Nintendo had no idea that their engineers had become someone else's master. They were still immersed in the dream of selling the N64.
A month after the release of the N64, the total pre-orders for the N64 had exceeded 5 million units. This was almost equivalent to the sales of the PS in a year.
Such a satisfying victory naturally made Yamauchi extremely proud. He became extremely confident again. The name of the tyrant returned to the world.
Originally, after the PS surpassed Nintendo, although Yamauchi was extremely angry, he was a lot quieter. Even his attitude towards third parties was a lot better. There were even changes in many aspects of policies.
Obviously, Yamauchi wanted to stabilize the shaky confidence of the third parties by relaxing Nintendo's policies. However, after the amazing sales of 5 million N64 units a month, the arrogant Yamauchi returned.
On May 3rd, Nintendo suddenly received a visit from more than a dozen representatives of third party game manufacturers.
More than a dozen representatives of third party game manufacturers appeared together. This had never happened before. Obviously, these companies planned to join forces to put pressure on Nintendo.
When he heard the news, Yamauchi didn't even plan to meet them at first. However, under the persuasion of Miyamoto Shigeru and Iwata Satoru, he finally met with these third party game manufacturers.
After meeting, the third party game manufacturers' attitudes were very tactful and very humble. First, they congratulated the N64 on its amazing sales. Then, they said that they would always be on Nintendo's side. In any case, after all kinds of flattery, these third party game manufacturers made their somewhat humble request.
That was, they hoped that the future version of the N64 would use a disc drive instead of a cartridge.
To be honest, these third party game manufacturers were already on cloud nine because of the cartridge.
First of all, the cartridge's capacity was small, making it difficult to program. Not to mention the shortcomings of not having too much game content. The key was that the cartridge now faced another very serious problem, which was that the cost was too high.
The cost of a disc was very low. The retail price was only 200 yen per disc. But the cost of a game cartridge was much higher.
Originally, the cartridges in the F&C era were already very expensive. They cost 1,000 yen per disc … Anyway, that was what Nintendo said.
Regarding this, the third party game manufacturers accepted it.
But when it came to the N64 era, third-party manufacturers couldn't take it anymore. Because the capacity of the game cartridge was increased from the previous 4 MB to 64 MB, the production cost of the cartridge was also increased. Therefore, Nintendo told all the third parties under its company that in the future, the cost of the cartridge would be raised to 3,000 yen per cartridge. The remaining cost would be split equally between Nintendo and the third party manufacturers.
This caused all the third-party manufacturers to explode.
Previously, the average price of a game cartridge was 5,000 yen, so after deducting the 1,000 yen burning and cartridge costs, the third-party game manufacturers could still get 2,000 yen, so everyone could barely accept it.
However, when the cost of the game cartridge was raised to 3,000 yen, if it was still sold at 5,000 yen, then the profit that belonged to the third-party manufacturer would only be 1,000 yen, which was almost halved.
Someone said that they could increase the selling price of the game to maintain profits!
However, the problem was that ever since the launch of PS, the price of the game, which used to cost 5,000 yen per copy, dropped to around 4,500 yen per copy. This was also the reason why all the players praised it.
But if the price of the N64 game cartridge didn't drop but instead increased, it would undoubtedly be a huge blow to the players. The players would use their actions to tell you their choice.
Therefore, these third-party manufacturers proposed to change the media from cartridges to discs. This way, the cost of the game cartridges would be reduced, and their profits would be preserved.
In all fairness, these third-party manufacturers' requests were reasonable, because discs completely crushed cartridges in terms of capacity and cost. The only thing that Brucaine had was probably the reading speed. However, this was only because the reading speed of the discs was a little slow. When the game actually started running, the reading speed wouldn't be much slower.
"I understand everyone's thoughts, I will consider it, everyone please go back!" After listening to the requests of the dozens of third-party manufacturers, Yamauchi Pu said expressionlessly.
The people present weren't fools, what was the difference between Yamauchi Pu's attitude and rejection?
Go back and wait! They were afraid that even if they waited until the sky turned dark, they still wouldn't be able to wait for the discs.
"President Yamauchi, all the manufacturers are burning with anxiety, please give us a definite answer today so that we can be at ease and focus on developing new games for Nintendo!" One of the representatives said.
"I'm sorry, I still have to consider this problem from all aspects, I can't give you an answer in a short time. And even if we want to change the discs, won't the current N64 not be sold? "
"So according to industry practice, the soonest we can wait is two or three years before we release an improved version of the N64. At that time, we can consider the discs!" Yamauchi Pu's words instantly caused an uproar.
Two or three years!
Two or three years later, it would be too late.
"President Yamauchi, there's no need to change the equipment, we can use the external CD-ROM. As long as we plug in the cable, we can directly read the discs. It's not troublesome at all, we can do it immediately!" A voice said.
"Shut up, are you teaching me how to do things?" Yamauchi Pu's face suddenly turned gloomy, he stared fiercely at the guy who spoke, "I remember you, you're the president of the trojan horse game Chuanfu, right? I'm happy to inform you that all of your future games won't be approved by Nintendo!"
Yamauchi Pu said bluntly.
"You … you …" Chuanfu's face changed. He knew Yamauchi Pu's temper, once he gave the order to ban him, he would really be banned by Nintendo.
But so what if he was banned by Nintendo? The world was no longer the world it was five years ago, Nintendo was no longer the only company in the world, it was not like he didn't have any other way out.
So he simply turned hostile and said, "So what if I'm teaching you how to do things? You old fool, you really think you're a tyrant, you can't go back on your words. Let me tell you, if you don't release the discs today, all of us third parties will leave you in the future. I'll see how you're going to sell your games in the future with only your Nintendo HQ! "
"Today is the day that Nintendo will be defeated!"
"Get President Chuanfu out of here!" Yamauchi Pu didn't even look at the guy, he just asked him to leave, leaving behind a group of shocked representatives.
"Who else wants to teach me how to do things? You can do the same as him. Nintendo doesn't need to be a disloyal partner with us!"
"…" The audience was silent, no one answered.
"Alright, since everyone doesn't want to talk anymore, then let's end the meeting. In the future, don't mention anything about CDs anymore. Cartridges will always be the mainframe of choice. Discs are just temporary benefits. In the future, they will be abandoned by the market."
Yamauchi Pu was just short of saying that Nintendo would stick to cartridges for 100 years.
But in history, Nintendo was indeed like this, because until 2020, Nintendo's physical games were still cartridges. Nintendo had indeed managed to stick to cartridges for 100 years.
After all, someone in the future invented the TF card.
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