Rebirth of Hong Kong’s Glorious Era - Chapter 118

After eating, Akita Masako took Li Wansui to a small memorial hall inside Nintendo.

In the small house of less than 100 square meters, the history of Nintendo’s step-by-step development, from scratch, from small to large, is recorded. Li Wansui is very interested. He has no entrepreneurial experience. This is also a learning opportunity.

He looked very seriously, and from time to time he asked questions like Akita Masako.

“Ms. Akita, who are these? Are they the elders of Mr. Yamauchi Hiroshi?” Li Wansui stood in front of three portraits, one of which was of Hiroshi Yamauchi when he was young, and the other two were painted in traditional Japanese kimonos. The man who looked vaguely similar to Hiroshi Yamauchi asked.

“Li Jun, these three are the three presidents in our Nintendo history, President Fangjiro Yamauchi, President Yamauchi Akira, and President Hiroshi Yamauchi.” Akita Masako introduced Li Wansui with a professional smile. .

“Oh? Tell me the story of the three of them, I think it must be very exciting.” Li Wansui laughed, he didn’t know much about Nintendo’s history.

Akita Masako replied: “Well, Nintendo is barely 100 years old. Founded in 1889, it specializes in the production and sale of hand-made Japanese flower cards. After the founder of the Yamauchi family, Fangjiro Yamauchi, and the second generation With the painstaking efforts of the president Yamauchi Yakuro, Nintendo has completed its original accumulation. When Mr. Yamauchi took over, that is, in 1949, the 22-year-old Hiroshi Yamauchi dropped out of the Law Department of Waseda University and took over the house of Nintendo. When President Hiroshi Yamauchi took over the ancestral business, the scale of Nintendo had grown to 112 members, with annual sales of about 13 million yen, and it was a workshop producing flower cards.”

Li Wansui thought to himself: “13 million yen is about 290,000 Hong Kong dollars. The purchasing power of 290,000 Hong Kong dollars should be very strong in 1949. When Yamauchi took over, Nintendo’s strength was still good.”

He nodded as he listened. The flower card, which he had already learned about when he visited Nintendo products, was a hand-drawn card, a kind of game, similar to the Three Kingdoms Killing in the Continent of Later Ages, with a figure drawn on the card.

Masako Akita continued: “In 1953, President Hiroki Yamauchi went out to negotiate with Disney’s agent in Japan and obtained the exclusive right to use the Disney brand. With the help of TV and magazine advertising bombardment, he switched to Mickey Mouse and other images. Playing cards quickly gained the support of young consumers, and Nintendo thus occupied nearly 60% of the market share and became the largest playing card manufacturer in Japan. The annual sales volume of 630,000 sets of playing cards is almost equal to the sales of Nintendo products in the past 15 years. sum.”

Li Wansui nodded and thought to himself, “Honeng Yamauchi has successfully cooperated with a behemoth like Disney 4 years after taking over, and he is really capable.”

“1977 was a very important turning point in Nintendo’s entrepreneurial history. In this year, the company’s business has also undergone great changes. Nintendo, whose products have gradually transformed into electronic entertainment, integrated semiconductors and microchips. In 1977, Nintendo released a playable The “E6″ console of six types of video games has now sold 400,000 units. We are now ranked in the industry, second only to Atari in the United States.” Akita Masako said with some pride.

Li Wansui thought to himself, “This is a bit unexpected. Nintendo is now the second largest player in the game console industry. Although it is the second largest player in the industry, its scale is far from Atari.”

He asked calmly: “Ms. Akita, I’m curious, how can Nintendo have such technical support to transform its business from a poker factory to a manufacturer of semiconductor terminal products? This is so amazing. Surprised, where does Nintendo get the technical support?” He asked very carefully. In the future, making a red and white machine not only requires an image controller, but also needs to find someone to design a series of complex programs such as the motherboard and the handle. Without this technical strength, I do not know the talents in this field. The experience of Nintendo’s transformation has been very helpful to him.

“After we decided to make game consoles, we hired a number of Sharp Electronics employees to solve the technical problems.” Akita Masako replied with a smile.

After listening to Li Wansui, he sighed in his heart that Japan’s semiconductor industry is really developed, there are so many big companies, and engineers are relatively easy to find. , shell and display and other parts of the process, to put it bluntly, is responsible for the assembly, although the technical content is there, I don’t know if the Hong Kong Electronics Industry can make it smooth like Nintendo to find suitable talents.

Li Wansui was at a loss and was secretly worried. It should be difficult to recruit hardware talents like developing motherboards in Hong Kong. Right now, Taiwan’s electronics industry is not as good as Hong Kong’s. Talent, can I only take the road of integrating the industrial chain in the future? Like when Xiaomi mobile phones started, all R&D and production were outsourced? Only doing sales and game development? At such a young level of globalization, tariffs are not as low as in later generations. Can it be successful? I am afraid it will raise a lot of costs, right?

