Chapter 658 The Second Arcade Game
Transportation in Los Angeles is very convenient. Yang Wendong and others soon arrived at Intel's headquarters, a 4-story office building located in the south of Silicon Valley. Although the number of floors is a bit low, the area of each floor is very large.
This is actually normal. In some remote places, land prices are not expensive, so it is natural not to build multi-story houses. Single-story buildings are large and more suitable for business communication within the office. In some large cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo, small single-story office buildings are actually abnormal. They are the only choice under high housing prices, and they have also become a symbol of company status, just like cars.
However, from the perspective of vision, senior management is definitely better, but this is only to satisfy personal pursuits. What is more important for a company is efficiency.
Gordon Moore also personally came to the door of the building to welcome Yang Wendong: "Eric, welcome to Intel's new headquarters."
"This headquarters is great." Yang Wendong said with a smile, "It really looks like the headquarters of a fast-growing company."
Gordon Moore shook his head and said, "Haha, compared to your headquarters in Hong Kong, Eric, it's far inferior."
Yang Wendong said: "With Intel's current development trend, it will sooner or later become a large company in the United States. By then, your headquarters can be built more beautifully than ours in Hong Kong."
Historically, before the 80s, Intel's development was very smooth. There may have been some unknown minor setbacks, but overall, it was smooth sailing.
Even in the early 80s, its profits plummeted due to the "rolling" of its Japanese counterparts. However, it subsequently formed a mutual policy through the US government's "special care" for Japanese semiconductors and its cooperation with Microsoft. Then its products have been far ahead in the field of terminal computers and it has no rivals since the advent of the smartphone era. Intel also made a similar mistake to Kodak and eventually declined.
"Haha, thanks for your good words." Gordon Moore was very happy with Yang Wendong's judgment, and then said, "Eric, it's windy outside, let's go in first. The prototype of the game you commissioned us to develop is already out, and we need your confirmation."
"Okay, please," Yang Wendong nodded in agreement.
A few months ago, before the explosion of Landmark Milk, Gordon Moore came to Hong Kong and accepted Yang Wendong's commission to develop a game called "Space Race";
The Hong Kong stock market has been very busy in the past few months, and Yang Wendong has also focused on these places. However, the game commissioned to Intel for development has not been affected at all;
Now that things in Hong Kong have come to a temporary end, I came to the United States to deal with some American affairs. The success of Intel's new game is also the most important thing about this trip to the United States.
At first, Yang Wendong was led by Gordon Moore to walk around the entire company. At this time, Intel was already a large chip company in the United States. Its 4-bit and 8-bit chips were very popular in the US market and had a good reputation. The number of employees exceeded 500. Yang Wendong also gave a brief introduction to some senior executives, but he didn't care. He would definitely forget it soon. All this was just a courtesy.
After the whole environment and the crowd were introduced, the group came to a laboratory on the third floor. In the middle of the laboratory, on a conference table, there was a metal device that was slightly larger than an ordinary color TV. The area below it was slightly larger, and there were some buttons, which were obviously used for control;
In the early days of arcades, they were not the large devices that were as tall as a person like in the past. Instead, they were designed to be placed on a table. This was mainly because the early arcades in bars or other places charged based on a time model rather than coins. This was because the characteristics of early games were designed based on normal playing time.
Later, the game developed rapidly, and merchants also found that it would be more profitable to adopt a coin-operated model. In this way, there was no need for the bar owner to watch the arcade machines himself or arrange for someone to watch them. Making money faster and saving labor was naturally perfect. For players, playing according to the lifespan of the game characters was more exciting than playing by time.
The coin-operated mode requires a large piggy bank to be placed underneath, so the arcade machines of the future are designed to be large and bulky. In order to look good and give players a better experience, the game screens are also larger, comparable to large color TVs.
But nowadays, several games can only be played through time, with much smaller space and weight, and even the screen is modified from a 17-inch small color TV. Seeing Moore and Yang Wendong coming, a staff member quickly powered on the equipment, and then the game interface opened after a while. Just as Yang Wendong requested, the entire interface did not have any messy images, just a bunch of white pixel dots in a black background, the largest of which looked like an airplane.
