Kobayashi Tetsu had gone mad! He was actually making a role-playing game!
In comparison, even Atlas's announcement of another arcade game project went completely unnoticed.
Developing arcade games was perfectly normal, especially after the success of Demon Tower.
Arcade games continuously generated game coins. A hit arcade game would be a pure cash cow, and given Demon Tower's precedent, it wasn't surprising that Atlas would make more arcade games.
But...
A role-playing game?
And for a console, not an arcade machine?
That cartridge would definitely be expensive!
Don't be fooled by the fact that playing Demon Tower averaged 80 game coins. 80 game coins only amounted to 8,000 yen, which wasn't even enough to buy a high-budget RPG cartridge.
Nintendo remained silent, too busy to comment.
The only reaction came from Kadokawa Game Magazine, which published an impassioned article by Tanimura Masahito.
In Atlas's office, Kobayashi Tetsu carefully read Tanimura Masahito's article.
"Developing role-playing games for consoles is nothing short of courting disaster! What we need are more platformer games like Mario, not these RPGs. In North America, Mario is the MVP, while Sonic just coasted to victory on his reputation!"
Tanimura Masahito wasn't just spewing insults; he had a point.
"Role-playing games require a massive amount of graphics, music, and text, resulting in larger-than-average cartridges and sky-high production costs. Take a standard 4,200 yen cartridge, for example. Most game companies only get 420 yen, while the remaining 3,780 yen covers production, distribution, and licensing fees to the console manufacturers."
"But RPGs start at 8,000 yen, and their costs skyrocket. If 64K of storage costs 64 yen, increasing capacity to 128K only adds 120 yen. However, bumping it up to 1M requires over ten times the cost—6,400 yen."
"Given these exorbitant costs, choosing larger cartridges makes recouping investments even harder, squeezing profit margins thin. Let's assume Atlas is a conscientious company that selects the larger capacity..."
"With such high costs, choosing a larger capacity cartridge makes it even harder to break even and reduces profit margins."
"Let's assume Atlas is a conscientious company that uses high-capacity cartridges, lowers prices, and relies on volume sales to make a profit. In that case, breaking even would be a distant prospect."
"But we all know Atlas is not a conscientious company—"
Kobayashi Tetsu put down the magazine, reluctantly admitting that Tanimura Masahito had hit upon a crucial point.
It wasn't that Atlas lacked conscience; it was the previous statement.
This was the mid-1980s, when Moore's Law still held true. According to this principle, every two years, the price of electronic products halves while their performance doubles.
The performance of electronic products exhibits diminishing returns. To achieve a 10% performance improvement, the cost far exceeds a mere 10%. Within the scope of Moore's Law, for example, in 2010, the price difference between a 500GB hard drive, a 1TB drive, and a 2TB drive was only a few hundred yuan.
However, the price gap between a 1TB drive and an 8TB drive was astronomical, far more than seven or eight times the cost.
Back then, increasing storage from 500GB to 2TB simply involved stacking more disks, with costs directly tied to the number of disks. However, moving from 1TB to 8TB required additional technology, making it impossible to buy an 8TB hard drive for just eight times the price of a 1TB drive.
Of course, mechanical hard drive prices have plummeted since then. Nowadays, you can sometimes find 8TB drives for less than 1000 yuan if you're lucky.
Role-playing games require large capacities, and that's non-negotiable. In this day and age, developers would have to use larger cartridges, which would significantly increase production costs.
They'd either have to raise the price or reduce the game's size.
But either choice would have a profound impact on the final product.
Kobayashi Tetsu folded his arms, a smug smile playing on his lips.
However, Tanimura Masahito seemed to have overlooked one thing:
Just as disks can be stacked, so can people!
"I can't solve that problem right now," Kentaro said bluntly, hammering down on Kobayashi Tetsu's smugness. "No one can alter the trajectory of hardware development unless there's a sudden breakthrough in high-capacity storage. I know Sony's working on some kind of optical disc, but the MS can't read those. As for floppy disks—"
Kentaro pondered for a moment.
"We could add an adapter to allow the MS to read floppy disks, but there's a critical problem. Floppy disks might not be any cheaper than adding a 1MB or larger cartridge chip, and players might not buy the adapter anyway. People always resist products that require extra parts."
Kobayashi Tetsu considered this.
"Can't you use MAPP4?"
MAPP4 was Nintendo's proprietary cartridge compression technology, which increased capacity from 40K (MAPP0) to 1MB (MAPP4).
Sega had a similar technology that compressed cartridge capacity while maintaining full color and audio fidelity.
But in this area, Sega simply couldn't compete with Nintendo.
Kentaro was genuinely bewildered.
"But you're publishing games for Sega."
Kobayashi Tetsu replied, "Then I can also publish games for the FC."
Kentaro: ————???
Kentaro was utterly dumbfounded.
"No, you—" Kentaro stopped himself.
You're betraying us, Xiao Che!
But as the words rose to his lips, he suddenly realized that Sega wasn't exactly in a position to judge.
Why was the relationship between Atlas and Sega so special? Was it really just because Kobayashi Tetsu's father was a minister?
Of course not.
In reality, Kentaro merely served as a go-between. The real crux of the matter was that Kobayashi Tetsu could make money—and with a platform as large as Sega, he could make even more. Sega, in turn, needed a powerful studio to collaborate with on game development and profit from it, such as the mutually beneficial partnership between MS and Sonic in North America, which had proven immensely successful.
Sega certainly had its own first-party development studios, but none had been as commercially successful as Atlas—not even close.
This was the basis for the seemingly exclusive arrangement between the two.
But this exclusivity was only tacit. If Kobayashi Tetsu decided he was done with Sega, they couldn't really stop him. At most, they could suppress the release of his past games and put pressure on distribution channels.
But this created another problem.
Push him too hard, and Kobayashi Tetsu would simply go to Nintendo! Hiroshi Yamauchi might even laugh so hard upon hearing the news that he'd spit out a bubble of mucus and immediately offer his daughter and son-in-law to Kobayashi Tetsu as a reward!
Now Kobayashi Tetsu suddenly wanted to make games for the FC, which was incredibly surreal and unbelievable.
Kobayashi Tetsu spread his hands apart.
"On one hand, I need Nintendo's technology license. On the other hand, MS actually has a technical advantage over the FC, with sharper graphics that the FC's cold white color scheme can't match."
"When prices are similar, users will naturally choose the product with better performance—what we call 'value for money'."
"Furthermore, according to the agreement between Sega and Atlas, since Atlas can produce cartridges themselves, Sega can lower their prices, creating a natural competitive advantage."
"I could find many more arguments for both sides, but I can also counter them all. So let's pretend none of this ever happened. I've already made up my mind. Now, I want to go talk to Nintendo, and I might need two bodyguards to protect me."
Kobayashi Tetsu was genuinely terrified that Nintendo would send assassins after him the moment he stepped foot on their premises!
After all, given Nintendo's history of ruthless business tactics, that old fox Hiroshi Yamauchi was entirely capable of such a thing.
He half-expected that the moment he stepped out the door, a big truck would come and whisk him away to another world!
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