Gunpei Yokoi (2)

"Mr. Smith I am very honored with your invitation to Atari, a company with immense potential that aligns with my own personal interest in gaming technology, but I still need a little more information about what I am expected to do and what benefits I will receive. You have to understand that leaving Japan and my family is not an easy step and I can't leave all my responsibilities behind without having significant security."

Of course Simon expected something like this and could even understand. Leaving your home country to work on the other side of the world is a very significant and hard decision. On top of that his current job at Nintendo was not really bad. But if the benefits were enough Simon was sure the Japanese talent in front of him would follow his dreams and enter the gaming industry with Atari.

"The annual salary is 600,000 US dollars, with an increasement of 10% every three years. Furthermore you will receive 0,5% commission of the profit of any product you will develop for Atari in the future. This profit sharing agreement will be valid for a long time. As long as you work at Atari and even after your retirement, your family will always enjoy the benefits from this part, unless Atari goes bankrupt. There are also future option rewards. You have the opportunity to go back to Japan for weekends twice a month, and all first-class air tickets are reimbursed, including the tickets for your family if they want to visit you in New York."

Gunpei Yokoi: "I am still bound by the contract in the company, and I cannot leave easily."

Simon Smith: "The lawyer will take care of everything. If you shake hands with me right now I will take care of anything else. You just need to boldly recruit any talents you know of and bring them with you to New York. There you will join the development team of the arcade machine and further improve our current product. The game console I planned for you will be our future product in 3-5 years time."

Gunpei Yokoi was actually not very happy at Nintendo during this period, and some of his product developments required a lot of money. And unlike games, which can bring immediate profits, hardware products cannot be profitable until a certain number of sales are made. Therefore, the board of directors and company management put a lot of pressure on him. After comprehensive consideration, Gunpei Yokoi agreed to Simon's invitation on the spot. Joining such a successful company with incredible potential and insanely high benefits was a dream come true for him.

Simon already had a finished contract with all the above mentioned conditions ready and prepared by his family's law firm. The contract's minimum length and non-competition agreement, if he were to leave, were 20 years. Yokoi Junpei didn't say anything about this clause and he even expected it to some degree.

If somebody offered him such massive benefits and wouldn't even try to control him with a lot of rules in the contract he would be very worried instead and even afraid of a scam. After signing, Simon personally handed a check of 300,000 US dollars to Gunpei Yokoi straight away. Looking at this huge sum of money, the already eager Japanese executive was completely relieved.

And Simon Smith is even more relieved than him, because after bringing Gunpei Yokoi to New York he already limited the future potential of Nintendo by a lot. Even if Nintendo were to join the future gaming market their strength and technical abilities especially in the hardware department would be far from as great as it used to be in his previous life.

The next hour Simon spent a lot of time simply talking about his vision of the future gaming industry with Gunpei. But he also learned many novel ideas from his future hardware department leader and even received some recommendations for people from Japan that were very well connected in the domestic gaming market and could help him set up sales channels in order to promote the arcade machines in the Japanese market.

Apart from the United States and Europe the japanese market was probably the biggest market for games, maybe even bigger than Europe. In Europe you have to set up sales channels for every major country individually and most of the time you have to offer percentages of the profit to the old forces in Europe in order to even be able to enter the market safely.

Atari would highly likely face similar problems in the Japanese market and having people that can help set up connections would be immensely valuable.

Overall the first communication between Gunpei Yokoi and his future boss went very well and both were very satisfied. Simon proposed for Gunpei to fly to the United States on his private plane in a week, which the Japanese executive happily agreed on. After confirming repeatedly that Simon's law firm would take care of his current contract with Nintendo he was relieved and would take care of his family's arrangements during the next week.

After parting from the new executive of Atari Sarah returned to his side and they spent the next few days together in Kyoto. Both fell in love with the culture of Japan because it was completely different from the U.S. and relieved them from the constant stress and pressure when in New York.

They especially enjoyed the bathing and clothing culture and visited many famous Onsen during their time in Japan. Spending the night together while wearing traditional Japanese clothing added a completely new touch to their relationship.

Unfortunately the time they spent together flew by quickly and on October 28th 1970 they boarded a plane back to the States. Gunpei Yokoi, only 29 years old at this point, didn't even have a wife yet let alone children. He was very curious about everything and full of expectations for his future life.

Simon was sitting across from him and wondered just how much the life of the genius hardware developer would change. In his previous life he died during a car crash in 1997, leaving behind a wife and son he would likely never have in this life, at least not the same. He should probably prepare a special bodyguard and bullet proof car for the important executive of Atari.