Gordon Moore introduced: "Eric, these are designed according to your requirements. These meteorites are composed of 5 pixels, and the spaceship operated by the player is composed of 36 pixels. The spaceship can be adjusted by up and down control to avoid being hit by meteorites, and then when it reaches the top, it wins;
This game can also be set to single-player mode or two-player mode, the adjustment switch is here"
Following Gordon Moore's introduction, Yang Wendong nodded and said, "This game is pretty much what I imagined."
In fact, in his previous life, he only knew about this game and had seen the graphics on the Internet, but he had never played the specific content. After all, he was born in the 80s in his previous life and had grown up into the Internet age. At that time, all games had wonderful graphics, not as boring as they are now.
Gordon Moore smiled and said, "How about we play a game?"
"Okay." Yang Wendong nodded and agreed, "Let's see who is better."
After all, it is a game I designed myself, so I have to play it anyway, so that I can use it as a reference for designing other games in the future;
Another point is that even though his entertainment threshold was very high due to short videos and various mobile games in his previous life, he has been in this era for more than ten years and the threshold has long disappeared. He now enjoys watching some of Hong Kong's current movies, TV series and even variety shows, and electronic games have a different threshold.
Gordon Moore laughed and said, "Haha, I must be good. I have played this game for a long time. I have to say, Eric, you are really a genius. This game is much more fun for me than [Ping Pong]. I think it will be a big hit."
Although Intel's core business is chips, and so is the career goal of Moore and others, while designing games for Yang Wendong, they are also aware of the sales of these games. After all, the core chips, motherboards, and software are all produced by Intel. Even if it is not the main business, Intel is one of Honor Electronics' main suppliers.
As for the understanding of the electronics industry, Intel insiders also know that the profit of games is very high. In an internal meeting, some senior executives even suggested that Intel should also make games. After all, Intel has experience and teams in this area, so it should be easy to do it.
But it was later rejected. The first reason was that Intel itself had not yet achieved real success in the chip business and should not interfere in other businesses. The second reason was that the core of games was not technology but creativity, and Intel did not have talent in this area. Starting over would require rebuilding a new team, and even the United States did not have such a team. The third reason was that when profitability was still uncertain, it might offend major shareholders, which was obviously not cost-effective. Moreover, as a supplier doing the same business as customers, if this matter got out, how would other major electronics companies believe that Intel would develop similar industries of its own in the chip field?
"Haha, I hope so too." After Yang Wendong finished speaking, he started playing against Moore;
In fact, the success of "Space Race" is almost inevitable. There is no competitor in this era. Once it is launched, it will be the only game that many bar customers can play. After getting tired of "Ping Pong", they will naturally want to try another game.
However, it is still a long way to go to reach the peak of Atari in the past, mainly because the channel construction is slow, the social publicity is also slow, and it takes a long time for the public to recognize it. Even in the era of TikTok, it takes a long time and costs a lot for a product to be known by a large group of people.
It took several years of different games to gradually let people know that there is such a thing as "arcade games" in the world. After this success, it will be much easier to promote home game consoles in the future.
Even in history, Jobs' fame was intentional. It made him an entrepreneurial idol in the United States and allowed everyone to know what a "personal computer" is. Otherwise, it would have taken an unknown amount of time and cost to succeed just by promoting it so that every American family would know about "personal computers."
The fierce battle between the two soon reached its climax. One had been playing for a long time, and the other was an elite in the game. They both had a lot of fun. If they lost, they would just start over. Anyway, they could play over and over again.
After a long while, the two stopped. Yang Wendong rubbed his tired eyes and said with a smile: "Moore, your level is not bad. I lost."
"Haha, you just started, but you're actually much better than when I first started playing." Gordon Moore also laughed.
Yang Wendong smiled and said nothing more, "Then let's design the game according to this, right? Excluding the R&D cost, how much is the manufacturing cost of the entire game console?"
