: Conspiracy?

Chapter 89: Conspiracy?

Three hours later, at Palo Alto's home.

Wearing an apron, Ethan, busy in the kitchen, took out four eggs, cracked them into a bowl, and then poured in some fresh milk.

After mixing well, strain out any unmixable foam and egg strands using a sieve. Then, heat a pan and melt a tablespoon of butter.

Pour the egg mixture into the pan and simmer over low heat until it is about 70-80% cooked. Then turn off the heat and stop cooking.

Sprinkle white pepper over the fluffy, smooth, and creamy scrambled eggs, then remove from the pan, plate them, and serve them in the restaurant.

When Ethan brought the last dish of scrambled eggs to the table, a sumptuous dinner with steak, salad, soup, and scrambled eggs was complete!

If this were his past life, after preparing this fragrant dinner, Ethan would definitely have taken out his phone, snapped a picture, and posted it on social media. He would have wanted all his friends to know that his cooking skills were pretty good!

But now, without the internet and social media platforms, we can only entertain ourselves and appreciate our own lives.

Oh wait!

There are clearly people nearby!

Why is there absolutely no feedback?

"Hey~hey~hey~ Give me a reaction! Dinner's all done!"

Looking at the figure beside him, engrossed in reading the documents, Ethan snapped his fingers.

This call made Evelyn, who was sitting at the dining table, look up abruptly.

She first looked at Ethan blankly, then lowered her gaze and instinctively glanced at the table. When the beautifully plated and enticingly fragrant dishes appeared, she instantly realized what was going on and belatedly praised, "Oh, Ethan, are you done? This must have been really hard work for you~"

"..."

"That's so perfunctory."

Ethan pursed his lips, his unhappiness written all over his face.

Evelyn understood immediately and quickly changed her tune, clasping her hands together in front of her and widening her eyes to appear sincere.

"Oh my God—what a sumptuous dinner—and it's all my favorite dishes—"

"Oh, Ethan—did you do all this especially for me? Oh, thank you so much—"

"..."

Ethan felt suffocated by the insincere manner.

And that deliberately affected voice gave Ethan a hint of tea.

"Okay, okay, okay."

Unable to bear it any longer, he raised his hands in surrender, "Evelyn, please let me go. I don't need your praise anymore. Let's eat."

Ethan placed the sterilized cutlery and spoons on the plate and pushed it in front of Evelyn.

Evelyn chuckled at his helpless expression.

He got up and moved his chair.

The girl plopped down next to Ethan.

He then shook the documents in his hand and explained with a smile, "Oh, Ethan, don't be angry. It's not that I want to ignore you, it's just that the proposed solutions in these two cooperation agreements really surprised me."

"Really!" she emphasized. "The terms in these two proposals are outrageous! Fifteen million US dollars? A twenty million US dollar contract just like that? Wow! Are they just rich? Or do other countries in the world really have such a large gaming market?"

Yes, after Evelyn came home from school, Ethan handed her the letter of intent for cooperation between Sega and Nintendo.

After all, Snake Game isn't just his game; if it were to be released overseas, Evelyn would definitely know about it.

His caution earned Evelyn's seriousness, but as for the girl to open the document and read it carefully...

That dazed look from just now appeared.

Because he knew the whole story, Ethan stopped caring.

Ethan moved Evelyn's plate back in front of her, and then picked up his knife and fork to cut his steak.

He added, "Of course, other countries also have huge gaming markets."

"After all, businessmen are profit-driven. If a deal isn't profitable, why would they come to me?"

"Are you just giving us money for free?"

"Isn't this just insane?"

"That makes sense." Evelyn thought Ethan's words made sense.

"So what are your thoughts on this?" the girl asked.

She added, "I assume you don't intend to operate this business yourself?"

"At least at this stage, you shouldn't have it?"

Evelyn was absolutely right!

Ethan is genuinely planning to sell the overseas distribution rights for "Snake Game".

It's not that he doesn't want to do it himself, but that they don't yet have the capability to do so.

"certainly!"

As Ethan forked the cut steak onto Evelyn's plate, he nodded and said, "We're not in a position to talk about operating our own overseas operations yet. I already knew this when I worked at Mirova. Sega spent fifty years and over twenty million dollars to build a fully equipped arcade production line in Liben and Southeast Asia. That kind of time and money expenditure is something we can't afford."

