The richest man starts with a blind box

Chapter 653 Long live the card
"It's actually a memory chip!" For this result, Huang He was both a little surprised and not so surprised.

The reason for the surprise was that what Nintendo needed were memory chips, something that had nothing to do with games, something that Boss Huang hadn't expected beforehand.

Not surprisingly, Jiangnan Group's memory chips are undoubtedly the only products in the world at present. If Nintendo wants to buy the best memory chips, they can only ask for it, no surprises at all.

But it is also amazing to say that Fuso itself is one of the largest semiconductor producers in the world and has the most mature semiconductor system in the world.Therefore, in the later period, the United States and South Korea jointly tossed it together, resulting in the semiconductor industry being cut into several sections, which is no longer the grand occasion of the past.

But after all, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse. Now that I want to buy a memory chip, I have to ask for it myself.

"Memory chips, this should be your country's strong point, so why are you looking for us?" Boss Huang asked with narrowed eyes.

"To be honest, our country cannot produce such high-quality and cheap chips as your company!" Satoru Iwata sighed, with a very lonely expression on his face.Indeed, 10 years ago, who would have imagined that a dignified Fuso company would beg to buy chips from Huaxia? This is definitely a historic breakthrough.

"You want our memory chips, but for the production of game cartridges?" Boss Huang continued to ask.

"That's right!" Satoru Iwata looked at Huang He in surprise, not expecting that the other party would be able to see through this on his own initiative.But there is nothing to hide. After all, the other party will know this sooner or later, so he said, "You just saw our newly released NDS handheld. This is the best game handheld in the world. The only weakness that can limit it is As a game cartridge as a storage device, we need a cartridge with large capacity and high reading speed, and your company's product is exactly what we need!"

The NDS game console continues the consistent tradition of all Nintendo game consoles, that is, the game console is played with a game cartridge.The game console itself does not have any space for storing games. If players want to play games, they must insert a game cassette into the game console, and then they can play games.

There are many advantages in doing so, first of all, it can save the cost of the game console itself, reduce the selling price of the game console, and further open up the market.

The second is to make game cartridges more important and irreplaceable. Players who want to play more new games can only continue to buy game cartridges, and each game cartridge can repeatedly earn a lot of profits.

At the same time, one of Nintendo's biggest incomes, which is also one of the means of exploiting its third-party game companies, is to charge expensive cassette recording fees.

Nintendo stipulates that all games from third-party game publishers must be handed over to Nintendo to perform all the work of burning game cassettes if they want to sell them on Nintendo's platform.

The reason is that Nintendo has the highest cassette recording technology, which can match the game console to the maximum extent, avoid various experience problems caused by game cassettes, and maintain user experience.

This reason sounds so lofty, but in fact, Nintendo will charge an additional 15% for every game cartridge burned.Third-party game companies already need to pay 30% of the platform fee to Nintendo, but now handing it over to Nintendo to burn the cassette, not only have to pay the expensive cost of the cassette, but also need to pay an additional 15% to Nintendo.

Nintendo itself is naturally making a lot of money, but the third-party game companies have lost money to grandma's family.

For example, a third-party game developer spent 1 million yen diligently to develop a game, and put it on the market with a total sales of 2 million yen.

It seems to have doubled the profit, which is very rich.

However, 2% of the 30 million yen, which is 6 million yen, must be handed over to Nintendo as an intermediary fee.

Secondly, you need to pay 15% of the cassette recording fee, which is 3 million yen to Nintendo.

Finally, Nintendo will calculate the cost for you. The total cost of all the engraved cassettes is 2 million yen. As a result, Nintendo took 000 million yen back and forth, and the third-party game manufacturers Only 1 million yen left.

The third-party game manufacturer obviously made money, but in the end they lost 1 million yen. On the contrary, Nintendo made a profit of 000 million yen without doing anything.

Such a policy naturally made Nintendo's third-party game manufacturers angry, but they couldn't resist because of the dominance of Nintendo's game console.

Cough cough, it's a bit far-fetched, let's get down to business.

All in all, game cartridges are the means by which Nintendo relies on to exploit third-party game manufacturers, so it is absolutely impossible for Nintendo to give up game cartridges unless it is a last resort.

In fact, the former president of Nintendo, known as the game tyrant, took Nintendo from a small poker manufacturer to Yamauchi Hiroshi, the world's largest manufacturer of game consoles.

After competitor Sony launched the function of game discs, when asked whether they would give up game cassettes and launch cheaper storage tool discs, Hiroshi Yamauchi said very simply.Even if Nintendo dies, it will never use that stupid prop to load the game.

