Chapter 143: Optical Future

"Castlevania..."

Sitting at the workstation that had just been assigned to him, Kojima looked at the detailed design document in his hands and couldn't help feeling a headache coming on.

Trying to fit an epic Gothic story into a 2D game with a capacity of only 1 MB… This was a challenge he'd never faced before.

Although he had directed plenty of 9mm short films in the past, designing a video game was an entirely different matter. Still, since Ethan had placed his trust in him, he had to give it everything he had.

He quietly peeked over the partition and glanced around the office. The developer named Will was glued to his screen, completely absorbed in his work. His fingers flying across the keyboard as he hammered out line after line of code. He was so engrossed in his work that he seemed completely oblivious to the world around him.

As for the man named Sid, he sat back in his chair, occasionally shaking his head before deleting everything he had just written.

Rather than a development department, this place felt more like a creative lab.

Everyone was busy with their own work. There were no deadlines hanging over their heads, no supervisors hovering behind them, pointing fingers.

Kojima lowered his gaze to the document in his hands. Aside from this design document, Ethan hadn't given him a single additional requirement. He had simply told him to let his creativity run free.

This was literally a dream come true. Kojima had always dreamed of working in an environment where he could unleash his creativity without restraint.

Sam carried a heavy cardboard box onto the third floor, where the hardware department was located.

Thud!

The box hit the floor with a loud crash, interrupting the discussion between Ethan and Gerald.

"Whew... I think that's about everything. I practically emptied out the bookstore."

Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead and casually pulled a book from the box, which was packed full of textbooks.

Semiconductor Device Manufacturing Processes.

"Just like you asked, pretty much every semiconductor-related reference I could find is in here."

"Nice work, this helps a lot."

Ethan's eyes lit up as he quickly lifted the box onto the table and began sorting through the books one by one.

"You... don't tell me you're planning to learn all this from scratch again?"

Gerald's eyelids twitched as he looked at the stack of semiconductor textbooks. It wasn't the first time he'd witnessed Ethan's uniquely unconventional way of doing things.

"What else am I supposed to do? It's not like we're in a position to acquire an established semiconductor company."

If he could, Ethan would much rather buy Toshiba outright and solve the problems of NAND flash memory and DRAM in one stroke.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Although Gerald possessed extensive expertise in hardware engineering, it was almost entirely at the system level. When it came to semiconductors and microscopic device fabrication, he might as well have been a complete novice.

As for Vivian's team, they simply didn't have enough skilled engineers to devote to this line of research. Naturally, the task fell back onto Ethan once again.

"If we want to build our own 16-bit console, memory technology is something we absolutely have to solve. As for storage..." He paused.

"Besides NAND flash chips, there's another technological path we can explore."

Although NAND storage was still nowhere in sight, there was something else that already existed.

"Have you ever heard of optical discs?"

"Disc?"

Gerald repeated the word, momentarily unsure what Ethan meant.

That wasn't surprising. CD technology had only just entered the consumer market and was still far from widespread.

In particular, the lack of standardized file formats meant its software ecosystem was practically nonexistent. Even so, the hardware itself had already matured considerably.

"That's right. Optical discs."

Ethan suddenly took a circular disc from his pocket. Its mirror-like surface reflected the room, faint rainbow colors shimmering across it.

"I had Satoshi buy this for me in Japan. It's a disc manufactured by Sony."

Gerald accepted the disc and examined it carefully. It looked to be only a little over a millimeter thick and just over ten centimeters in diameter. It was actually smaller than a floppy disk.

"How much data can this thing hold? More than a floppy?"

A floppy disk already stored around 1 MB. Aside from expensive mechanical hard drives, it was currently the cheapest high-capacity storage medium available.

Switching to an entirely unfamiliar storage technology would require rebuilding everything from the system architecture to the storage format and compression algorithms.

In Gerald's eyes, the amount of work involved far outweighed whatever benefits a new storage medium might bring.

"If the gains aren't that significant, I think sticking with our current expansion disk model offers much better value."

"Mmm..."

Ethan pondered for a moment before taking the lightweight disc back and spinning it around on one finger.

"This thing is only 1.2 millimeters thick and 12 centimeters in diameter..."

"But..."

"It holds 700 MB."

"How much?"

Gerald nearly choked.

"Seven hundred megabytes? You're serious?"

That wasn't even in the same league as floppy disks anymore. It was practically science fiction.

What did 700 MB actually mean? It was enough to hold every single game and expansion GAMENOVA had released so far, with plenty of room left over.

To put it even more dramatically, it was enough to store the thousands upon thousands of games released for the Atari 2600 all on a single disc.

A small stack of optical discs could preserve virtually the entire history of video games.

"It's really that amazing. As far as I'm concerned, it's inevitable that optical discs will replace floppy disks."

Ethan paused.

Optical disc technology was incredibly powerful, but it came with one enormous obstacle.

Patents.

Neither Philips nor Sony would casually license their CD-ROM patents to GAMENOVA. Even if they did, those specifications had been designed specifically for storing music, so they couldn't simply be repurposed for software.

How should data be stored? How should it be addressed? How should file structures be layered?

All of it was still unexplored territory. But, unexplored territory also meant opportunity.

"We have to do it."

"And we have to do it faster than anyone else."

Before Sony and Philips realized the full potential of optical storage, they had to establish their own file format standards and patent technologies, creating a path that circumvented the existing patent barriers of the optical disc giants.

"I understand..."

Gerald knew exactly what 700 MB represented. If they could successfully introduce this technology with their next-generation console… even if it were only as an external add-on, similar to an expansion floppy drive, it would completely overturn the gaming industry.

That much storage meant they could freely include richer animations, higher-quality sound effects, more CG cinematics, and even from a purely gameplay perspective, every additional kilobyte meant room for countless more lines of code.

"But our experience with optical disc technology is literally zero. If we want to overtake everyone on the curve, we'll have to invest an enormous amount of research time. And if Nintendo or Sega catches up during that period, we'll lose the first-mover advantage of our 16-bit console."

There was one more concern Gerald chose not to mention, cost. Every storage medium required its own corresponding reading device, and optical disc drives certainly weren't likely to be any cheaper than floppy disk drives.