"As for setting up a factory directly without considering the concerns?"

"That's even more impossible."

"After all, the last Atari to rashly open a branch..."

"They've already blown it up."

After the huge success of "Pong", Atari founder Nolan Bushnell felt that he was the chosen one.

So he set his sights on exporting games, hoping to seize global profits.

The first target was Liben, whose national economy was performing very well.

However, after they confidently established a branch in Liben and poured millions of dollars into it, they discovered that Liben was a very closed market that did not welcome strangers to invest at all.

Their rash actions violated the business norms there, and they subsequently faced strong sanctions and boycotts.

then……

Atari had no choice but to accept the loss and leave the market.

When millions of dollars couldn't buy a corresponding market share, Ethan, who had no money in his pocket, naturally couldn't think about overseas distribution.

Ethan had told Evelyn this story before.

So when he brought it up again, Evelyn, recalling all of this, immediately laughed.

"Yeah~Yeah~Yeah~"

"I see."

"So you're trying to cross the river by touching the corpse of Atari?"

"Why not?" Ethan said in a serious tone, "Our peers have already set a bad example. All we can do is pay the highest respect to their dedication and express our sincere regret for their failure."

At this point, Ethan winked at his sister.

"Hehehehe..." Evelyn was overjoyed by the sarcastic remark.

He tossed the file aside, picked up a knife and fork, and started eating his steak.

When the texture became nearly nine-tenths cooked, her brow furrowed instinctively.

She glanced at the cross-section of the steak, then at Ethan who was enjoying his meal, shook her head helplessly, and put the remaining half of the steak on her fork into her mouth.

"So, which company do you want to work with?" she asked vaguely.

This question did indeed come up to Ethan.

After swallowing the steak in his mouth, Ethan froze, a conflicted look on his face.

"To be honest, it's really hard to choose between these two."

"If we consider market breadth, I would choose Sega first. Because they not only have branches in Liben and Southeast Asia, but also have their own marketing outlets in Europe. Their global shipping capacity is definitely greater than Nintendo's."

"But if we're looking at the depth of a single market, I would choose Nintendo. Because Liben is the world's second-largest consumer video game market after North America. Deeply exploring this market can bring us greater profits, and Nintendo is a company with the ability to deeply explore the Liben market, because this company has been operating in Liben for almost a hundred years."

"What?" Evelyn was somewhat surprised by Ethan's words.

"Is Nintendo really that amazing?"

"I thought it was just an ordinary Liben Company!"

That's right. Americans at that time didn't really know Nintendo. Or rather, before Mario sparked that toilet-fixing craze, very few people in America had ever heard of Nintendo.

But that's normal.

After all, Nintendo at that time was still focused on developing the Liben market and had not yet officially extended its reach to America.

But... the native inhabitants' lack of understanding didn't mean Ethan, the time traveler, would ignore it. While organizing his memories, he explained to his sister the awesomeness of Nintendo—

"Nintendo was founded in the last century. At its peak, it could even be said to have monopolized the entire Riben playing card market."

"After reaching the pinnacle in a single field, they tried to expand into new businesses, introducing our country's playing cards to Liben. Since no company in Liben had ever done business in playing cards before, their introduction naturally gave them an inherent monopoly advantage."

"Not only that, they also partnered with Disney, obtaining a license to print Disney's classic cartoon characters on playing cards. In this way, they achieved great success in the playing card industry."

"Then, they focused on research in the toy field and tried to develop toys. One of their engineers, Gunpei Yokoi, invented several toys that sold more than a million units in a single year. For example, the light gun that came with the Milo Odyssey was invented by him. This one product alone could bring Nintendo tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year."

"WTF? They made the light guns for Milrohua?" Evelyn was very surprised by this news.

Ethan smiled and nodded, saying, "Yes, they made that light gun."

The light gun the two men were talking about was actually a light gun peripheral from shooting video games.

When a target appears on the TV screen, the player holding the light gun aims and pulls the trigger to shoot and kill the target on the TV.

This technology looks advanced, but it already existed in the 1960s.