And Hiroshi Yamauchi himself kept emphasizing in the company's internal meetings that the rules of cassette tapes are absolutely not allowed to be abandoned. Iwata Satoru has just taken over the position of president for a little over a year, and his buttocks have not yet been firmly seated. Naturally, he dare not violate it. Hiroshi Yamauchi's will.

In fact, until the death of Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's game consoles did not have the ability to store games internally. It was not until the death of Hiroshi Yamauchi that the latest generation of game consoles, Switch, was launched for the first time with a hard disk, which is the internal storage space. The game can be downloaded through the network without using the game cassette.

And Sony's next-generation PS host already has its own storage space, so this has become one of the huge black spots that Nintendo wants money but not game experience in the eyes of players, and desperately wants to pluck hair from players.

In addition to this black spot, the cassette also brings a serious problem, that is, the cost of Nintendo games.

As we all know, any manufacturer of game consoles does not make money. A switch that only sells in the early 2000s, its screen performance can even pull down the flagship machine in 2020, so the hardware of the switch is really a waste of money. 2000 The price in the early days is really not profitable.

However, this is also an industry practice. Whether it is Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft, they are all trying to make the console as cheap as possible, and sell it as long as they don’t lose money, and then put the hope of making money on game cartridges.

After all, you have already spent more than 2000 yuan to buy a game console, so if you don’t buy another game worth thousands of yuan, wouldn’t you be sorry for the money you spent on this game console?

The price of a game console is about 3 yen, and then a game is sold for 5000 yen, and 6 games can buy back the cost of a game console. Do you think this game cartridge is profitable or not?

Now for Nintendo, their plight is also reflected in the game cartridges.

Assuming that Nintendo and Sony release a game at the same time, and the platform and third-party game manufacturers are expected to earn 4000 yen in profits from this game, then regardless of the development cost of the game, the remaining cost is to make the game The cost of the cassette is gone.

At this time, Ps generally used CDs as the carrier of games, while Nintendo still used its own cassettes.

At present, the size of a top game masterpiece is generally around 500MB-1GB, even if it is placed on a handheld, it is 100-300MB in size, so it should be calculated according to the minimum standards of 500MB and 100MB.

For a disc, 500MB is just the capacity of sprinkling water. A disc is enough to hold the entire game, and the cost of burning it is no more than 80 yen, which is about less than one yuan. After that, the game package is counted. As well as packaging and other expenses, the production cost of a game cassette does not exceed 200 yen at most, so the price of such a game is 4200 yen.

But for the game cartridges used by Nintendo, compared with the current technology, the production cost of a 500MB game cartridge is at least about 1500 yen, and when various packaging costs are included, it will reach about 1600 yen. The price of the game card is as high as 5600 yen.

For games of the same quality, players need to spend an extra 1400 yen to buy games on the Nintendo platform. Considering this cost, either Nintendo will take the initiative to lower its profit expectations, or it will only increase the price and lose the market.

This is also one of the reasons why Nintendo has continued to fail since the rise of Sony. It is because the price of Nintendo’s cassettes remains high, even exceeding twice the price of Sony games of the same level. Players will like Nintendo.

In fact, the entire Nintendo is aware of this, but due to the suppression of the tyrant Hiroshi Yamauchi, no one dares to violate his meaning and development philosophy.

Satoru Iwata knew very well that the problem of high production costs of Nintendo game cassettes must be changed as soon as possible, otherwise Nintendo would continue to decline in the future competition, or even go to extinction.

Especially the handheld market, which can be called the last safe haven, is currently facing huge competition risks, but the handheld cannot use large storage devices, and can only use advanced micro storage chips to make cassettes, which is even more serious. The cost of making game cartridges.

But the will of the tyrant cannot be changed. The only way is to reduce the cost of memory chips.Originally, this problem could not be solved. In the history of Nintendo, it could only continue to pretend to be blind, relying on the quality of the games in its hands and the poor performance of the PSP after its launch to survive.

However, Satoshi Iwata discovered Jiangnan's memory chip, which made him feel like he had discovered an amazing treasure.

Before they purchased a memory chip with a capacity of 100MB, it cost about 1200 yen.But now, the quality of a 100MB Jiangnan-produced storage chip is more stable, and it only costs about 900 yen. This makes Iwata Satoru overjoyed, but also sees the possibility of suppressing chip production costs and continuing to compete with Sony. sex.

(End of this chapter)