Minoru Arakawa's next words froze every pen mid-air.
"This SNES-CD will be jointly developed by Nintendo and our new partner, Philips," he paused, deliberately emphasizing the name. "The core CD-ROM drive technology will be fully licensed and technically guided by Philips."
*Philips?*
*Not Sony?*
The two words surged through everyone's minds like an electric current, plunging the room into a stunned silence.
The *Wall Street Journal* reporter whose tie Arakawa had straightened that morning felt his head spin. He suddenly remembered that Philips and Sony were the two giants who had established the CD technology standard! They were the titans holding the fundamental patents!
Nintendo had shaken off Sony and gone straight to the real power broker!
"Then—then what about the PlayStation that Sony announced this morning?" a reporter blurted out, unable to contain himself.
The question echoed the unspoken thoughts of everyone in the room.
Minoru Arakawa seemed to have anticipated this question. The smile on his face finally dropped its pretense, becoming sharp and clear.
"Regarding Sony Corporation and their... *innovative* product—"
He paused deliberately, savoring the breathless tension in the room, before dropping the bomb that would truly shake Chicago to its core, each word carefully enunciated:
"Nintendo of America will, effective immediately, unilaterally terminate all cooperation with Sony Corporation and revoke all licenses for the SNES-CD."
*Boom!*
If the room had been silent before, it was now an explosion of noise.
But before the reporters could even leap from their seats, Arakawa's cold, precise voice cut through the chaos like a surgeon's scalpel, dissecting Sony's most fatal vulnerability.
"Simultaneously, we have formally filed a lawsuit with the court, asserting that the trademark 'PlayStation'—including both ownership and usage rights—belongs exclusively to Nintendo. Until the court renders its verdict, Sony Corporation is prohibited from releasing any electronic entertainment products under the name 'PlayStation' or any similar designation."
Deathly silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The entire venue seemed to have been collectively petrified by some dark magic.
Then, like a volcanic eruption, all hell broke loose!
"My God!"
"Suing over trademark rights?! Is that even possible?!"
"Brutal! Fucking brutal! This isn't just a breakup—it's burning the other guy's birth certificate!"
*Cutting off the fuel supply!*
*This was the real deal!*
Sony could build machines and woo developers, but if they couldn't even use the name, their grand launch event that morning would become an international laughingstock!
Minoru Arakawa watched the crowd erupt into chaos—flashing cameras, shouting voices, and swaying figures—transforming into a perfect backdrop in his eyes.
He didn't utter another word.
With a slight bow, Minoru Arakawa turned and strode off the stage with effortless grace amidst the deafening chaos.
His figure vanished into the backstage darkness, leaving behind a scene of utter pandemonium after a moment of stunned silence.
"My God!"
"Quick! Grab the phones! Grab the phones!"
The reporters finally snapped out of their petrified stupor. Their first instinct wasn't to organize their thoughts, but to seize the nearest communication devices.
The public phone booths closest to the main stage instantly erupted into a brutal melee more savage than a rugby scrum.
"Get out of my way! I saw it first!"
"Fuck! Stop pushing! My notes! My notes!"
The *Wall Street Journal* reporter, leveraging his superior physique, shoved aside two colleagues, jammed a precious quarter into the coin slot, and dialed the newsroom number with trembling fingers.
"Headline! Change it! Throw out all that Sony PlayStation announcement crap from this morning!" he roared into the receiver, spittle flying against the phone booth glass. "Listen! Nintendo is suing Sony! Over the PlayStation name!"
A moment of silence hung on the other end of the line. The editor was clearly stunned by the news.
"Are you drunk? Aren't they allies?"
"Allies my ass! They've found a new lover! Philips! Yes, the Philips that sells light bulbs and razors!" The reporter felt his blood pressure spiking. "Sony's press conference this morning has become an international joke! A multi-million-dollar suicide attack!"
He slammed down the phone and leaned against the glass of the phone booth, gasping for breath. He felt more exhausted than after running a marathon.
Meanwhile, another wave of reporters who hadn't managed to get through on the phone charged toward Sony's exhibition booth with a clear objective.
But when they arrived, they found nothing.
The Sony exhibition area, which had been bustling with crowds and radiating futuristic technology just that morning, now held only a few shivering junior employees trying to maintain appearances.
The PlayStation prototype, quietly displayed in its glass case, seemed particularly ironic under the flashing cameras, like an expensive tombstone with no one to mourn it.
"Where's Ken Kutaragi? Get him out here!"
"Sony, what's your response to this? You've been played, you know that, right?"
The employees could only bow mechanically, repeating "No comment" like robots.
At the center of this storm, Ken Kutaragi was hiding in a vacant storage room at the convention center.
He gripped the phone receiver so tightly that the veins on the back of his hand bulged. Gone was the confident swagger he had displayed on stage that morning.
"Yes, President Oga," he said, his voice dry and hoarse, each word squeezed out as if through clenched teeth. "They knew all along... Minoru Arakawa was acting the whole time... The trademark—they're trying to seize the PlayStation trademark."
A long silence stretched from the other end of the line.
Kutaragi could almost feel the suffocating tension in the Tokyo headquarters' boardroom.
The flawless plan they had painstakingly crafted—the sharp dagger aimed at the giant's heart—had been snatched from their grasp at the final moment of triumph, turned against them, and plunged into their own hearts.
Meanwhile, a handful of particularly astute reporters had bypassed the gaming area entirely and headed straight for the home appliance section of the main exhibition hall, where they found the Philips booth.
The Philips booth was vast and brightly lit, exuding the characteristic elegance and composure of a European corporation. A blond, blue-eyed Dutch manager was smiling warmly as he demonstrated their latest electric shaver to a group of distributors.
"It perfectly contours to your face, providing the smoothest shave imaginable."
"Sir!" A reporter rudely interrupted him, shoving a recorder in his face. "What's Philips' comment on the SNES-CD project with Nintendo?"
The Dutch manager froze, staring at the frenzied reporters with bloodshot eyes, then at the razor in his hand, his face a mask of confusion.
"What CD? Sir, would you like to buy a razor? This new model is on sale."
The reporters exchanged bewildered glances.
It was like a conversation between a chicken and a duck.
The entire Chicago convention center had descended into chaos.
The air in the gaming area crackled with a bizarre, electric tension. Yesterday, people were debating 3DO's business model; this morning, they were marveling at Sony's performance beast. Now, every conversation converged on a single topic: Nintendo's stunning comeback.
No one cared about 32-bit technology or polygon rendering capabilities anymore.
The media and investors were fixated on the all-out war now playing out in the open, a battle to the death.
This was no longer mere business competition.
This was a blood feud, a vendetta that would end only with annihilation.
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