The inventor was Gunpei Yokoi.

"Wow...this is really...unbelievable..." Evelyn exclaimed.

She hadn't expected Nintendo to be so amazing.

As Ethan recounted his story, curiosity arose in her mind. "Ethan, how do you know so much?"

Although it was a question, she also offered her own guess: "You didn't start following them while you were working at Mirowa, did you?"

"I guess so," Ethan smiled at his sister.

"So you mean you're choosing Nintendo?" Evelyn continued to ask.

The next second, she came up with a new question.

"Wait a minute, didn't you notice that Sega and Nintendo's appearances are a bit odd?"

"Why did they all appear at the same time? And why did they all simultaneously purchase the publishing rights to 'Snake Game' from us?"

"I don't know why Sega would appear at this time, but I wonder... could Nintendo's appearance be related to Mirova?"

"After all... you're the one who disgusted them?"

Evelyn frowned slightly, cautiously guessing.

These words made Ethan laugh. "Oh, sister, I think you're overthinking it."

"Milo doesn't have that ability. They don't have the power to influence Nintendo, as you say."

In fact, the successive appearances of Nintendo and Sega also puzzled Ethan.

He didn't understand why these two companies would coincidentally appear at the same time and both want to buy the game distribution rights from him.

But after he cleared away his memories of his past life, he felt that it was probably just a coincidence.

Because in his previous life, he had learned about Nintendo in class.

If he remembered correctly, it was a course on financial investment. During the class, the teacher introduced them to the high-performing stocks that government pension funds in various countries held for a long time. When talking about Liben, the teacher specifically mentioned Nintendo.

For many years, Nintendo has been the second most profitable company in the country, after Toyota.

After more than a decade of consistently exaggerated price-to-earnings ratios, analyzing their development process naturally becomes something that financial professionals enjoy doing.

There's no way around it; finance is an industry where you have to find patterns even when there are none.

Through his teacher's analysis, Ethan also understood why Nintendo was successful.

In fact, this success can be summarized in a single sentence—

Hug a powerful patron.

Because the Yamauchi family, who created Nintendo, started out alongside the Mitsui zaibatsu!

After that, when selling Hanafuda (flower cards), they directly latched onto the coattails of Murai Kichibei, the tobacco tycoon of Ritsumoto!

When Ethan recalled this fact, he realized that he had been worrying too much.

No matter how awesome Milrova is, or how dissatisfied people are with him, he still can't move Nintendo!

Since Nintendo doesn't make games, it's essentially a monopolistic enterprise!

Mirova wants to direct it?

You might as well get a key made!

Does it deserve it?

As for Sega...

They were just sued by Mirohua, so how could they possibly cooperate amicably?

Of course, Ethan couldn't tell Evelyn about this.

He could only say that the probability of the whole thing being manipulated by Mirova was very low.

As for Evelyn...

She wasn't interested in this kind of corporate gossip either.

After Ethan had already taken note of these matters, she stopped worrying about anything else, simply nodded slightly to indicate that she understood, and then said directly, "Since you think it's okay, then you can make the decision yourself. Just let me know when you need to sign."

"Are you sure?" This simple response was exactly what Ethan had expected.

Because he knew that Evelyn hated these kinds of business negotiations.

But at the same time, he jokingly said, "Aren't you afraid I'll sell you off?"

"Do you dare?" Evelyn rolled her eyes and clenched her left fist.

"I dare not."

"Hmph~" Evelyn hummed twice, as if celebrating her victory.

With Ethan backing down, he also put away his playful mood and revealed his plans—

"Evelyn, this is actually what I think."

"The Liben distribution rights for Snake Game will be handed over to Nintendo, while the distribution rights for all other games except North America and Liben will be handed over to Sega."

"If they accept, that's the best news; if Sega doesn't accept..."

"Then we'll have no choice but to strategically abandon markets in other countries and regions."

"After all, together with North America and Liben, we already account for more than 80 percent of the global video game market share. Choosing Sega for the remaining scattered market is not a worthwhile move."

Evelyn had no objection to Ethan's choice.

So, the next day after arriving at work, Ethan dialed the phone number of David Rosen, the founder of Sega.

