game trailblazer

Chapter 165 The First E3 Exhibition

On May 5, the second day of the E12 exhibition, Zhang Lexing led the members of the E3 visiting group to the West Hall of the Convention and Exhibition Center.The most dazzling stars here are the old game companies Nintendo and Sega, as well as the newcomer Sony in the game industry. The booths of these three companies are very coincidentally arranged in places not far away and where they can see each other. Solve the number to attract visitors.

The rich and powerful Sony built the largest booth, and also put out a large display board, which was marked with huge words, "Currently, more than 160 game developers are developing PS games, and the total number of games under development has reached more than 200." ", although I don't know the quality of the final game, but the two numbers alone are very eye-catching.In order to demonstrate, or rather to show off, the powerful 3D performance of PS game consoles, Sony put up more than 30 PS game consoles and supporting display devices (televisions or projections). "Ridge Racer" and "Iron Fist" just transplanted from the arcade, with the unparalleled 3D graphics effects of these two games, attracted many visitors to wait in line for a trial, even Zhao Haiguang's two companions Wang Bo and Yan Xiaowei I couldn't help but ran to see the excitement.

Sony's methods are not limited to these. The president of SCEA responsible for the PS game business also announced that the price of the PS game console in the United States will be 299 US dollars. This price can be said to be unexpectedly cheap. The high price of $3 is lower than that of Sega's just announced SS (Saturn) game console, which is expected to sell for $549 less.Judging from the attractiveness of the price, Sony's move can be said to be a complete victory. Coupled with the perfect game screen, the PS game console immediately became the most popular product in the entire exhibition.

The bigger surprise was yet to come. When the superstar Michael Jackson appeared at the Sony booth, it immediately detonated the audience. A large number of people flocked to the Sony booth like a tide. The organizer of the exhibition, IDSA, had to arrange a large number of security guards to come Go to Sony's booth to maintain order.The popularity of Sony's booth completely overwhelmed his two rivals, Nintendo and Sega. Even until the end of the exhibition, Sony's booth still maintained a high popularity.

Sega’s booth is just opposite to Sony’s. Compared with it, it is slightly smaller. There are also nearly 2 SS game consoles known as “30D extreme hardware”, which are used to display game screens and supply information on projection screens. Visitors try it out.Sega now also understands the importance of 3D games. In order to show that the 3D performance of the SS game console is not too weak, the focus of this display is "VR Warrior" and "Sleepwalking America" ​​personally created by Sega, which coincides with Sony's booth. Tekken and Ridge Racer face off.

The performance of the SS game console itself is not weak. It is officially called "epoch-making crystallization". It has two 32-bit RISC processors as the main processor, and the sound processor uses the Motorola 68000 processor, which is the previous generation of 16-bit games. It is a pity that the 3D processor was forgotten in the original design. As a result, the SS game console has a super 2D picture, but if it wants to display a 3D picture, the main processor must be used to assist the calculation, and the result is that the PS game Machine to compare down.This point can be clearly seen from the comparison between "VR Warrior" and "Tekken". They are also arcade transplant works, and the picture effect of "Tekken" is obviously more than that of "VR Warrior".Although the staff yelled hard and the ShowGirls performed hard, the line waiting for the demo in front of the Sony booth was much longer than that in front of the Sega booth.

When Zhang Lexing turned to Sega's booth, he happened to see an acquaintance, Sega North America CEO Thomas Kalinske, who was looking at Sony's booth with a frown.

In fact, before Sony announced the price of the North American version of the PS game console at $299, Thomas Kalinske had already received rumors. In order to compete with Sony, he also suggested to the RB headquarters that the North American version of the SS game console The price is also set at 299 US dollars, but those guys who are old-fashioned and not in the North American market at all actually said "In order to leave room for price reduction in the future, the price of the North American version of the SS game console must be set at 399 US dollars", don't they? I understand that if this uncompetitive price is combined with the congenital defects of SS game consoles (3D performance is insufficient), it is impossible to compete with Sony. For this reason, he even directly reported this to the president of RB headquarters, Nakayama Hayao Unfortunately, things backfired. President Hayao Nakayama, who had always trusted him in the past, actually scolded him this time, and the proposal to cut prices naturally fell through.

On the second day of the E3 exhibition, Sony officially announced the price of the North American version of the PS game console, which was indeed $299, and the price of $399 for the Sega SS game console suddenly became extremely embarrassing.But this only made Thomas Kalinske a little discouraged. Although the market is a bit difficult to do, it is not completely impossible. Although the boss no longer trusts him before, it is not that there is no turning point, but the next news he heard Let him completely collapse.

