Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 219 Hell and Heaven Are Only One Step Away

Although Ethan had never studied how big games of this era were, he knew that they would definitely not be as exaggerated as 128KB.

There are two reasons:
One is that when they were making arcade machines before, they didn't spend much on purchasing storage devices.

Second, Steve Wozniak just developed the external disk drive this summer and launched it into the market as a new Apple product.

When the external drive designed by Wozniak also read a floppy disk with a single side of 140KB and a double side of 280KB, the "Contra" designed by Evelyn was actually the same size as the single side of the disk?
Isn't this telling the world clearly that if you want to play my game, in addition to buying a home console, you also have to buy an Apple floppy drive?

And which child or family can accept such a thing?
Back then, when pricing the home console, Ethan had already discovered that two hundred dollars was a watershed in that era. People might grit their teeth and buy items under two hundred, but items over two hundred would definitely make people think for a long time. But now, when an Apple floppy disk drive costs four hundred and ninety-five dollars, the price of five hundred plus two hundred would discourage countless people.

Seven hundred dollars to play a game?

This kind of thing may be very common in the future, but at present...

nonexistent!

"Oh, my dear sister, today is not April Fool's Day..."

Ethan’s mouth trembled, his eyes staring straight at Evelin, his pupils filled with panic.

"You're kidding me, right?" He forced a smile that was uglier than crying. "It must be less than 128KB, right? You saw that I was too excited so you wanted to scare me?"

Such a question made Evelin purse her lips, her apple muscles slightly raised, and she tried her best to show a smile full of peace. She looked at Ethan without hiding anything, even if she didn't say a word, but...

Her expression told it all.

"Oh——No——"

Ethan held his head and yelled helplessly: "Why so——"

"Why is this happening? Why is this game so big?"

If Ethan felt that he was enveloped in victory a second ago and that all his competitors would surrender under his impact, now he felt that he had fallen into hell.

Because a game of 128KB in size cannot be sold through a home console!

This is not a question of whether there are rich people in the world!

But this price is beyond the purchasing power of the general public!

Nowadays, you can buy a used Ford for just this much money!

When a game's play value is equal to that of a Ford car...

Then people will definitely vote with their feet!

When he thought of this, Ethan, who had been playing games for six hours, felt his eyes go dark. He just wanted to get up and leave, but he instinctively fell down on the sofa.

"Oh Ethan - are you okay -" Evelyn was startled and raised her hands to support Ethan.

Ethan shook his hand to indicate that it was okay.

Then he shook his head violently, as if trying to shake off the darkness, but more like trying to gain clarity.

He raised his head and frowned for a while. When he opened his eyes again, he took a deep breath and asked, "Is this the worst news I need to face? Or... are there any other problems with our previous plan?"

At this moment, Ethan remembered something more important.

"The cost of this console..."

“It shouldn’t exceed the limit, right?”

When deciding to develop the console, Ethan and Evelyn reached a consensus. They both felt that $199.99 was the upper limit of the machine's price. Therefore, after deducting various expenses such as sales, marketing, transportation, and manufacturing, the room they could operate with should only be $150.

In this case, even if they can give up making the first wave of money from the launch of new products for the sake of company reputation and market dominance, the hardware cost of the entire machine must be controlled at around US$129.

There is no way around it. It costs money to make and copy games.

If you spread it out evenly, one game costs seven dollars, and three games cost twenty-one. You can't save this money.

And when they were already so stingy when calculating the cost of the console, Evelyn suddenly regarded Apple's external floppy drive as the operating core of the home console?

Oh - if that's the case, then Ethan can just declare the console project dead!

Because after connecting to Apple's external floppy drive, what they made was no different from the Apple II! Or in other words, what they made was a crude version of the Apple II! If that's the case, why are they still selling home consoles? Isn't it better to just sell games that rely on the Apple II?

When the girl heard Ethan's anxious question, she immediately shook her head.

He stood up, walked to the storage cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, took out a shoebox-sized wooden box from it, and returned to Ethan's side. "I said, the machine you just played was a test version."

“This is the consumer version we can sell now.”

These words made Ethan quickly take the box, and then he saw that the appearance was roughly the same as the test version of the machine. This box did not have a built-in drive interface, but it also had an additional tape-sized embedded frame, and on it, a black plastic box was inserted.

Although Evelyn did not introduce this, Ethan understood that this was the cartridge technology he and his sister had initially decided to use when discussing the production of a home console.

People who have played Nintendo game consoles must be familiar with the cartridge. However, this thing actually has no technology at all. It just replaces the arcade game saving method with the console.

In arcade machines, games are saved in read-only memory, and they are soldered on the same circuit board as the central processor, but in consoles, they are separated, the central processor is embedded in the console, and the circuit board with the read-only memory is made into a cartridge.

It's that simple.

