Takuya Nakayama was sipping his freshly brewed coffee, not even lifting an eyelid at the remark.
"Worth it?"
Snip! A branch fell to the floor.
"Sato, go count the games on Sony's launch list." Nakayama set down his pruning shears and blew dust off the leaves. "Aside from Ridge Racer, which still needs polishing, it's all mahjong."
He turned, casually picking up a newspaper from his desk and pointing at the dense rows of Mahjong Goku and Mahjong Heaven. "Are they trying to sell the PlayStation to mahjong parlors? Or do they expect every elementary school student in Japan to ditch monsters after school and play four rounds on TV?"
Hideki Sato blinked, then couldn't help but chuckle at the meager-looking game list.
"Hardware is just the ticket; software is the moat," Nakayama said, tossing the newspaper into the waste bin with the casualness of discarding a used tissue. "But we can't let Sony dominate the narrative."
"Don't rush to refute them," Nakayama said, tapping his fingers on the table to interrupt Sato, who was about to instruct the PR department to issue a press release. "Official responses just make us look like brawling housewives. We need the gentle stab of a 'reasonable and objective' approach."
He pulled a business card from his drawer and slid it across the table. "Contact these people, and the Editor-in-Chief of Dengeki Oh—the one who always loves to clash with manufacturers. Feed them some material, but keep it subtle. Just talk about patent fees and supply chain issues."
Hideki Sato glanced at the list—all notorious "poison-tongued" tech geeks from the industry—and a flicker of understanding crossed his eyes.
Within two days, the narrative in Akihabara's electronics district and gaming media had subtly shifted.
Several in-depth analytical articles spread like wildfire through the gamer community.
Not a single word in the articles criticized Sony directly; instead, they were packed with dry data analysis.
The authors dissected the Jupiter and PlayStation down to their last screw, ultimately arriving at a thought-provoking conclusion:
The Jupiter's ¥39,800 price tag was a genuine act of desperation.
Each machine included CD-ROM patent fees and licensing costs paid to Sony. After deducting these expenses, Sega was practically selling each unit at a loss, relying solely on brute-force hardware to maximize performance.
In contrast, the PlayStation, also priced at ¥39,800, used components entirely from its own production lines. This internal sourcing allowed for such tight cost control that it was practically a self-serving transaction.
As for the CD playback feature that had been so hyped up? The article included a picture of a decoding chip on a low-end Sony CD player, with a small caption underneath: "Adding this decoding chip would increase the cost and enable CD playback."
"Sony's scheme is so blatant, I could hear it all the way in Hokkaido!"
In the video game store, a young man in a baseball cap waved the article at the indecisive office worker and shouted, "See, uncle? You think you're buying a high-end stereo, but you're just paying for the Sony logo. If you really want to listen to music, your home system is better than this thing, right? Besides, are you buying this for your kids to play Ridge Racer or listen to Beethoven? They'll be fighting over it! You really think you're saving money?"
The office worker froze, and the "Home Entertainment Center" brochure in his hand suddenly felt burning hot.
This was exactly what Takuya Nakayama wanted.
Peel away the "value" facade, and what remained was a stark mismatch between the product and the actual needs.
For core gamers, the CD playback feature was like putting a radio in a Ferrari—nice to have, but not essential. Who drives a Ferrari to listen to the radio anyway?
As for potential users who hadn't yet jumped on the bandwagon, Sega had no intention of letting them off the hook either.
Since both consoles were neck-and-neck in performance and the CD function was a useless gimmick, what was left to compete on?
It came down to who had the stronger hand.
Instead of engaging in a public war of words with Sony, Sega quietly bought up every available GG Slot in Akihabara, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro.
No specs, no sentimentality—just images.
On the left, a brutal 3D close-up from Virtua Fighter 2 showed fists connecting with visceral impact. On the right, a blur of motion from Sonic streaked across the screen. Below them, a row of actual gameplay screenshots from Phantasy Star and Demon Samurai flashed.
Ken Kutaragi stared at the sea of GG Slots lining the streets, his knuckles white as he crushed his coffee cup.
He wanted to retaliate, to plaster Ridge Racer posters over them, but when he rummaged through his hand, all he found was that yellow sports car. The rest were embarrassing mahjong cards and block-faced characters.
"That bastard Takuya Nakayama—!" Kutaragi gritted his teeth, helpless.
This was the grand strategy.
Sega wasn't playing games with rhetoric. They were seizing the very definition of "game console" for themselves.
Want to make a home appliance?
Fine. Go set it up next to the rice cookers in the appliance store.
This is the gaming world. Mediocrity is a sin. No games means death.
The Sony marketing department, which had been so proud of the "home entertainment center" concept, now stared at the meager launch lineup in their hands, exchanging awkward glances as if they'd been stripped naked and thrown under a spotlight.
The players, who had been so easily swayed by Sony's "value for money" claims, were finally coming to their senses.
Why buy a game console if there's no games to play? To put it on a shelf as an altar?
In just three days, Sega's one-two punch had completely reversed many consumers' initial purchasing intentions, which had been leaning towards Sony.
Before the media storm had even subsided, while people were still debating whether "buy a CD player and get a game console" was a rip-off, Sega cut the chatter and laid its trump card on the table.
November 4th.
That morning, an unprecedented "blank space" appeared on the GG pages of all major Tokyo newspapers.
Readers, accustomed to being bombarded with garish, over-the-top advertisements, froze when they turned to this page.
The entire page was pure white.
No flashy graphics, no dense feature lists.
Only the black Jupiter console, its metallic surface gleaming with a cold, hard luster, floated silently in the center of the frame.
Above it, a single line of minimalist black Songti font stood out:
1994.11.19
And at the very bottom, a single line of small text, yet more deafening than any bombastic headline:
Global Simultaneous Release.
This "minimalist" approach, in an era desperate to cram every selling point into consumers' eyes, exuded sophistication that practically overflowed the page.
"Brutal. Absolutely brutal."
In the Famitsu editorial department, Hirokazu Hamamura stared at the newspaper, his cigarette burning down to its sponge tip without him noticing.
"Editor-in-Chief, is there anything special about this date?" the new editor asked, looking bewildered. "It's only two weeks before Sony's December 3rd release."
"Two weeks?" Hamamura scoffed, crushing his cigarette butt into the ashtray with force. "For core gamers, that's two centuries. More importantly, check the calendar. What's the day after November 19th?"
The new editor flipped through the desk calendar, still looking puzzled.
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