Location: Volta S.A. Factory (Ivry-sur-Seine) / Sony Research Laboratories (Minato, Tokyo)
Date: April 1988 (The day after the return from Kyoto)
Point of view: Omniscient (Slippery focus on Lazare Bonaparte and Kenji Takeda)
The April showers whipped the huge bay windows of the presidential office of Volta S.A. in Ivry-sur-Seine. The Parisian spring was cold, capricious, but inside the room, the atmosphere should have been one of absolute euphoria.
Alexandre de Vigan, who had just disembarked from his flight from Narita airport, his features drawn by jet lag but his eyes shining with triumph, had just placed the contract on the heavy oak desk. The red seals of the Kyoto firm, a global titan of entertainment, validated the integration of the SONG graphics coprocessor for their next home console.
Karim Belkacem, who was present in the office, read over Lazare's shoulder. The technical director was jubilant.
"It's done, Lazarus," Karim whispered, not believing his eyes. "We locked the switchboard. Kyoto wants the first 100,000 chips by the end of the year for their final development kits. The yield of wafers in Taiwan is good. We're going to flood the planet. »
Yet Lazare Bonaparte, seated in his leather armchair, stared at the contract with a pout that looked dangerously like contempt. He turned the pages of the technical specifications annexed by the Japanese engineers.
"Exceptional diplomatic work, Alexander," Lazarus conceded in a matter-of-fact voice. "You forced the Shogun to bend the knee. But look at the specifications of the architecture they plan to build around our chip. »
He pushed the document towards Karim.
"They adamantly refuse to give up the cartridge holder," Lazare said, his jaw clenched. "They feel that the disc format, the CD-ROM that their partner Sony is working on for sound expansion, is too slow to load, too expensive for children to produce, and too easily hackable. They want to curb the system. They're going to couple our chip with conventional two- or four-megabyte ROM cartridges. »
Karim frowned. "So what? The cartridges have almost instantaneous memory access times. It's perfect for flooding the SONG with data, isn't it? No loading time for the player. »
Lazarus turned abruptly. The engineer of the future was boiling over the short-term vision of the men of 1988.
"Perfect for 2D, Karim! Perfect for displaying small flat characters jumping on turtles! But have you forgotten the specifications of our own component? The SONG incorporates a 3D rasterizer. To generate three-dimensional worlds that look real, we need textures. Complex images that will be placed on the polygons. A single ambitious 3D game, with fine textures and quality music, would fill their miserable cartridge from the title screen! »
Lazarus got up and paced back and forth in front of the rain-swept bay window.
"Kyoto is run by conservative toy merchants, terrified of material innovation. They want to use a Formula 1 engine to drive a cart. If we let them, the 3D revolution will be pushed back a decade. The European studios currently working on our graphics API will find themselves suffocated by the lack of storage space. The SONG will die of suffocation. »
De Vigan cleared his throat, perplexed.
"But the contract is signed, Lazarus. They are masters of the final architecture of their console. They cannot be forced to include a CD-ROM drive if they do not want one. »
A smile of fearsome irony stretched Lazarus' lips. The advantage of the time traveler lay not only in the electronics, but in his prescience of the great corporate betrayals of History. Lazare knew full well that Kyoto was preparing to humiliate Sony by secretly cancelling their partnership on the CD-ROM extension, preferring to ally itself with the Dutch company Philips. This historic snub would push Sony to create the PlayStation out of pure revenge.
He was going to accelerate this betrayal. Starting today.
"We can't force the Shogun, Alexander," Lazarus whispered, approaching his secure drawer. "But we can arm his vassal. The partnership between Kyoto and Sony is already moribund. Sony engineers in Tokyo know that the 650-megabyte CD-ROM is the only viable horizon, and they are frustrated by the arrogance of the Kyoto pundits. »
Lazarus took out a thick kraft paper envelope, sealed with wax, which he had prepared during his long sleepless winter nights. He put it before de Vigan.
"What is it?" asked the sales manager.
"The spark of rebellion," replied Lazarus. "Alexander, I want this envelope to leave tonight by diplomatic courier. Outside of any official channel. It is due to land directly on the desk of Sony's engineering team in Tokyo. We are going to prove to them that the SONG chip does not need Kyoto's authorization to change the world. We're going to give them the blueprints for the perfect machine. And when they read this, they will understand that they no longer need to be mere subcontractors. »
Four days later. Tokyo, Japan. Arrondissement of Minato.
Spring rain washed the streets of Tokyo, blurring the neon advertising lights. In Sony Corporation's research labs, the studious silence was broken only by the clatter of keyboards.
Kenji Takeda, a visionary young engineer on the hardware development team, massaged his temples. In front of him, on his desk cluttered with oscilloscopes, lay the schematics of the SPC700 sound component that he was laboriously designing for the future Kyoto console.
