Sony's Lead-the-Way Party

"It's true that it's powerful, but it's too expensive." Ken Kutaragi shook his head. "SNK's ambitions are too big. They want to bring arcade machines directly into people's homes. Selling a machine for 60,000 to 70,000 Japanese yen and a cartridge for 30,000 Japanese yen is treating game consoles as luxury goods. Moreover, these people are ambitious and hard to control. What we need is widespread adoption, not decorations for nouveau riche living rooms. That's the lowest priority."

Another cross.

"Only Capcom Namco remain."

"Capcom is very pragmatic." Ken Kutaragi's tone softened somewhat. "I heard they're releasing a new CPS-2 Board this year. The technology is solid, and they don't have any ambitions to make consoles; they just want to focus on selling games. It's a good backup plan. But if we're going to gamble on 3D—"

His fingers tapped heavily on the name "Namco".

"Namco is the best choice."

Ken Kutaragi's eyes gleamed with the excitement of a tech enthusiast seeing his kindred spirits. "These guys used to work with Atari on 3D technology. Their expertise in 3D is no less than Sega's. Have you seen their System 21 Board? That's what they produced after parting ways with Atari. Their Winning Run and Sega's VR Racing were neck and neck. More importantly, Namco and Nintendo have a long-standing feud."

The executives present all exchanged knowing smiles. It was no secret in the industry that Namco, as one of the earliest manufacturers to support the Famicom, was later exploited the most by Nintendo's unfair terms.

"I also lean towards Namco," the previously silent technical lead added. "They previously collaborated with NEC on PC-E. While they had ambitions, those were ambitions based on technological confidence, much easier to control than SNK's blind arrogance. Furthermore, if we could jointly develop an architecture that allows their arcade games to be ported to PiayStation at low cost and without loss of performance..."

superior----"

"Then they're very likely to agree to cooperate with us," Ken Kutaragi. "We can do a joint development project with Namco. Based on the PlayStation architecture, we can develop a universal arcade board. This way, they can develop a game once, making money from arcades, and also seamlessly port it to our consoles to sell software. Namco dominates the arcade market, Sony dominates the home console market. I believe Nakamura Masaya will seriously consider such a cooperation."

Norio Ohga understood. This was a tactic of using someone else's strength against them.

By leveraging Namco's technical expertise to improve Sony's hardware, and simultaneously using Sony's R&D capabilities to reduce the marginal cost of Namco's arcade machines.

"Very good." Norio Ohga made the final decision. "Namco is the tentative choice. Kutaragi- kun, you go and negotiate personally."

"Hi." Ken Kutaragi closed the folder, feeling his blood start to boil.

One week later, at Sega Headquarters.

Nakayama Takuya tossed a freshly printed copy of the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun onto his desk. A barely noticeable headline appeared in the corner of the front page. "Nintendo's Super Famicom-CD Peripheral Development Plan Seems to Have Been Shelved."

"I knew it." Nakayama Takuya crossed his legs, twirling a ballpoint pen in his hand. "That old man Yamauchi Hiroshi is like a greedy pig, only taking in and never giving out. Get him to give half of the Super Famicom to Sony? Unless Mario changes careers and becomes a sewer cleaner."

Sitting across from him, Yu Suzuki was staring blankly at the news. "But Takuya, didn't I hear they just signed an agreement a while ago? Minoru Arakawa was even popping champagne in Chicago."

"The agreement was signed to keep Sony on a leash, not to make the dog eat at the table." Nakayama Takuya scoffed, leaning forward. "Suzuki -san, think about it, how does Nintendo make money?"

"Game software?"

"Wrong, it's this plastic casing." Nakayama Takuya picked up a Mega Drive cartridge and weighed it in his hand. "More accurately, it's the control within this plastic casing. Royalty fees, cartridge production costs, approval fees—through this whole process, Nintendo can easily pocket 30% of the profits. If it were a CD-ROM, the cost of a disc is only a few hundred Japanese yen, anyone can press discs, so how could Nintendo hold them back? How could they collect tolls?"

Yu Suzuki seemed to understand something. "So they never intended to release CD peripherals at all?"

"We'll definitely push it, after all, we need to keep an eye on our Mega-CD," Nakayama Takuya shrugged. "But definitely not now, and certainly not in the way Sony wants. Nintendo's current strategy is clear: keep Sony in check, stall them, and wait until the Super Famicom cartridges sell for another two or three years before squeezing out the last bit of profit. As for that so-called Super Famicom-CD, it's just a carrot dangling in front of a donkey's eyes."

At that moment, the door was pushed open, and Tanaka, the head of the Marketing Department, strode in, his face beaming with a gloating expression.

"Takuya, the news is confirmed." Tanaka plopped down on the sofa, unbuttoning his suit jacket. "Our sources in Kyoto say that Nintendo's Hardware Department has lowered the priority of the SFC-CD project to the lowest level. Apparently, Yamauchi Hiroshi was furious at an internal meeting, saying that this kind of carrier, with its snail-paced loading speed, simply cannot meet the current game loading speed requirements."

"Ha, that's quite a plausible reason," Nakayama Takuya chuckled.

Nintendo's move was indeed ruthless.

On the surface, it's due to technical reasons—slow reading speed and loading time—which was indeed a common problem with early optical disc players, contradicting the smooth experience of simply inserting and playing.

But at its core, it was all about maintaining the absolute dominance of Super Famicom cartridges.

Nintendo holds several exclusive data compression technologies and special chip patents (such as the DSP chip commonly used in Super Famicom cartridges), which allows them to cram amazing visual effects into limited cartridge capacity.

As long as the storage medium remains unchanged, this technological barrier will remain unbroken, leaving third-party manufacturers with no choice but to obediently pay Nintendo's high-priced cartridges.

"What's Sony's reaction?" Nakayama Takuya asked.

"It's very quiet." Tanaka frowned. "Too quiet. Logically speaking, after being played like this, Norio Ohga's temper should have been furious by now, but Sony hasn't made a sound at all. They even canceled the planned joint press conference and only issued a perfunctory postponement announcement."

"A barking dog doesn't bite." Nakayama Takuya's smile faded, his eyes turning cold. "Naka, this is the most dangerous thing. Nintendo thinks they've played a fool, but they don't realize they've unleashed a real monster."

He stood up and walked to the window to look at the street scene of Tokyo.

The wheels of history took a turn here, only to roll back into the original tracks.

Nintendo's arrogance and greed drove Sony to the brink of ruin, but also forced it to find a way out.

If Sony hadn't been pushed to this point, Ken Kutaragi wouldn't have had the chance to create the revolutionary PiayStation.