It is precisely because of its simplicity that it is cheap, and when this mature technology appears, Ethan knows that Evelyn still made the machine according to the original plan.

But even so, he was already frightened and immediately stood up and connected the machine in his hand to the TV. As the screen lit up again, a single game of "Snake" appeared in the game menu.

This fact made Ethan feel relieved, but the next second, he asked again: "Are there any other games?"

"uh-huh."

Evelin pointed to the TV cabinet, where three cassettes were still lying.

This situation made Ethan reach out and take it, and just when he was about to replace the machine with a new game, his action suddenly stopped. Evelin, who witnessed all this, laughed and said, "You can hot-dump it."

"Don't worry, it won't be broken."

At the same time, the girl also explained, "I considered this problem when designing it. If the cassette cannot be hot-plugged, then this product will not be sold."

"Because there are too many ordinary people who don't follow the operating procedures."

"Of course, when promoting it externally, we have to say that this will damage the machine."

Since his sister said it was okay, Ethan became bolder. Under his operation, the two games previously launched by Destiny, "Pac-Man" and "Star Wars", also appeared one after another.

Not in the mood to play, Ethan continued to look through the books.

The third box contains "Minesweeper", which will be released together with the machine.

If he had seen this scene an hour ago, Ethan would have been happy that the production of "Minesweeper" was completed, but now... Ethan sat down on the ground and let out a long sigh.

Because the emergence of these games means that their home console projects have not yet gone bankrupt.

Even without Apple's external floppy drive, their home consoles can still play games.

Staring at the slightly larger consumer version of the console, Ethan knew he still had a chance. He reached out and touched it, and a look of anticipation emerged on his face again. "How much does this machine cost?"

“You want to know?” Evelyn didn’t answer directly, but kept it a secret.

"Of course!" Ethan nodded vigorously and turned his gaze back to his sister.

There was a flicker of anxiety in those pupils full of desire.

This expression made Evelyn laugh out loud. She stopped teasing Ethan and said directly, "The cost of this machine cannot be estimated for the time being, because it contains a 6502 produced by Chuck Pete Chip Company. Previously, our purchase cost was ten dollars."

"This price will definitely fluctuate when we produce home consoles in the future, because when we control the equity of Western Design Company and let Michael Blanco Manufacturing Company produce the chip, the cost of this chip will be almost less than five dollars."

"After removing this thing whose cost is incalculable, all the other things like the audio chip, display chip, cassette slot, power switch, reset switch, handle, circuit board, video cable connecting to the TV, etc., all added up, it's only a few dozen dollars. According to the large-scale purchasing quotations of those companies, the cost of this machine should be around ninety-eight dollars..."

When Evelyn uttered the word "ninety-eight dollars", Ethan, who was sitting on the ground, was stunned.

After three or five seconds, he finally woke up and asked in a trembling voice: "Are you sure?"

“Uh-huh.” Evelin made the sound through the tip of her nose and nodded.

As she moved, Ethan, who received this information, immediately lay on his back and gasped.

"what--"

The next second, he shouted again.

To be honest, he was really scared just now!

He was really afraid that Evelyn would make him a scaled-down version of the Apple II!

Because once their home console needs to be connected to an external disk to use, all his waiting for more than a year will be in vain! This will not only cause a serious blow to his business layout, but also may make their few advantages vanish!

Thinking of this, Ethan turned his head to look at his sister again and complained loudly: “Oh Evelyn—you know? You really scared me to death just now!”

Evelyn, who understood the meaning of Ethan's words, refused to admit it.

The girl denied it directly: "You are obviously scaring yourself! I told you from the beginning that the host with the disk is a beta version. You are the one who is letting your imagination run wild!"

"But you didn't explain yourself to me clearly!"

"I make sure I've made myself clear!"

"No way! You clearly misled me! If you hadn't told me that this scrolling shooting game was 128KB in size, how could I have believed that you had built an Apple external disk into the console?"

"Haha - look, you yourself said that the root of the problem is 'you think'!"

"I said misleading!"

"think!"

"Misleading!"

Amidst the roars, Evelin, too lazy to continue arguing, raised her fist. After a simple shake, Ethan fell silent.

Knowing he was in the wrong, he avoided looking around and coughed twice. When he once again caught sight of the host that cost only ninety-eight dollars, he changed the subject.

"Oh Evelyn, how did the cost of this machine get so low?"

"Didn't you tell me before that the manufacturing cost of our machine would be at least one hundred and twenty dollars? Now, after deducting 6502, its cost is only ninety-eight?"

"This is incredible!"

Although Ethan had already realized and decided not to make money from the home console project, if this machine could really make money... then he would still gladly accept it.

After all, the purpose of starting a business is to make money!
After removing the central processing unit, the cost price of ninety-eight dollars means that they can make a profit of at least ten dollars on a machine. Although this number cannot be compared with that of arcade machines, and even the profit ratio will be crushed by arcade machines, but when the volume is high, this number is terrifying.