Kenji was a man full of resentment. He firmly believed that the compact disc, a technology co-invented by Sony, should be the heart of modern entertainment. But Kyoto's management despised Tokyo engineering. They treated Kenji and his team like vulgar suppliers of audio chips, constantly hindering their research into the additional CD-ROM drive they were supposed to design.
The door to his office opened. A secretary stepped forward, looking uncertain, holding a heavy kraft envelope covered with French stamps.
"Takeda-san. A special courier has just dropped this off. It's marked personal and confidential. Sender: Lazare Bonaparte, President of Volta S.A. »
Kenji frowned. He knew this name. Since the humiliating demonstration of the Frenchman de Vigan in Kyoto a few weeks earlier, the entire hardware department of Sony has been talking about this famous SONG chip. It was a silicon monster that relegated their own research to the rank of antiquity. But why was the CEO of Volta speaking directly to him, a Sony engineer, rather than to the Kyoto decision-makers with whom the contract had just been signed?
"Thank you. Leave me," Kenji ordered.
Once alone, he broke the seals with his letter opener. He emptied the contents of the envelope on his desk pad.
There was no letter of introduction. No commercial blah-blah. There were about twenty technical drawing boards of diabolical sharpness, printed on thick tracing paper.
The first plate showed a three-quarter view of a machine.
It wasn't a simple sketch. It was the integral architecture of a standalone video game console, designed exclusively around a central CD-ROM drive. Kenji immediately noticed the clever thermal design: the internal power supply was isolated, while the RISC CPU and SONG coprocessor were centrally arranged, bathed in optimized airflow through discreet ventilation vents.
But what struck Kenji most was the aesthetics of the case.
The 1988 consoles all looked like crude toys made of white or colorful plastic. The case designed by Bonaparte was a monolith of a dull grey, flat, serious. It was reminiscent of the elegance of a high-end hi-fi turntable. In the center, the large circular cover of the CD player closed the architecture like a seal of technological perfection. It was a machine designed to sit proudly in the adults' living room, not to be hidden in the children's room.
The engineer, his heart suddenly beating faster, pushed aside the first board to examine the second. What he saw froze him in his chair.
The handcuffs.
Until now, game controllers were simple rectangular blocks, which players pinched with their fingertips. Ergonomics was a secondary concept.
Lazare Bonaparte had just redesigned the interface between man and the digital space.
The sketch showed a controller with two long drooping handles (horns), designed to fit perfectly in the palm of the palms. On the left side, an isolated directional cross. On the right-hand side, four circular buttons arranged in a diamond shape.
But it was Lazarus' annotations, written in perfect technical English, that revealed the genius of the design.
"Navigating 3D environments computed by SONG requires moving on the Z axis and controlling camera angles. Placing all the buttons on the front side would force the player to let go of the main motion controls. »
Kenji looked at the controller's upper elevation plane. On the edge of the controller, exactly under the natural location of the left and right index fingers, Lazare had drawn triggers. He had annotated them L1, L2 and R1, R2.
Shoulder buttons. The idea was terrifyingly flashy. The player no longer had to move his thumbs; He used his index fingers to navigate in depth of field.
Kenji leaned over the four action buttons. Instead of the classic letters of the alphabet (A, B, X, Y), Lazarus had demanded an abstract, purely symbolic nomenclature. He had drawn four geometrical figures there.
"A green triangle pointing upwards to represent the direction or point of view of the camera. A pink square to represent a document or the opening of a menu. A Blue Cross and a Red Circle to instantly materialize Cancellation and Validation in the player's subconscious, regardless of their native language. »
Kenji leaned heavily back in his chair. He looked at the scattered shots, bathed in the pale glow of the ceiling light. He was now nothing more than a frustrated engineer; He had just received the roadmap for the twenty-first century.
The silent message of the French envelope was deafening in its clarity.
Volta S.A. was yelling at him: "Your partner in Kyoto wants to kill 3D with his cartridges. Here is the exact architecture of the only console capable of supporting the future. It's custom-designed for our graphics chip and your CD-ROM drive expertise to merge. Break free from Kyoto. Launch your own machine. Let's build the perfect Play Station. »
Kenji Takeda knew that if he presented these plans to his board of directors in Tokyo, he would trigger an earthquake. The idea of breaking the bid contract with Kyoto to launch their own standalone console would scare Sony executives.
But looking at the perfect design of this controller with gray handles, Kenji knew he had no choice. The seed of rebellion had just been planted. The original "Play Station", coupled with French silicon, would not see the light of day in 1994, but much earlier.
