Assist

The two-week deadline passed in the blink of an eye.

On the day of the board meeting, Hatano wore a new suit, his hair combed without a single strand out of place, and sat down in his seat twenty minutes early.

In front of him lay a thick stack of data reports, all of them operational data from the Tijuana factory over the past year and a half—yield rates, labor cost comparisons, logistics turnover days, tariff savings breakdowns—every item marked out with perfect clarity.

Hatano went straight to the point from the very start.

He took apart the pain points of the North American cartridge supply chain one by one, from the shipping cycle out of Shenzhen, to the rise in trans-Pacific freight costs, to the congestion rate at California ports, speaking entirely with numbers.

When he finished, the conference room was quiet for several seconds.

The first to speak was Yamamoto from the Finance Department.

"Director Hatano, I have no objection to the data on the North American market. But the question is, after this line is built, how many years can it be used? Mega Drive sales are already going downhill, and Jupiter uses optical discs. If we spend a large sum building a cartridge production line, and three years from now optical discs fully replace cartridges, what happens to this line?"

What Yamamoto said was also the concern of quite a few people present.

Several directors exchanged glances and said nothing, but their attitude had already been expressed very clearly—wait and see.

Hatano's answer was direct. "Mega Drive sales are indeed declining, but third-party cartridge OEM orders haven't dropped much. As for handheld cartridge demand, that goes without saying. GamePocket's installed base is right there. The number of cartridges this group of users consumes every year is