As he spoke of this truly 3D masterpiece, a project into which he had poured his heart and soul, Shigeru Miyamoto's eyes shone with an astonishing brilliance. "The Information Development Department has set aside all other secondary tasks! Everyone is focused on this project! We've abandoned simple level stacking and are building a truly deep, freely interactable 3D box-garden world! We need time, but I promise you, it will absolutely revolutionize everyone's understanding of action-adventure games!"
"I'll give you all the time you need, and the funding will be unlimited!" Yamauchi Hiroshi waved his hand dismissively, cutting Miyamoto off. His tone was stern, leaving no room for negotiation. "The quality of The Legend of Zelda must be absolute perfection! I want the whole world to see how terrifyingly superior the lack of loading times on cartridges is in a truly real-time, interactive 3D world!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Also—" Yamauchi's voice trailed off slightly. A rare flicker of compromise crossed his usually arrogant eyes, but he quickly concealed it. "You're to personally visit those third-party developers who are currently starving. Especially Capcom and Namco."
Shigeru Miyamoto froze.
Have Nintendo's core first-party team take the initiative to contact third parties?
In the old days, when Nintendo dictated the terms, this would have been absolutely unthinkable.
"Sega is riding high on the success of Final Fantasy VII right now. All their channels and resources are being poured into Square, which means other developers are struggling. They're bound to be resentful," Yamauchi Hiroshi sneered, his eyes piercing through the market landscape. "Whatever concessions Sega is offering to win them over, Nintendo can match—and more! We can negotiate the royalties. We can even compromise on the cartridge production costs. The N64 can't rely on you alone, Miyamoto. We need more games to fill the gap during this transition period! We absolutely cannot let Takuya Nakayama, that old fox, lure all these developers over to Sega!"
Hearing the President's words, a wave of bitterness washed over Miyamoto, but it was quickly replaced by admiration for the old lion's ability to adapt to the times.
Nintendo is truly changing to win.
Miyamoto nodded firmly and drained the cold tea from the table. "I'll fly to Osaka this afternoon to meet with President Tsujimoto personally!"
Yamauchi Hiroshi picked up the gold Parker pen from the desk and scrawled his messy yet forceful signature on the red sales report, then pushed the document forward.
"Go and get it done. Tell them Nintendo is far from admitting defeat. This console war is not over yet!"
Minato Ward, Tokyo, Sony Headquarters Building.
In the redwood-paneled boardroom on the top floor, the air was so stifling it felt solid, making every breath a dull ache in the lungs.
Ken Kutaragi sat at the far end of the long table, his hand gripping a weekly North American market report freshly printed from the Finance and Marketing Departments.
He had squeezed it so hard that the edges were crumpled and stained with sweat.
Taking a deep breath, he slammed the report onto the polished solid wood table, the dull thud echoing with a chilling finality.
Opposite him, Sony's current president, Nobuyuki Idei, was staring down at the same set of data.
Idei's face was hidden in the shadows, backlit. He said nothing, only slowly reaching up to adjust the cold, gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"Jupiter's install base in North America and Japan saw another terrifying surge last week," Ken Kutaragi announced, breaking the suffocating silence. His blunt, engineer's temperament left him with no patience for pleasantries. His voice was hoarse, laced with anxiety. "The Final Fantasy VII effect is devastating. Sega's contract manufacturers can't even keep up with disc pressing. Meanwhile, PlayStation's sales growth has plummeted far below our absolute worst-case projections!"
Nobuyuki Idei picked up the Montblanc fountain pen from the desk, uncapped it, and drew a heavy, horizontal line across the report's glaringly red downward curve.
"How wide is the gap?" Idei's voice betrayed no emotion, yet it carried an unquestionable authority.
"It's widening—a chasm now," Kutaragi said, standing abruptly. He pointed to the bar chart on the report, his finger trembling slightly. "PlayStation and Jupiter launched around the same time. At first, even though we trailed in install base from day one, we managed to hold our own against Sega by using marketing and strategic positioning to mask our weak game lineup. But now? Sega is wielding Square as their trump card! In terms of first-party titles and third-party support, they've left us eating their dust!"
Nobuyuki Idei had been in office for nearly two years.
During this time, he had focused most of his energy on internal power struggles and cross-departmental integration, attempting to forcibly pivot Sony from a traditional hardware manufacturer into a multimedia entertainment empire.
He had just ousted Schulhof, Norio Oga's confidant, and taken full control of the North American operations. He was at the height of his power.
Yet, on the electronic entertainment front—a territory he had pinned his hopes on—PlayStation's current decline was like a rusted iron nail driven deep into his throat. He couldn't swallow it, and he couldn't spit it out.
Just then, the assistant pushed open the heavy double doors of the conference room.
Norio Oga walked in.
The current Chairman of Sony, though temporarily on the losing side of the power struggle, still maintained his characteristic composure, unruffled even as Mount Tai collapsed before him.
He took the seat next to Nobuyuki Idei, his sharp gaze sweeping across the reports on the table before settling on a sweat-drenched Ken Kutaragi.
Nobuyuki Idei and Norio Oga—two Sony titans who had fought a vicious, eat-or-be-eaten war within the Board of Directors—were now, for the first time, sitting at the same conference table, united by the existential crisis facing PlayStation.
"Sega won on content," Oga said, leaning back into his leather chair. His tone was calm, but his words cut straight to the bone. "That old fox Takuya Nakayama deliberately cleared the entire December stage for Square. And the result? Square sucked the market's attention and the players' wallets dry with a single, monstrous four-disc game."
Idei closed the report, crossing his hands on the table and tapping his fingers lightly against the back of his hand.
"The direction His Excellency Akio Morita set all those years ago was correct," Idei said suddenly, his voice tinged with a rare note of self-reflection. "Hardware is just the vessel; content is the core. Our strategy went astray. Our commitment to the console gaming market was never strong enough."
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