Secretly Advancing Along Another Route

A new source of revenue! The moment he mentioned that, the shareholders were wide awake. Even those who had been whispering below fell silent.

Over the past year, they had seen Takuya's ability to make money firsthand. Projects like the handheld version of Tetris had brought in massive flows of materials, allowing Sega shareholders who held stakes in suppliers to make a fortune. Meanwhile, Fatal Fury and the Sega Esports Tournament had left shareholders with arcade businesses under their control grinning from ear to ear. Not to mention that most shareholders had benefited, to varying degrees, from Sega's distributors.

That was the power of a blockbuster that could make the pie bigger.

"As for the specific projects, I'll explain them in detail at the next planning meeting. I won't take up everyone's time here."

After saying that, Takuya bowed and left the conference room.

The conference room fell silent once more.

Seeing that no one voiced an opinion, Nakayama Hayao took the lead. "What does everyone think of Takuya's report just now?"

Whispers began to spread through the conference room. Some nodded from time to time, but others still had their brows tightly furrowed.

Without waiting for the shareholders to discuss it much longer, Nakayama Hayao rose to his feet and said:

"From the day Sega was founded, it has never been a company that blindly followed old ways."

"We dare to place bets where others see nothing, and we dare to challenge powerful opponents."

"That is Sega's DNA!"

"The esports tournament will prove that we have the ability to create trends and ignite the market's passion."

"And the next-generation 16-bit console will be the platform that carries our greater ambitions and truly shakes Nintendo's hegemony!"

He slammed his palm onto the table, producing a dull bang.

"In my capacity as president and major shareholder, I propose a vote on the resolution: effective immediately, accelerate the development plan for the 16-bit home console!"

"Who is in favor? Who is opposed?"

Nakayama Hayao's gaze swept across every director like a blade.

The conference room was utterly silent. No one raised another objection.

Nearly half the shareholders raised their hands in agreement without much hesitation. The rest, after a struggle, slowly raised theirs as well.

The resolution passed unanimously!

After coming down from the top-floor conference room at headquarters, Takuya returned to Development Team Three and found Yu Suzuki there.

"Suzuki-san, what brings you over here? Aren't you developing Out Run?"

Takuya asked as he filled his teacup with water.

"Didn't I hear you were called up to the top-floor conference room? So, how did it go? Any new arrangements?"

Yu Suzuki rubbed his hands together and asked eagerly.

Takuya said with an amused look, "Probably. Just wait for the official notice. We'll definitely have to sign nondisclosure agreements."

"Oh, oh, oh! Yoshi!"

Yu Suzuki let out two strange cries. He knew this was already the limit of what he could get out of Takuya, so he hurriedly returned to Team Two.

Once Takuya had sent Yu Suzuki away, Development Team Three's leader, Shimizu, and the other team members gathered around him and asked, "Nakayama-san, are we getting another new project?"

"Yeah, helping out the other teams all this time has been too boring."

Takuya looked at the people gathered around him, set down his teacup, and pressed both hands downward to signal for silence.

"I won't say much. This week, wrap up the work you have on hand. Understood?"

"Yeahhh!"

"I knew it!"

The group shouted excitedly as they returned to their workstations and continued working. Their enthusiasm was even higher than before.

By Friday, before the new planning meeting, there was a hardware development meeting.

At the meeting, Takuya explained to the Hardware Development Department and the leaders of each game development team the concept he had presented at the shareholders' meeting: using the System 16 arcade board as the foundation and the Motorola 65000 CPU as the core.

"That is the general outline of the 16-bit home console development plan based around the System 16 arcade board that I presented to the shareholders. Since the company developed Hang On and Fatal Fury, everyone here has refined and upgraded the pre-System 16 board into the System 16. You are all already very familiar with this board and the Motorola 65000 CPU. I imagine many of you understand their performance limits even better than I do."

Seeing that everyone basically nodded in agreement, Takuya continued, "Those of you in the Hardware Development Department should be able to roughly estimate the prices of the Motorola 65000 and these memory chips two years from now. The 65000 is being used in more and more applications, and its production volume is increasing as well. Its price-to-performance ratio should reach a fairly suitable range in two years."

"At that point, the production cost of our 16-bit home game console and the cost of porting arcade games will give us plenty of room to maneuver on price when promoting the console."

"Our Hardware Development Department approves of this development approach. For the other components, we will also try to use models that are relatively mature now and will likely have sufficient room for price reductions in about two years. That will allow us to quickly establish a reliable and stable game development environment, so the game development teams can begin preparing major titles to support the launch as early as possible." The head of the Hardware Development Department had clearly come prepared. They had no reason to pass up a project where they could demonstrate their value and the practical risks were low.

The leaders of the other development teams also stated that once they finished their current projects, they would immediately begin developing games centered on the System 16 board.

Thus, word quietly spread that "Sega has seen the outstanding performance of the System 16 board and will increase its investment in game development for System 16." Meanwhile, the Hardware Development Department's home console development was packaged as a project to develop a new generation of light guns—after all, Nintendo's NES game Duck Hunt sold even better in North America than it did in Japan.

"Sega is going all in on arcades." Most people at Nintendo and third-party game developers thought so. After all, Sega's advantage in arcades was simply too great, just as Nintendo's position in the home console market was.

However, Yamauchi Hiroshi did not let down his guard. The performance of Nakayama Takuya's first two games alone had left him deeply impressed.

Nakamura Masaya of Namco and Kozuki Kagemasa of Konami, the two presidents who also did not fully believe it, felt the same.

They had all been dealt heavy blows by Takuya, directly or indirectly. Like hell they believed him!

Sometimes, they even sighed that ever since Nakayama Takuya joined Sega, Sega had become crafty. It was no longer the straightforward boy it used to be. Having heavy punches was one thing, but it also hid its intentions behind layers of feints and misdirection. It had no martial virtue at all.

Thus, under Yamauchi Hiroshi's orders, Nintendo still stepped up its investigation and infiltration of Sega in hopes of obtaining information that could not be uncovered openly. In the short term, however, those efforts were doomed to be fruitless. Immediately after the shareholders' meeting, the Hardware Development Department had signed nondisclosure agreements. The internal minutes of the hardware development meeting mentioned only System 16 game development and promotion, along with the new light gun development plan. No information whatsoever about developing a new 16-bit home console was left on paper.