If they sell 10 million home consoles, they can make 100 million!

If 100 million units are sold, we can make 1 billion!

If this number is put on the Internet in the future, it may not be enough. After all, many people think that guys who earn a million yuan a year can only live a miserable life in Shanghai, and guys who earn tens of millions a year can only be considered well-off in Shanghai, and only guys who earn hundreds of millions a year are worthy of finding a full-time wife.

But now, it is the late 1970s and early 1980s of the twentieth century!
A billion in cash in this day and age?
Even if you use one hundred US dollars, it can kill a bunch of giants!

And Ethan's admission of weakness also made Evelin curl her lips, "You have to thank Steve for this."

"What?" Ethan didn't understand.

"Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak." Evelyn explained directly: "If it weren't for the fact that their machines sold so well, many companies would want to become Apple's suppliers and make concessions in their quotes. We wouldn't have found that those suppliers were willing to take the initiative to lower their prices."

Ethan felt that the manufacturing cost of his console fluctuated too much, but Evelyn thought it was normal because when she was making the console, many of the materials were not purchased in the name of the Destiny game, but directly asked Apple in Cupertino next door.

When the two Steves were rampaging in the market waving Apple II and external disks, and when Lawrence Rockefeller did what he said and helped Apple get educational procurement, semiconductor suppliers who wanted to get a piece of the huge market came to Apple on their own initiative, hoping to get Apple's orders.

This behavior may have been unbelievable in the past. After all, the production of computers is inseparable from various chip manufacturers. In this industry, they are the real predators in the upstream position. But when Apple made a lot of money in the computer market, those suppliers who followed Apple to make money naturally became the eyesores of their peers. Other suppliers also want to make money, and Apple can make them money. When this fact appeared, bidding for orders also appeared.

Everyone wants Apple to use its own products.

More people are expecting Apple to develop new machines based on its own products.

So, when Evelyn found out that the raw materials purchased by Destiny Game were more expensive than those purchased by Apple, she called Steve Jobs directly and asked him to buy the goods for her. Steve Jobs was also very understanding. He bought whatever Evelyn wanted and helped to keep it confidential. He asked the material suppliers to deliver the goods to Apple first, and then they would transport the goods to Palo Alto themselves.

In the process, their hosting costs dropped by nearly 20%.

As for why Destiny Game can’t get this price?
That's because the demand for materials for video arcade machines is not as great as that for personal computers.

"If we announce a large-volume purchase, our purchase price should be lower than Apple's. If we announce a joint purchase with Apple, the price we get will definitely be the lowest in the industry."

Evelyn said, "But I can't disclose the development plan of the home console to the public, right? So I can only ask Steve to buy me a batch first, and the rest... I'll talk about it during production."

This fact made Ethan nod.

In industrial production, it is a normal business practice to lower product costs by purchasing in large quantities. Ethan did not think of it for a moment, that was just because he was not in this industry in his previous life.

Now, after being mentioned by Evelin, he was no longer surprised.

“So, this is also the reason why our console can be connected to Apple products?”

Ethan felt that he seemed to understand why their host computer could be connected to Apple products.

Evelin didn’t hide it and said, “Of course.”

"When the materials used by our two companies were basically the same, I castrated the Apple II. That was my idea for designing the host. Wozniak was doing addition when designing the computer, and I was doing subtraction."

"If it weren't like this, how could I have finished both the console and the game in one year?"

“I’m not God!”

"Besides, this is convenient, right?"

"We originally designed the game for the Apple II, so in this case, making a simple version of the Apple II home console can help the game run without many problems."

Ethan was convinced.

He really didn't expect that his sister had done this kind of thing in the past year.

However, on second thought, he felt it was normal.

After all, my sister is alone, and it would be too difficult for her to make both the console and the games.

"Do they know?" Ethan asked.

"I didn't tell them, but they should be able to guess it."

Evelyn said: "Because when I was making the console, I asked Woz how to cut some functions that were useful to Apple but useless to the console, and he gave me a solution directly."

"When I asked them to help me buy materials, Jobs also said that we must tell him when the new game is done, because he felt that after we have been working on a project for so long, the new thing we come up with will definitely shock the world, and he wants to be the first witness."

"That's fine." Ethan nodded.

Since both parties already knew these things, then they just copied it. Besides, Ethan didn't think the two would object. After all, when they were selling Apple II last year, they gave Snake for free. Ethan had already given the game copyright to them for marketing, so it should be reasonable for his product to borrow from the design of Apple II, right?

Even if there are problems, the two parties can just get a patent mutual authorization and it will be resolved.

There's nothing we can do about it. Who lets him, as the game maker, control the production tools for making games?

This is the advantage of industry tandem!

