"Oguchi." Takuya Nakayama interrupted him, pulling out the page with a close-up shot of the Jaguar controller and sliding it across the desk to his newly appointed deputy. "Forget the damn 64-bit for now. Take a look at this."
Oguchi Hisao paused, then lowered his gaze to the brick-like controller, its surface bristling with buttons.
"These numbers at the bottom..." Oguchi hesitated. "Are they for some kind of complex commands?"
"Who knows?" Takuya leaned back in his chair, chuckling softly. "The Trammell Family probably wants us to believe that playing their games requires growing a third hand—or just using your tongue."
Oguchi's lips twitched at the sudden, biting remark. His tense shoulders relaxed slightly, but the worry in his eyes remained: "But the marketing hype from these technical specs..."
"Parameters are just numbers. Experience is what truly captures players," Takuya Nakayama said, his smile fading as his fingers tapped absently on the table. "Who knows how they came up with that 64-bit claim?"
He paused, then looked up at Oguchi Hisao.
This future key player might still be adjusting to his new role, and this situation would serve as an excellent training ground.
"Still, given the hype they're generating, we can't afford to turn a blind eye." Nakayama pushed the stack of documents toward Oguchi. "I want you to handle this. Don't get hung up on their flashy marketing jargon. Dig deeper into their console's specs, track their company's activities over the past few years, and find out what their launch lineup will be."
"Yes, I'll contact the American branch immediately," Oguchi Hisao replied, quickly pulling out a notebook and scribbling furiously.
Kyoto, Nintendo Headquarters.
The steam rising from the teacups did little to dispel the tension in the conference room.
At the center of the table lay an urgent briefing document on the "Atari Jaguar."
"Atari..."
Yamauchi Hiroshi murmured the name, his voice low and guttural, as if he were chewing on a piece of stale, hardened mochi.
None of the senior executives dared to speak up.
How had Nintendo built its empire?
To put it bluntly, it was built on the ashes of Atari's collapse.
Even if the once-dominant giant of the global gaming industry was reduced to mere bones, as long as its logo still glowed, Nintendo would have to take it seriously.
After all, no one wanted to see the former emperor rise from his grave.
"What's Minoru Arakawa's take on this?" Yamauchi Hiroshi asked, his eyes sweeping over Gunpei Yokoi, who was responsible for hardware development.
Yokoi clutched the detailed information just faxed from the United States. His usually furrowed brow relaxed, and a faint, peculiar expression flickered across his face.
"Arakawa-san has confirmed it. The Atari of today is nothing like the Atari of old," Yokoi said, spreading several images across the table. "After Jack Tramiel acquired the company in 1984, all that remained was the name and a pile of unsellable inventory. This so-called 64-bit console might just be a gamble to inflate stock prices."
"Tramiel?" Shigeru Miyamoto interjected, recognizing the name. "The cheap calculator guy?"
"That's right," Gunpei Yokoi confirmed, pointing to the peculiar controller in the spy photos. "Take a look at this."
Everyone's attention shifted to the image.
It was a bulky black controller, its lower half crammed with a dense grid of twelve numeric buttons, as if someone had forcibly shoved a telephone base unit into the controller itself.
Miyamoto froze for half a second before bursting into laughter. "What kind of design is this? Are they trying to get players to play games or make phone calls?"
The tense atmosphere in the conference room instantly dissolved with this quip.
Yamauchi Hiroshi, hearing this, visibly relaxed his shoulders.
He picked up his teacup and gently blew on the floating leaves.
If it was just a hollow shell, there was nothing to fear.
"All specs, no soul," Yamauchi declared, his tone regaining its usual authoritarian pride. "Tramiel might be a shrewd businessman, but he doesn't understand games. After ten years, does he still think players will open their wallets just because he throws in more hardware? Without good games, even a supercomputer won't make anything fun."
He casually swatted the report aside, as if shooing away an annoying fly.
Meanwhile, at Sony Headquarters in Tokyo...
Unlike Nintendo, which approached the "challenger" with historical caution, Sony viewed the company more like a poorly executed comedy.
Although Terramir Technologies was not publicly traded and kept its finances tightly guarded, for a giant like Sony, with its formidable control over the electronic component supply chain, it was easy to see through the hardware manufacturer's facade.
By simply tracking their chip orders, order sizes, and payment cycles, the company's true financial state became crystal clear.
A comprehensive investigative report on Terramir Technologies lay spread across Oga Norio's desk.
There were no thrilling business secrets, only pages filled with dismal facts.
"Is this the company that claims to be revolutionizing the market with its 64-bit architecture?"
Ryoji Nakabachi flipped through the few thin pages of the fax in his hand.
The report was grim. The company's cash flow had been teetering on the brink of depletion for years, and its R&D budget was pitifully small—less than a single quarter's marketing expenses for Sony's Walkman division.
"Jack Tramiel is a shrewd master of cost control. Or, you could say, a miser," Nobuyuki Idei remarked, leaning against the window with a hint of amusement in his voice. "He was notorious for squeezing suppliers back in his Commodore days, and it seems he hasn't changed his ways since taking over Atari. Our sources in Silicon Valley report that many of the Jaguar's core components were compromised to save money. Its so-called '64-bit' architecture looks more like a marketing gimmick—two 32-bit chips crudely forced together."
Ken Kutaragi sat in a corner, idly fiddling with a Jaguar controller model he'd obtained from the United States.
At this, he tossed the brick-like object onto the center of the table.
Clang! The sound echoed sharply.
"This thing even smells like cheap plastic," Ken Kutaragi said, his contempt evident on his face as he gestured at the cluttered numeric keypad. "A phone keyboard on a controller? Do they think gamers want to order pizza while playing? Only outsiders who don't understand games would come up with such an anti-human design."
He stood up and walked to the whiteboard, where a diagram of the PlayStation's architecture was drawn.
"Hardware development is a money pit. Without hundreds of millions of dollars in continuous investment and top-tier chip customization capabilities, do they think they can just shout a few numbers and build a next-generation console?" Kutaragi scoffed, tapping the whiteboard twice with a marker. "This is an insult to engineers."
Oga Norio rubbed his temples.
He had initially worried that this "Jaguar" that had appeared out of nowhere might be a real threat. Now, it seemed to be nothing more than a paper tiger.
"Since he's just a broke opportunist, there's no need to waste our time on him."
Oga Norio closed the report and tossed it aside casually, as if discarding an expired supermarket flyer.
"Ignore Atari's blustering," Oga Norio said, looking up and scanning the room. His voice was quiet but carried an undeniable authority. "Sony's most important task right now is to complete the PlayStation."
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