When he offered his suggestion, David Rosen was displeased and refused Ethan's leftovers in a harsh tone.

Furthermore, he stated that all other terms were negotiable, except for the global agency clause, as it was their bottom line.

This outcome left Ethan quite disappointed.

Since they couldn't reach an agreement, they had no choice but to part on bad terms. When Ethan dialed the number left by Hiroshi Yamauchi, he learned that they had been selected and arrived at the Stanford Industrial Area within half an hour.

"Oh, Mr. Jones, we're so glad you chose Nintendo!"

Hiroshi Yamauchi expressed his excitement to Ethan.

"I hope we can have a pleasant collaboration in the future."

Ethan extended his hand and shook it.

Although Ethan had reached an agreement with Nintendo on cooperation, it would be three days before they actually signed the contract.

The reason is actually quite simple: Liben Company is very particular about the wording when signing contracts.

They always prefer to make some written statements for unclear terms.

Therefore, a contract that could be resolved in a few dozen pages is often stretched to hundreds of pages by them, and that's the nature of their craftsmanship...

Ethan was actually quite helpless.

However, he doesn't need to get involved in this negotiation; there are external lawyers providing services, and he only needs to review the contract after it's drafted.

This relaxation during the wait is a silver lining amidst the bad news.

Of course, Ethan didn't sit idle during the three days he was waiting to sign the contract.

While holed up in his office, he wrote down all the ideas for the game "Pac-Man".

From the gameplay to the monster design, he even drew the corresponding game map on draft paper so that Evelyn could create the game more easily.

And when he finished all of this and handed over what he considered to be a near-perfect project proposal to Evelyn.

Evelyn's eyes widened as she scanned a few pages.

"Oh, Ethan—is this your new idea?"

"Yeah~ Isn't that amazing?" Ethan asked with a smile.

"This isn't just impressive, it's incredibly impressive!"

Evelyn exclaimed, "Oh my God—how could you come up with such an idea?"

"Evading enemy pursuit while collecting all the items in the maze? Wow—this idea seems even more interesting than Snake Game!"

"You're a fucking genius!"

This praise brought a smile to Ethan's face.

However, just when he thought the plan was finalized and game production was about to begin, Evelyn, who had flipped through a few pages, suddenly changed her expression.

"Evelyn, what's wrong? Is there a problem?" Ethan asked, somewhat puzzled.

Evelyn looked up again, giving Ethan a surprised look, and said, "Ethan, are you sure this game can be made?"

"What?" Ethan was puzzled; he didn't understand why Evelyn would say that.

Pac-Man was a game from that era, so he was certainly certain that the game could be made.

His question made Evelyn scratch her head, think for a moment, and then say, "Ethan, there's a problem with the game you designed."

"Or, from a technical point of view, the game you designed has a major bug."

"If I had to describe it, it would be that it doesn't conform to the rules of binary."

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Note: ① Atari entered the Japanese market in 1973, but exited in 1974 after incurring losses, selling the company to Namco for five million US dollars. This is why Namco later became Atari's distributor for Japanese products. This story comes from the book "The History of Silicon Valley." ② Nintendo was born with the genes for success. The great-grandfather of the Yamauchi family was already a lime merchant in Kyoto during the Edo period, backed by the Mitsui zaibatsu, so wealthy that he could afford to find a husband for his daughter. Nintendo's founder, Fusajiro Yamauchi, was that son-in-law, originally named Fukui. During Fusajiro's time, his family's lime shop was already the exclusive distributor for Mitsui in Kyoto. They supplied a large portion of the cement orders for Lake Biwa. This lime shop still exists today, named Haikō. They have undertaken many infrastructure projects for the Japanese government, including the Kyoto University Hospital and the Kyoto Aquarium. ③Kichibei Murai was known as the "Tobacco King" of the Meiji era. It is said that he made the first standard-issue cigarette of the Ritsumoto brand. He had a close relationship with Fusajiro Yamauchi. ④The patent for the light gun did indeed belong to Nintendo. Based on this alone, they earned 30 million US dollars a year in 1970.

P.S. Today should also be a chapter. When I was writing about Pac-Man creation, I mixed up the Pac-Man bug and the Space Invaders bug, so it was all for nothing.

(End of this chapter)