Hehe ~
After solving the problem of the host computer, Ethan turned his attention back to the five and a quarter disk containing "Contra".

"Does this game really need 128KB?" He was still a little skeptical.

Or maybe he didn't want to believe it.

Evelyn also knew that it was difficult for Ethan to accept this fact, so she stood up, walked to the desk in the study, and took out a stack of thumb-length documents from the drawer.

This behavior made Ethan lean over to take a look, and when he cast his eyes on the paper, the production ideas of "Contra" appeared before him.

Caressing the manuscript of ideas that she had written while making the game, Evelyn asked, "Ethan, do you remember how big the index range of 6502 is? That is, the upper limit of the eight-bit CPU?"

“Two hundred and fifty-six,” Ethan remembered. “You told me before.”

“While working on Pac-Man.”

"Yes, two hundred and fifty-six." Evelyn nodded and said, "And all the graphic materials of the entire game can only be bound to this. In other words, I still use the 0-255 index as before. Of course, I didn't use so many materials when I actually made it."

"But this number is easy to calculate, so I'll use it as an example."

"Since the size of these pixel slices is 8×8, and each pixel slice can be mixed with four colors, the code that indexes it is basically written in 2 bits. In this case, the size of a pixel slice is actually 8×8×2 bits, 16 bytes."

“When we have 256 assets, our entire asset library is 256×16 bytes, which equals 4096 bytes, or 4KB in size.”

“And when a library of material costs 4KB…”

"128KB for a game, that's not too much, right?"

"After all, our resolution is 256×240."

After Evelyn's explanation, Ethan finally understood why this game was so big.

他们机器的分辨率是256×240的，当游戏铺满整个屏幕时，需要的像素片就有（256÷8）×（240÷8），也就是32×30，960个。

Since these things are indexed from the material library, one is 1 byte, so a screen image is 32×30×1 byte, which is 960 bytes.

Therefore, the longer the map is, the more indexes are needed. For example, Evelyn made about fifteen full screens in the first level, with a total size of 15×960 bytes, about 14KB. The whole game has seven levels, an average of ten full screens, and the map alone is 67KB.

Of course, if you do this, the game Evelin can even be more than 200 KB. In order to compress the map size, she has even optimized it and marked all objects with abstract paintings, such as Attackers' bunkers, doors, alien eggs, and bosses are all marked independently, and then only the appearance positions of these special objects are saved in the level data. The size of an object is 2 bytes.

In addition to retaining a large amount of background, enemy, and other character information, such as the random location of ammunition, she compressed the seven-level map to about 45KB.

In this case, how is 128KB used?
It's very simple, with all kinds of sound effects and an extremely exaggerated plot.

These things take up nearly 30KB of storage.

Ethan was so confused after hearing this fact.

As he was flipping through the crafting book and listening to his sister's chatter, he suddenly discovered a bright spot like a blind monk, "Evelyn, wait a minute." He interrupted his sister.

"You mean... the reason this game is so big is because I wrote so much?"

He was in disbelief.

"Yes."

Evelin nodded seriously.

"..."

This fact left Ethan speechless.

Good guy!
So you blame me for everything!
But the next second, he shook his head again, feeling something was wrong.

Is the game so big because it has so much story?
That's easy!
Wouldn’t it be better to just chop these things down?

Grass!
Is it that simple?

wrong!

I'm such a genius!

Note: ① The cost suppression described in the article is the way Nintendo actually does it. I have already noted that Yamauchi Hiroshi forced the use of Ricoh's cheap chips when there were no cheap chips, so I will not repeat it here. ② The memory chips were very expensive back then. According to the incomplete information I found, a 32KB ROM could sell for more than 128 US dollars in the early 1978s. Of course, this was Intel's price. Other companies such as Toshiba, General Motors, and Nintendo would be cheaper, but they would still cost more than 64 US dollars. Shigeru Miyamoto was really forced to do this. The 2364KB "Contra" described in the article could have been forced to go on the market if it was to be made into a cartridge in 75, because Intel had already launched a 150KB ROM that year, with the product code , but when it was first launched, they sold it for US dollars. This thing was only affordable for arcade machines, and individuals could not afford a game cartridge that cost US dollars. It is said that this is also the reason why Yamauchi Hiroshi engaged in disk peripherals and cooperated with Philips. Sony, for example, really made a lot of money by selling optical discs.

[Correction]: There was a slight problem with the notes about Pac-Man in the previous chapter. I said that the 6502 had a design flaw, and then the players who completed Pac-Man took advantage of this design flaw. I wrote this news wrong. The 6502 did have a design flaw, but Billy Mitchell, who got the highest score through Pac-Man, did it, and neither he nor Namco said. This is a question raised by outside players and the media. They said that Mitchell used a bug called "phantom read" to complete the game, which is to block the CPU with meaningless instructions.



(End of this chapter)