Tokyo, top floor of Sega Headquarters.
The fax machine spat out a stack of papers still warm to the touch.
The assistant quickly straightened the pages, clipped them into a blue folder with several freshly developed photos from the factory, and hurried toward the president's office.
Nakayama Takuya leaned back in his broad leather chair, reading a North American sales summary.
A knock came at the door.
"Come in."
The assistant entered and set the folder on his desk. "President, this is the report from the Shenzhen contract factory. It came in half an hour ago. The first trial-production batch of GP2 units arrived in Tokyo on the morning flight and went straight to the Hardware Laboratory on the fifth floor."
Nakayama Takuya put down the sales summary and opened the folder.
On top was a printed photograph.
It showed the spacious, brightly lit workshop at Sega's Shenzhen contract factory.
Several assembly lines were running at full speed.
Terauchi wore a full white cleanroom suit, mask, and antistatic cap. Calipers in hand, he carefully measured a handheld shell that had just come off the line.
Behind him, a neat row of gray units sat on an inspection table.
"Terauchi looks pretty sharp in that outfit." Nakayama Takuya chuckled.
The assistant smiled and continued. "Director Terauchi has been working around the clock for nearly a week. Sharp's first batch of custom screens arrived in Shenzhen the day before yesterday. Since it's the first batch, he wanted to be sure everything went right. He took a team onto the production line to oversee assembly and keep the initial defect rate and material waste down."
Nakayama Takuya turned to the second page.
The report was packed with figures: the first batch's yield rate, assembly time, screen-bonding pass rate, and more.
The numbers looked