling a network connection.
'Enable your entertainment computer to have network capabilities. Networking allows you to update your ranking data at any time, and compete with people from all over the world to achieve various game records and achievements.'
'The SFC network module is now available for sale, for only 100 yen. Players are welcome to purchase.'
Odachuan suddenly had a bad feeling.
The SFC can be connected to the internet?
How come they never knew about this?
He immediately looked at the engineering development personnel: "Didn't you disassemble the SFC game console before? Did you notice this network module before?"
"This... this was completely unexpected for us, because this is also an external peripheral device."
Odachuan said, "But, doesn't the game console need to have a relevant network module inside to work? Just having an external network port won't be enough, and the system also needs to be prepared with network-related programs."
Being in Surui Electronics, an internationally top-notch electronics company, he naturally understood some basic structures of electronic product manufacturing.
For a device to add an internet port, there must be some pre-prepared network service capacitors or a separate network module on the motherboard.
Desktop motherboards sometimes come with them built-in, and sometimes they are implemented through separate network cards, which was a situation that occurred in early computers. In later years, network modules have been completely integrated, and rarely separated.
The engineers felt a bit ashamed.
They had indeed been negligent, failing to notice the reserved network port in the SFC.
Odachuan also understood what was going on, but he didn't blame the staff for their incompetence. He just asked, "Can our game console do this now?"
The engineer immediately replied, "It can, but we didn't make any provisions in the software and hardware beforehand, so the production cost of our network module might be a bit higher."
"How much higher?"
"More than 200 yen."
Odachuan was speechless.
Their network module costs twice as much as the retail price of others. How can they compete?
But Odachuan thought that GameStar Entertainment's network module should be sold at a loss, only 100 yen, which is the price of a cheap drink or a cheap rice ball in Japan. It's a real loss to buy an electronic product for that price.
Just the production cost here would be over 200 yen. If you add transportation and other packaging costs, it would all add up to over 300 yen. So to make a profit, they'd have to exceed 300 yen.
This is a bit of a headache.
At present, their PN game console has already sold 700,000 units. If they also sell at a loss of 100 yen, equipping all 700,000 units with network modules would directly lose 140 million yen.
The company is already somewhat dissatisfied with the frequent losses in the game business department. The subsequent profits have just filled the previous marketing costs not long ago, and now they have to sell a certain product at a loss, which will probably be hindered to a certain extent.
But there's no choice now, they have to follow suit.
Their game console's performance is already inferior to the SFC. If they can't even match the service, their players will probably quickly abandon them.
As Odachuan was pondering, the employee who had previously reported in cautiously said, "Uh... Minister, we still have a second advertisement to watch."
Odachuan realized and said, "Then what are we waiting for, let's see the second advertisement too."
The employee immediately operated the computer and played the recorded second advertisement.
This time, the advertisement was for the recently announced GB game console.
At the beginning, there was a scene of a group of children playing with the GB together.
However, there was nothing particularly special about it; it seemed like just a very ordinary promotional advertisement.
But then, one of the children, feeling a bit bored, said, "Oh, playing like this is really boring, each of us can only play by ourselves. Wouldn't it be great if we could play together?"
As Odachuan watched, he felt like he already knew what was coming, and his eyes widened slowly.
And then, a child smiled slightly and pulled out a data cable from his pocket.
"Come on, we can play together now, just connect this cable, and we can immediately exchange data between us. We can play Tetris together, play Super Mario together!"
After saying that, the child plugged one end of the data cable into the side interface of his GB handheld console.
That interface was supposed to be a charging port, as Surui Electronics' engineers had thought at the time.
At this moment, they all found it hard to believe.
Wasn't that interface just for charging? But now it turns out it's for data transfer too?
When GB was released, it also launched its own dedicated rechargeable battery, which would have longer battery life and wouldn't require extra spending on batteries. At that time, that interface seemed to be just for charging.
But now, they suddenly realized that besides charging, this thing could also have other uses, and these other uses seemed even more important.
At this point, Odachuan couldn't bear it anymore.
"Didn't your engineering team notice this either?"
The head of the engineering team was already sweating.
Where could they have found such a thing? In the past, no one had made handheld consoles, let alone thought that this charging interface could also be used for data transfer. If no one mentioned it, they really couldn't have thought of it.
So this thing can be connected to other consoles and played together?
This is really eye-opening; they never thought about it before.
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