Just now, Thomas Kalinske overheard a supervisor from the RB headquarters talk about something, and the gang at the headquarters came up with a new idea. When the SS game console was first released in RB, it sold 17 units in one day, which was much higher than the 10 units sold on the first day when Sony PS was launched, but I didn’t expect that Sony, which is now lagging behind, will gradually catch up Therefore, the people at the RB headquarters thought that the reason for this was that Sega did not support enough SS game consoles. Sony only needed to support PS game consoles, while Sega had to support both 16-bit and 32-bit game consoles. So they thought of a clever plan to terminate the 16-bit platform and all upgrade plans.

This news came as a bolt from the blue to Thomas Kalinske. Sega’s 16-bit Genesis host (the American version of the MD host) is far from the end of its life at this time, and the Genesis host will continue to thrive for at least two or three years.It's a pity that the people in the headquarters don't see it this way. In their eyes, Sega's 16-bit game console is simply a stumbling block to the success of the SS game console. As long as it is removed, the SS game console will surely succeed.According to the executive, the move to terminate the 16-bit platform will begin within two or three months.Thomas Kalinske was completely disappointed. He was no longer worried about Sega, because as long as this stupid order was implemented, it would be a disaster for Sega North America. He was only worried about his own future.

"Tom, I didn't expect you to come here in person." A somewhat familiar voice came from the side.

When Thomas Kalinske was worrying, he suddenly heard someone calling him, so he looked in the direction of the voice, and it turned out that it was Zhang Lexing who had dealt with him before.Although he failed to compete with Minoru Arakawa for the handheld game back then, he found the field again on the Genesis console, and Thomas Kalinske, who was in a good mood, didn't care about the handheld game anymore.

"Zhang, didn't you come here in person?" Thomas Kalinske would not underestimate the man in front of him now. Although he had never read that issue of "Forbes", the fact that the Chinese won the title of the richest man in the world has long been covered by everyone. Such newspapers have been hyped over the sky, even if he doesn't pay attention, he will inevitably see them.

"Tom, you don't look like you're in a good mood?"

Thomas Kalinske observed for a while and found that he was not paying attention to himself, so he took two steps outside and said to Zhang Lexing in a low voice: "Oh...Mr. Zhang, I wonder if your invitation was still valid back then?"

"Of course it still works. This is my latest contact number. If you want to come Tom, you can call this number anytime." Zhang Lexing took out a business card and handed it over.

Thomas Kalinske took the business card, put it away carefully, and thanked him: "Thank you, Mr. Zhang, I will contact you after the matter in hand is done."

"Okay, I'll be waiting for you anytime." After speaking, Zhang Lexing led the E3 visiting group to visit other booths.

With Zhang Lexing's promise, Thomas Kalinske had a solid foundation in his mind and no worries, so he decided to make a final effort and go to the RB headquarters after the exhibition to make another speech, and he must stop the termination of the 16-bit platform. Take action, and you must not let a piece of land that you have worked so hard to put into the water so easily.It's just that Thomas Kalinske didn't expect what his visit would bring him. Maybe he thought of it, but he didn't care anymore.

Leaving Sega's booth, Zhang Lexing led the E3 visiting group members around several nearby booths, and then came to the Nintendo booth not far away.

Compared with Sony and Sega's booth, Nintendo's booth is a bit shabby. It's not that Nintendo has no money, but that it can't produce too many attractive dry goods.Half of the entire booth displayed outdated Super Nintendo (SFC) games, and the other half displayed slightly weird VRBoy and related games.

In fact, VRBoy is still very avant-garde in terms of design ideas. The imaging technology used is the latest research result launched by a research laboratory of RB Keio University in 1993. The three-dimensional image space formed can theoretically realize the "virtual world", but limited by the current technical strength, only red liquid crystals can only be used to display a single color.

The VRBoy placed on the demo table is a typical red and black body, consisting of a head-mounted binocular body and a game controller.There were not many people queuing in front of the demo console, so Zhang Lexing also went to join in the fun, planning to see this legendary game console.After waiting for 10 minutes, the last person in front of him also walked away. Zhang Lexing sat down on the chair in front of the demo table, and then put his face on the front of VRBoy's fuselage. A red and black world appeared on Zhang Lexing's in front of you.

The game running on VRBoy is "Mario Tennis". Characters such as Mario and Peach are playing tennis in the three-dimensional world. , but the monotonous red is a bit uncomfortable for the eyes after looking at it for a long time.

The legendary 64-bit game console that Nintendo vowed to exhibit has been postponed. Players will have to wait until November to see the shape. As for the release, it will definitely be next year.In addition, only a group of beautiful girls in hot clothes (measured by 11 standards) were left on Nintendo's booth dancing hot and hot dances. It seems much lonely in comparison.

