Chapter 111: Jumping Tickets

  Unconsciously, May is quietly slipping away, while June is also quietly approaching.

  Catherine and her companions had already livened up the villa they purchased.

  At the entrance of the villa, bodyguards were guarding here.

  There were two batches of bodyguards.

  One team is Catherine's protection umbrella staff, and the other team is Jenny's bodyguard.

  Jenny's grandfather was a director of United Technologies Corporation (UTC) in the United States and also held some shares in Raytheon, he was a true arms dealer.

  "UTC is a powerful company, and Apollo 11 was able to fly into space thanks to UTC's support."

  The bodyguards were all strong and robust. More importantly, they all wore guns on their bodies, only that the guns were hidden inside their clothes.

  It's also because of these bodyguards that Catherine and the others don't mind going out as much anymore. After all, this is 1960s America.

  At this moment, Catherine's companions are discussing something. Unexpectedly, Elsa is also here at this moment.

  However, everyone was wearing strange clothes.

  Just like Elsa, she has a pair of white cat ears on her head, wearing cat-paw-shaped gloves on her hands, and wearing strange shoes on her feet, with a tail behind her that is erect and upright. At first glance, it's really cute.

  Aida's outfit was even more fiery - it was a Playboy Bunny suit.

  "What equipment is Catherine good with?"

  Lisa seems to be thinking.

  "Cow? No way, Kate's bust isn't big enough, dressing up as a cow just wouldn't work..." Lisa looked at her own chest, maybe she could do it?

  "Kate's got long legs, maybe the horse isn't so bad?" Ida laughed.

  "But Catherine doesn't seem to like horses?"

  Lily seemed to recall Catherine's confusion when she rode a horse for the first time.

  At this time, Lily was wearing a polka-dot outfit, and at first glance, she looked just like an adorable puppy.

  "Hehe, just because she doesn't like it, we must make her wear it~"

  Lisa smiled slightly.

  "But will Kate like it?"

  Jenny was somewhat skeptical.

  At this time, Jenny was wearing a ballet dress with two wings on her back, just like an elegant and lovely swan.

  "But I think it's fine... Ah, Elsa, what do you think?"

  "Ah...... uh...... hmm?" Elsa was somewhat at a loss.

  In fact, she was completely dragged over by them.

  Catherine's companions are preparing a unique birthday for Catherine.

  But because of confidentiality, Catherine knew nothing about it.

  In fact, with the advent of Z80, Catherine is "swinging freely".

  With the advent of Z80, it also means that Microsoft II computers and XBOX are entering the countdown phase!

  Catherine decided to release XBOX first and let technicians develop it with all their might.

  Having just CPU is not enough, for game consoles, display processing devices are also necessary.

  A Picture Processing Unit (PPU) capable of displaying 64 colors, with a total of 4KB of video memory. The screen can display two layers of scrolling and five pages, with two background pages each using 1KB of video memory. The display device is also capable of showing 32 colors - not because Catherine didn't want to show 64, but simply because it was too expensive, having the will but lacking the means.

  In fact, Catherine did not consider making money from XBOX host at least in the initial launch period.

  Of course, with the maturation of pipeline production technology, costs will only continue to decrease in the future.

  And now Catherine is thinking of using Super Mario and other games to make money!

  To put that into perspective, the NES console itself sold 62 million units worldwide during its lifespan, while Super Mario Bros. has sold a staggering 70 million copies!

  Although FC also included the original Contra and other games, Super Mario was also pirated countless times.

  Catherine's thinking games are not just Super Mario, but also games like Contra, it's just that Super Mario is Catherine's mainstay.

  At the time of FC, a batch of very classic games emerged. Because at this time, the performance of the host showed limited power, so more game manufacturers put their energy on the playability of the game.

  Consumer products should be cheap, and the cheaper the better.

  When the first XBOX console appeared, it was already late May.

  However, the cost of $250 can absolutely bankrupt someone.

  Although so, however a game is popular, it can't be stopped either way.

  At that time, when FC was listed in Taiwan, Taiwanese people could hardly afford to buy games. So they came up with a trick: renting out the console for 1 Taiwan dollar per hour to recoup their investment.

  Catherine didn't know if this method would work in the US, but it also showed that when a game is popular, there's no way to stop it.

  But what was even more troublesome, and what gave Catherine the most headaches, were the game cartridges.

  Although Catherine had considered this issue before, the plan that Sanders came up with gave her a headache.

  Xbox games are stored on game cards that can be inserted into slots on the console in read-only ROM form.

  Capacity has LA series 24K, LB series 40K, LC series 48K, LD series 64K. There are also some media with higher storage capacity, but they are still under development. There are also some game cartridges with batteries to save game progress, which is not very realistic for the time being.

  The simplest LA series cassette alone costs over $100, and this is still a cost that has been compressed to the limit.

  The ROM cartridge was vetoed by Catherine.

  One plan fails, another takes its place.

  Catherine suddenly thought of something cheap - cassette tapes!

  Why can't you achieve your goals through magnetic tape? !

  You know, historically there were indeed games on cassette tapes!

  The current tape is about 100BPI. BPI means how many bytes are stored on the inch-long tape. Calculating specifically, the capacity of a box of tapes can reach around 48KB. If it's any larger, the tape would have to be scaled up, which isn't very suitable.

  More importantly, games like Super Mario are exactly that size (the original ROM file without emulation info is 32KB, now Mario includes emulator code.)

  In this way, its storage cost is at least reduced by 90% compared with cassette tapes!

  Although using a cassette tape would require about 2KB of additional memory to read the content, and the speed would also slow down when switching levels, but that's not a problem at all. To know, later CD-ROM games required reading time, that was a tragedy!

  And tape technology is now relatively mature and can be used by itself!

  But that would again increase the cost of the host, just as Catherine predicted, civilian products have to be cheaper.

  Once fully implemented with pipeline production, the initial cost is around $320, and after mastering the process, it may continue to drop to $300 or even lower.

  The ex-factory price is fixed at $320, which means no profit was made, and considering the tax, it's actually a loss.

  As for retail price, Catherine decided to set it at $349.

  However, this delayed the release of XBOX.

  So, in May 1965, Apple Computer jumped tickets...