PS: Please give me a monthly ticket
(End of this chapter)
Transportation in Los Angeles is very convenient. Yang Wendong and others soon arrived at Intel's headquarters, a 4-story office building located in the south of Silicon Valley. Although the number of floors is a bit low, the area of each floor is very large.
This is actually normal. In some remote places, land prices are not expensive, so it is natural not to build multi-story houses. Single-story buildings are large and more suitable for business communication within the office. In some large cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo, small single-story office buildings are actually abnormal. They are the only choice under high housing prices, and they have also become a symbol of company status, just like cars.
However, from the perspective of vision, senior management is definitely better, but this is only to satisfy personal pursuits. What is more important for a company is efficiency.
Gordon Moore also personally came to the door of the building to welcome Yang Wendong: "Eric, welcome to Intel's new headquarters."
"This headquarters is great." Yang Wendong said with a smile, "It really looks like the headquarters of a fast-growing company."
Gordon Moore shook his head and said, "Haha, compared to your headquarters in Hong Kong, Eric, it's far inferior."
Yang Wendong said: "With Intel's current development trend, it will sooner or later become a large company in the United States. By then, your headquarters can be built more beautifully than ours in Hong Kong."
Historically, before the 80s, Intel's development was very smooth. There may have been some unknown minor setbacks, but overall, it was smooth sailing.
Even in the early 80s, its profits plummeted due to the "rolling" of its Japanese counterparts. However, it subsequently formed a mutual policy through the US government's "special care" for Japanese semiconductors and its cooperation with Microsoft. Then its products have been far ahead in the field of terminal computers and it has no rivals since the advent of the smartphone era. Intel also made a similar mistake to Kodak and eventually declined.
"Haha, thanks for your good words." Gordon Moore was very happy with Yang Wendong's judgment, and then said, "Eric, it's windy outside, let's go in first. The prototype of the game you commissioned us to develop is already out, and we need your confirmation."
"Okay, please," Yang Wendong nodded in agreement.
A few months ago, before the explosion of Landmark Milk, Gordon Moore came to Hong Kong and accepted Yang Wendong's commission to develop a game called "Space Race";
The Hong Kong stock market has been very busy in the past few months, and Yang Wendong has also focused on these places. However, the game commissioned to Intel for development has not been affected at all;
Now that things in Hong Kong have come to a temporary end, I came to the United States to deal with some American affairs. The success of Intel's new game is also the most important thing about this trip to the United States.
At first, Yang Wendong was led by Gordon Moore to walk around the entire company. At this time, Intel was already a large chip company in the United States. Its 4-bit and 8-bit chips were very popular in the US market and had a good reputation. The number of employees exceeded 500. Yang Wendong also gave a brief introduction to some senior executives, but he didn't care. He would definitely forget it soon. All this was just a courtesy.
After the whole environment and the crowd were introduced, the group came to a laboratory on the third floor. In the middle of the laboratory, on a conference table, there was a metal device that was slightly larger than an ordinary color TV. The area below it was slightly larger, and there were some buttons, which were obviously used for control;
In the early days of arcades, they were not the large devices that were as tall as a person like in the past. Instead, they were designed to be placed on a table. This was mainly because the early arcades in bars or other places charged based on a time model rather than coins. This was because the characteristics of early games were designed based on normal playing time.
Later, the game developed rapidly, and merchants also found that it would be more profitable to adopt a coin-operated model. In this way, there was no need for the bar owner to watch the arcade machines himself or arrange for someone to watch them. Making money faster and saving labor was naturally perfect. For players, playing according to the lifespan of the game characters was more exciting than playing by time.
The coin-operated mode requires a large piggy bank to be placed underneath, so the arcade machines of the future are designed to be large and bulky. In order to look good and give players a better experience, the game screens are also larger, comparable to large color TVs.
But nowadays, several games can only be played through time, with much smaller space and weight, and even the screen is modified from a 17-inch small color TV. Seeing Moore and Yang Wendong coming, a staff member quickly powered on the equipment, and then the game interface opened after a while. Just as Yang Wendong requested, the entire interface did not have any messy images, just a bunch of white pixel dots in a black background, the largest of which looked like an airplane.
