Hoshino rose to his feet, straightened the stack of fax papers, and slipped them back into the folder.
"Managing Director, there's one more thing." Reaching the door, Hoshino paused and looked back. "The equity transfer with TSMC has completed its final legal procedures. We secured an eight-percent stake in their new wafer fab project in Washington State."
"Excellent work." Nakayama Takuya gave an approving reply.
That meant Sega had secured a VIP ticket in advance for the coming battle over chip production capacity.
After Hoshino left, the office fell quiet once more.
Nakayama Takuya lifted his water cup for a sip, then casually opened his internal email, intending to finish the last few messages before heading home.
At the top of his inbox sat a June game sales brief copied over from the North American division.
He double-clicked it open with the mouse.
The data on the first few pages of the report was fairly ordinary.
Then, halfway through, the words Ghost in the Shell leaped into view.
On the eighteenth of last month, the "simultaneous VHS release" strategy led by Hisao Oguchi had officially gone into effect.
The game discs and VHS tapes distributed by Manga Entertainment had hit shelves simultaneously at one thousand Blockbuster stores across the United States, as well as major game retailers.
The offline channels had created a forced visual tie-in.
The sci-fi sections of video stores were plastered with game posters, while purchase and rental guides for the VHS tapes stood beside the counters in game shops.
The sales curve in the brief looked exceptionally good.
Rather than the steep first-week explosion of a traditional blockbuster title, it showed a steady rise with remarkable resilience.
The response from the North American market validated their earlier projections.
Quite a few sci-fi fans who rented the