He hurriedly put the tracing papers away in a fireproof briefcase and picked up his phone. He was going to demand an emergency meeting with the big boss of Sony. The Builder of Ivry had just handed them the keys to the empire. All we had to do was seize it.
Location: Akihabara (Tokyo) / Seat of an Arcade Giant (Ota, Tokyo)
Date: May 1988
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Alexandre de Vigan)
The Akihabara neighborhood, at nightfall, was a permanent sensory assault.
Alexandre de Vigan stood in the center of a gigantic arcade, spread over six grimy floors. The air was saturated with the acrid smell of cold tobacco, teenage sweat and ozone from the hundreds of overheated cathode ray tubes. The noise was a deafening cacophony: 8-bit explosions, frenetic synthesizer music, and the continuous metallic crash of hundred-yen coins rushing into the coin machines.
Wearing a double-breasted suit in cold wool, an immaculate silk pocket square and custom-made shoes, the shark of Volta S.A. stood out radically in the midst of this fauna of high school students in uniform and salarymen who came to drown the pressure of their working day.
De Vigan observed.
In front of him, a young Japanese man was absorbed by an extravagant car racing machine, equipped with a force feedback steering wheel and a hydraulic bucket seat. The game was beautiful for the time. He used the famous Super Scaler technology: the PCB resized gigantic 2D sprites very quickly to simulate an effect of depth.
But de Vigan, educated by the ruthless meetings of Lazare Bonaparte, knew the truth behind the illusion.
It wasn't real 3D. It was a sham. Above all, de Vigan was thinking about the cost. To run this single game, the manufacturer had to design a custom-made, colossal motherboard (PCB), packed with dozens of memory chips and dedicated coprocessors. Each milestone cost a fortune to make. With each new successful game, Japanese engineers had to reinvent a hardware architecture. It was an archaic economic model, of appalling cumbersomeness.
The sales manager stepped out of the arcade, pushing back the heavy clear plastic doors, and inhaled the fresh air from the street.
The home console market, thanks to the Kyoto signature and the Trojan horse slipped to Sony, was locked in for the future. But the future was taking time. A console took years to develop and penetrate homes.
In 1988, the real technological showcase, the place where legends were forged and where cash flow came in by the second, was the Arcade. Movie theaters generated billions of dollars in worldwide revenue. And Lazare Bonaparte wanted his share of the cake. Immediately.
A black taxi with automatic doors stopped at his level.
"Ota's quarter, please," de Vigan ordered, settling down on the white lace-covered benches.
Thirty minutes later, he entered the headquarters of one of the world's largest arcade machine manufacturers. The leaders of this company were proud. They considered themselves the true kings of video games, the craftsmen of the extreme, relegating home consoles to the rank of underpowered toys.
De Vigan was ushered into a sleek meeting room, where the General Manager of the Amusement Division and three of his chief engineers were waiting for him.
The greetings were cordial but tinged with the usual reserve. The Japanese knew that this Frenchman had just made Kyoto, their competitor in the trade fair market, bow down. But here, they were on their territory.
"Monsieur de Vigan," began the General Manager, a stocky man with a deep voice. "We've heard about your graphics chip. This is a great feat for a living room machine. But the arcade is a different world. Our players demand absolute excellence. Raw power. Our Twin 16 and Y Board systems are marvels of technology. We design the hardware around the game. What could you bring to us? »
De Vigan placed his briefcase on the table. He opened it and took out a green silicon and epoxy plate, in the standard JAMMA format.
It wasn't a living room development kit. It was a complete arcade motherboard.
"I can bring you an end to your financial hemorrhage, gentlemen," replied Volta's shark with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
He put the card on the table. In the center of the printed circuit board were two large black ceramic chips, stamped with the Bonaparte Microelectronics logo.
"You're bleeding your R&D budgets dry," de Vigan continued, his voice cracking. "Whenever your game designers have a new idea, your engineers have to design a new electronic plate. You pay for molds, specific assembly lines, months of hardware testing for each terminal. Your model is absurd. You build a new car factory every time you want to release a new car model. »
The Japanese engineers stiffened, offended by the analogy. But the General Manager remained silent, because the Frenchman had just pointed out the absolute logistical nightmare of his company.
De Vigan designated the two main components of the Volta map.
"This is the VESLA CPU. And here's our SONG graphics coprocessor. This board is not a prototype. It is a universal standard. A generic arcade system, infinitely more powerful than any custom card you currently own. »
De Vigan plugged the card into the meeting room monitor and turned it on.
He did not launch the technical demo he had shown in Kyoto. Lazarus had a specific demonstration prepared for the arcade.
The screen immediately showed a racetrack. But the track did not scroll thanks to stretched lines of pixels. It was a real three-dimensional, textured track. Cars made up of thousands of textured polygons negotiated corners. The camera performed spectacular tracking shots around the vehicles, demonstrating the real-time application of Gouraud's shading and the perfect depth management by the 16-bit hardware Z-buffer.