Arakawa looked at the somewhat deserted booth, especially those VRBoys that few people were interested in, and couldn't help but feel bitter in his heart.In fact, according to his thinking, there is no need to make any transitional 32-bit hosts, and it is enough to directly develop 64-bit hosts. However, his father-in-law has too much trust in Yokoi Gunpei, even if everyone opposes this. Weird VRBoy project, but with the support of Yamauchi, Yokoi Gunpei's development project was passed.Well, now VRBoy is made, but the monochromatic red and black screen is enough to scare many people away, and then look at the live demo, you can figure it out with your toes, this machine must be ready .

VRBoy is ready to rush, but the N64, which Arakawa has placed high hopes on, encountered development problems and had to postpone the release. If it is delayed, it can be postponed. But at the beginning, my father-in-law Yamauchi insisted on using a card to store the game instead of what he was optimistic about. As soon as the news was announced, he immediately wanted to stab the hornet's nest, and was opposed by many companies that were interested in developing games for Nintendo, and many of them were even the most staunch allies in the past.Arakawa really knew that this time he was in serious trouble. The game console was not afraid of poor performance, but he was afraid that no one would develop games on it. If the N64 was really abandoned by everyone, the consequences could be imagined.Now whenever he has time, he would think hard about how to make the N64 competitive when the cassette is used as the storage medium. Because he was thinking too hard, he didn't notice that Zhang Lexing came to the Nintendo booth, nor did he I noticed that Zhang Lexing left after trying VRBoy.

After leaving the Nintendo booth, Zhang Lexing joined the E3 visitors and went to the next booth together.After walking around for a while, Zhang Lexing brought the E3 visitors to the joint booth of Oriental Electronic Entertainment Co., Ltd., where the works of Tianzhiyuan, Creative Workshop, Maxis and other companies were displayed, and there was Capcom next to it. and Konami, the independent booths of these two companies.

Among the joint booths, Tianzhiyuan has the largest scale. The games on display are mainly those on the Super Nintendo and GameBoy handhelds. In addition, there are two PS games on display. Authorized by dozens of world-renowned automobile manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, etc., and the appearance, engine sound, and performance of each car in the game are completely produced based on the data collected by the real car, reflecting the uniqueness of each car. The details are different, but due to development progress issues, only one game animation can be played at this exhibition.The other is the basically completed "Pro Evolution Football", which supports handles with analog joysticks, and can already be tried on the spot. Its real game atmosphere has attracted many people to line up.

Maxis' place is not too big, and the games on display are still the traditional "Simulation xx".What the creative workshop exhibited this time is the latest trial version of "Legend of the Black Stone" that has been ported to the KylinWindows95 platform, as well as the latest achievement of Ken Silverman's 3D engine group Build3D, which is a real 3D engine. It has most of the content that a 3D engine should contain, such as real-time light and shadow, skeletal animation system, model animation system, physical effects, collision detection, rendering engine, polygon model, animation and particle effects. It runs smoothly on my Pentium computer.

Originally, Zhang Lexing planned to invite Ren Haoqiang's real-time strategy game "Three Kingdoms" to participate in the E3 exhibition. Unfortunately, his team encountered a numerical balance problem during the development process. Due to lack of experience, loopholes were left in the pre-design. The bottom layer of the game had to be overthrown and restarted, and "Three Kingdoms" was too late to catch up with E3.

In order to show the effect of "Legend of Black Stone" and the Build3D engine, the creative workshop put out a total of eight latest Pentium computers. At first, there were only four computers running "Legend of Black Stone", but I did not expect that "Legend of Black Stone" would be so attractive , people lined up to try the game, and finally had to adjust three computers displaying the Build3D engine to ease it up a bit. In fact, the Build3D engine is not unnoticed, but because the verification version of the game made with the Build3D engine can be controlled There are too few places, so basically there are only onlookers.

The long queue of trial games in front of the creative workshop booth attracted the envious eyes of game company representatives in the E3 visiting group, and their confidence was also improved accordingly. At least in their opinion, the level of domestic companies seems to be relatively strong. There are also some companies that are not far behind foreign companies. If the Game Developers Conference in the second half of the year can really carry out technical exchanges, it will definitely have a great promotion effect on their companies.

On May 5th, the third day of the E13 exhibition, Zhang Lexing led the members of the E3 visiting group to the Kentia Hall and the Petrie Hall. The booth of a small game company, and saw the former game giant Atari in the Petry Hall, as well as their mysterious Jaguar 3-bit game console, and of course their pitifully small number of games. The first E64 slowly It's time to end...

(End of this chapter)