Gordon Moore introduced: "Eric, these are designed according to your requirements. These meteorites are composed of 5 pixels, and the spaceship operated by the player is composed of 36 pixels. The spaceship can be adjusted by up and down control to avoid being hit by meteorites, and then when it reaches the top, it wins;
This game can also be set to single-player mode or two-player mode, the adjustment switch is here"
Following Gordon Moore's introduction, Yang Wendong nodded and said, "This game is pretty much what I imagined."
In fact, in his previous life, he only knew about this game and had seen the graphics on the Internet, but he had never played the specific content. After all, he was born in the 80s in his previous life and had grown up into the Internet age. At that time, all games had wonderful graphics, not as boring as they are now.
Gordon Moore smiled and said, "How about we play a game?"
"Okay." Yang Wendong nodded and agreed, "Let's see who is better."
After all, it is a game I designed myself, so I have to play it anyway, so that I can use it as a reference for designing other games in the future;
Another point is that even though his entertainment threshold was very high due to short videos and various mobile games in his previous life, he has been in this era for more than ten years and the threshold has long disappeared. He now enjoys watching some of Hong Kong's current movies, TV series and even variety shows, and electronic games have a different threshold.
Gordon Moore laughed and said, "Haha, I must be good. I have played this game for a long time. I have to say, Eric, you are really a genius. This game is much more fun for me than [Ping Pong]. I think it will be a big hit."
Although Intel's core business is chips, and so is the career goal of Moore and others, while designing games for Yang Wendong, they are also aware of the sales of these games. After all, the core chips, motherboards, and software are all produced by Intel. Even if it is not the main business, Intel is one of Honor Electronics' main suppliers.
As for the understanding of the electronics industry, Intel insiders also know that the profit of games is very high. In an internal meeting, some senior executives even suggested that Intel should also make games. After all, Intel has experience and teams in this area, so it should be easy to do it.
But it was later rejected. The first reason was that Intel itself had not yet achieved real success in the chip business and should not interfere in other businesses. The second reason was that the core of games was not technology but creativity, and Intel did not have talent in this area. Starting over would require rebuilding a new team, and even the United States did not have such a team. The third reason was that when profitability was still uncertain, it might offend major shareholders, which was obviously not cost-effective. Moreover, as a supplier doing the same business as customers, if this matter got out, how would other major electronics companies believe that Intel would develop similar industries of its own in the chip field?
"Haha, I hope so too." After Yang Wendong finished speaking, he started playing against Moore;
In fact, the success of "Space Race" is almost inevitable. There is no competitor in this era. Once it is launched, it will be the only game that many bar customers can play. After getting tired of "Ping Pong", they will naturally want to try another game.
However, it is still a long way to go to reach the peak of Atari in the past, mainly because the channel construction is slow, the social publicity is also slow, and it takes a long time for the public to recognize it. Even in the era of TikTok, it takes a long time and costs a lot for a product to be known by a large group of people.
It took several years of different games to gradually let people know that there is such a thing as "arcade games" in the world. After this success, it will be much easier to promote home game consoles in the future.
Even in history, Jobs' fame was intentional. It made him an entrepreneurial idol in the United States and allowed everyone to know what a "personal computer" is. Otherwise, it would have taken an unknown amount of time and cost to succeed just by promoting it so that every American family would know about "personal computers."
The fierce battle between the two soon reached its climax. One had been playing for a long time, and the other was an elite in the game. They both had a lot of fun. If they lost, they would just start over. Anyway, they could play over and over again.
After a long while, the two stopped. Yang Wendong rubbed his tired eyes and said with a smile: "Moore, your level is not bad. I lost."
"Haha, you just started, but you're actually much better than when I first started playing." Gordon Moore also laughed.
Yang Wendong smiled and said nothing more, "Then let's design the game according to this, right? Excluding the R&D cost, how much is the manufacturing cost of the entire game console?"
PS: Please give me a monthly ticket
(End of this chapter)