The whole thing ran at sixty frames per second, without the slightest drop in framerate.
The chief engineer's breath was taken away.
"Impossible... He whispered as he approached the screen. "Polygons textured at this speed? Where are the geometry circuits? Where are the digital signal processors? »
"Everything is calculated here," de Vigan replied, gently tapping the SONG chip. "Thirty-two megabytes per second. No flickering. No resizing sprites. The real, the pure third dimension. The arcade industry strives to simulate reality. We calculate it. »
The General Manager stared at the screen, fascinated. The raw power was undeniable. But his business mind was looking for the flaw.
"Such standardized power... This means that any studio could buy your card and compete with us," he remarked.
"Exactly," de Vigan retorted. "And that's why you need to sign with us today."
He sat down, folded his hands on the table, and dropped the cleaver.
"I propose a paradigm shift. Stop designing hardware. Buy our standardized arcade boards in bulk, for a fraction of the price of your own custom PCBs. Install them in generic arcade machines. When one of your games no longer works in the gym, the manager will no longer need to buy a new ten-thousand-dollar cabinet. All they have to do is buy the ROM cartridge of the new game and plug it into our universal motherboard. »
De Vigan let the idea germinate.
"You're going to reduce your material production costs by eighty percent. Your development teams will no longer code in machine language on experimental chips: they will use the Volta API software libraries, halving the development time of a game. You're going to flood the market with 3D masterpieces that your competitors won't even be able to conceive. »
"And in exchange?" the Director asked, suspicious.
"In exchange, Volta S.A. takes a commission on each motherboard sold, and royalties on each arcade game cartridge developed on our system. We offer you the keys to the 3D era. But the toll belongs to us. »
The room fell silent. The engineers looked at their Japanese motherboard, placed in a corner, which suddenly seemed archaic, prehistoric. The Volta system made state-of-the-art hardware engineering unnecessary. He was shifting the battlefield: war would no longer be fought on printed circuit boards, but on the talent of software programmers.
"What will happen if we refuse?" the Arcade boss asked slowly.
Alexandre de Vigan gave an elegant little laugh, devoid of the slightest warmth.
"I cross the street. I'm going to see Namco, or Capcom. I give them the VESLA/SONG system. In a year's time, their arcade machines will display fighting and racing games in true textured 3D. Meanwhile, your teams will still try to cheat with flat sprites to give the illusion of speed. You will be old-fashioned in a single summer season. Players will desert your terminals. The hundred-yen piece is cruel, sir. It falls only into the most impressive machine. »
The blackmail was perfect. It was no longer a question of negotiating a component, it was a question of the survival of their hegemony.
The General Manager looked at the virtual cars on the screen, spinning with perfect algorithmic grace, ignoring the hardware limitations of his time. He understood that the Frenchman had just imported a technology that did not belong to this decade. To oppose it was to oppose the passage of time.
He turned to his legal adviser and nodded briefly.
"Prepare the supply contracts," the General Manager capitulated with a sigh of excitement. "We will take twenty thousand motherboards for our system next year. And software development kits from tomorrow. »
Alexandre de Vigan smiled. The victory was total, absolute.
That same evening, as he walked through the illuminated streets of Roppongi, de Vigan stopped in front of a telephone booth. He dialled Lazare Bonaparte's private number.
"Paris?" Vigan's demand.
"I am listening to you, Alexander," replied the Builder's voice, tinged with slight fatigue.
"Sega and Namco are in a bin. They abandoned their proprietary architectures for the arcade. The Volta Universal Card will be the industry standard by the end of the year. The dark rooms are ours. »
At the other end of the line, Lazarus let no joy burst forth. His mind was already projected ten shots away.
"Good. The material foundations are now locked on the entire chain, from the family lounge to the public rooms," analyzed the CEO of Ivry. "We control the display of global entertainment. But there is one last fortress. The most dangerous. »
"Which one?" asked de Vigan. "Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Namco... Japan has been brought to its knees. Europe is equipped with our OS. Who can still threaten us? »
"The consumer personal computer, Alexander," Lazare whispered, and de Vigan could almost see his gaze darken through the receiver. "IBM and its clones. The place where a certain Bill Gates is building his own software empire in the United States. Microsoft has had time to see our systems coming to European professionals. If they control the global PC with their next operating system, our monopoly on video games will eventually be surrounded. Take a flight to Paris. The real computer war begins now. »
De Vigan hung up. The noise of Tokyo enveloped him again, but he could no longer hear it. The Volta empire had just conquered entertainment, but the Titan of Ivry did not intend to stop until he had put the planet's home computing under his control.