Enix's Decision

"Enix's current financial situation is very healthy." Yasuhiro Fukushima stopped twirling his fountain pen and gave his view. "The Dragon Quest series has stable sales, and the manga publishing business is highly profitable. We don't need to sell ourselves off for short-term cash flow. I believe independence is Enix's bottom line."

The founder of Enix opposed Sony's shareholding proposal.

Honda Keiji opened another document. "Sega hasn't mentioned taking a stake. What they're offering is a complete development ecosystem. This is the technical department's evaluation report on the outsourcing list Sega provided."

He distributed the report to everyone. "After verification, quite a few small and medium-sized teams on the list have mastered Jupiter's low-level development tools. Sega has even helped them build common logic modules for RPGs. If we adopt Sega's plan, the 'core + outsourcing' model we're so proud of can operate seamlessly on the next-generation platform. Management costs won't increase, and project risks can still remain within a controllable range."

Yuji Horii carefully flipped through the technical report.

As a producer, what he cared about most was whether the game could be made, and whether it would be fun once it was made.

"Nintendo's N64 cartridges are too small in capacity, and the microcode is too hard to deal with." Yuji Horii gave his professional opinion. "If we insist on staying in Nintendo's camp, the development cycle for the new generation of Dragon Quest will be stretched out endlessly. Sega's disc medium and mature toolchain will let us focus our energy on the story and systems. From a developer's perspective, I lean toward Sega."

A brief silence fell over the conference room.

The strengths and weaknesses of the two proposals were already very clear.

Sony offered money and wanted control; Sega offered technology to keep them alive.

A young