After thinking about it for a long time, he made a decision in his heart: “No, we must have our own factory and design team. In later generations, Xiaomi’s foundation was not solid, and it was overtaken by the mobile phones made by Huawei, and was far ahead, and was also closely followed by oppo and vivo. The mobile phone business can already be seen in the mainland market. Lenovo, Xiaomi’s predecessor, has embarked on the road of integration, and after giving up research and development, it has also declined.”

He woke up from his contemplation. He was still thinking too much. He took a step by step and continued to ask: “There are so many talents in Japan, can you take me to visit your R&D team? I have learned about the history of your company. Later, I admired President Hiroshi Yamauchi very much. He was a genius with sharp eyes. However, compared with President Hiroshi Yamauchi, our school values ​​your company’s technical team more, after all, it is for talent cooperation. “

He stepped into the topic, and he was more interested in Nintendo’s R&D team than Nintendo’s family history.

Akita Masako said with a smile: “No problem, Li Jun, please come with me, I will take you to meet Yokoi Junpei, the head of the R&D department.”

Li Wansui asked casually, “Who is Mr. Yokoi Junping?”

Akita Masako said unpreparedly: “Yoki-kun is an old senior of our Nintendo. Speaking of which, our president still got inspiration from Yokoi-kun.”

“Oh? What’s the story here?” Li Wansui showed a curious look on his face.

Akita Masako vividly began to tell this story of Nintendo’s well-known past:

“In 1965, Yokoi Junpei joined the Nintendo Company, where he was mainly responsible for the maintenance of the poker assembly line. One day Yokoi used waste materials to make a peculiar set of devices during a break from work, a mechanical spring that could be freely retracted after pressing the button. The arm is absolutely surprising. Yokoi proudly demonstrated this new toy to his colleagues in the workshop. The device suddenly malfunctioned at a critical moment, and the top part of the glove flew out rapidly under the action of external force and hit a On the middle-aged man who hurried across the aisle, when everyone saw clearly that the man was the president Yamauchi, they were too frightened to say anything. Calmly asked Yokoi Junpei: “What’s your name? What position do you hold? “

Yokoi Junpei has long heard from colleagues about the ruthless deeds of the president in the past. He tried his best to control his emotions: “Yoki Junpei, an assembly line maintenance worker.”

“Come to my office after get off work!” Yamauchi turned around and left with Yokoi’s invention.

Yokoi Junpei walked into the president’s office, feeling a little apprehensive under the sharp gaze of Yamauchi Puying Falcon. An imperceptible smile flashed across Yamauchi’s face, and he said to Yokoi: “Your invention is very interesting, but I personally hope that your invention is not limited to personal entertainment, but can make it a kind of entertainment for the public. ‘Great’ merchandise accepted!”

Yokoi left the office with the spring device. A few days later, he excitedly brought the improved device to see the president. The structure of the device is more reasonable and safe, and the materials used tend to be lighter and more flexible. Yamauchi fiddled dozens of times like a child, but this time there was no embarrassing mechanical failure. He immediately called Hiroshi Imaishi, who was in charge of factory production, to put him into mass production quickly~www.mtlnovel.com ~Through the vigorous promotion of TV commercials, Yokoi Junpei’s toy named “Super Strange Hand” became very popular, and sold more than 1.2 million in half a year, becoming Nintendo’s most successful product of the year”

The story almost came to an end, and Akita Masako said in a slightly excited tone: “That was the first toy we made at Nintendo, and since then, we at Nintendo have transformed from a card factory to a toy factory, because of this , we have only now transformed into an electronic toy factory.”

Li Wansui scolded inwardly, when Masako Akita just introduced the history of Nintendo, why didn’t he mention that Nintendo had also been a toy factory, he thought to himself about the mystery: “This is not a secret, it must not be deliberately concealed, isn’t it? Is it because Yokoi Junpei was more important than Yamauchi Hiroshi during this period? After all, Yokoi Junpei was the inventor. Afraid of affecting Yamauchi Hiroshi’s prestige? If this is the case, this Yamauchi Hiroshi is really strong and domineering.”

He changed his mind and thought: “A worker who has become the head of the development department, in addition to Yokoi’s strength, he can also see through the leopard that Nintendo’s professional talents are scarce, no wonder he is very interested in the cooperation with the school that I mentioned, Talent training in the game industry now basically relies on internal training in each company.”

Li Wansui didn’t show any expression on his face, and said, “This is really a legend, hurry up and take me to see Mr. Yokoi Junping.”