Chapter 181: An Unexpected Person - Part 2

When The Wall Street Journal had already published that Philips' motive for acquiring Magnavox was to promote its VLP Videodisc, Ethan Jones was genuinely confident in asserting that last year's incidents were undeniably linked to Magnavox. Those events had their fingerprints all over them!

"Damn! Philips wants to use Magnavox's gaming console to promote their video format?"

"They started on this so early?"

Ethan clasped his head with both hands, fingers threaded through his hair, truly unable to believe his own analysis.

Because wasn't that just absurd?

Remember, the video game industry was only truly born in 1972, the same year Philips released the home video recorder. And while promoting home video recorders to the world, were they already contemplating using video games to promote their next-generation product?

What's the difference between this foresight and having a cheat code?

However, Ethan only sighed over this briefly before pushing it to the back of his mind.

Because he thought…

"I seem to have dug up a massive landmine!"

"I've stabbed Philips' future product to death. From now on, they might target me, right?"

After clarifying everything, Ethan felt like his head was about to explode! He was just a game developer; how did he inadvertently take down a participant in the video format war? If he were involved in videotapes, laser discs, DVDs, or Blu-rays, that would be another matter, but he wasn't. In this scenario…

"Wait!"

"Am I not involved?"

The previously protesting Ethan paused.

At this moment, he suddenly remembered that laser discs, DVDs, and Blu-rays served purposes beyond just recording movies and TV shows or storing music videos. The discs related to the video format war weren't just profitable in the film industry. As data storage mediums, PCs were designed with dedicated optical drives for them, and game consoles like PS, Xbox, and Wii couldn't do without them.

In that case, had Philips been punched by them first?

"Hiss… It seems Philips is actually a good guy!"

"Even though they targeted me, I also remembered the gold mine that is optical discs!"

Ethan Jones suddenly felt that being continuously hammered by Magnavox might have been a blessing in disguise. If not for Magnavox's cautiousness, he might not have recalled optical discs for quite some time, especially since the mainstream storage medium of the era was still magnetic tape.

Without wandering through this field in his current life, remembering would have been incredibly difficult.

However, even though Ethan had remembered optical discs, he wasn't in a hurry.

Firstly, the technology for optical discs wasn't perfected yet. Even if Ethan wasn't very familiar with this topic, he knew that the peak of optical discs didn't come until the late 1980s, at least ten years from now. With so much time, he could afford to plan slowly.

Secondly, he didn't understand these high-tech products well. He needed to go home first and consult with Evelyn Johnson to see how far this technology had developed.

But when Ethan got home and entered Evelyn's study to share his thoughts, the girl buried in circuit research was utterly perplexed.

"Ethan, I feel like your thoughts jump too fast?"

"Like a frog!"

"Weren't you researching the conspiracies of Magnavox and Atari these past few days?"

"Why are you suddenly interested in optical discs?"

The girl was bewildered.

She brushed her dangling hair behind her ear, her beautiful eyes filled with confusion.

Ethan didn't hide his speculations and shared his thoughts.

When the girl learned that Ethan believed Philips thought they had lost the videotape war, that their VCR format couldn't beat JVC's VHS, and therefore sought to pioneer a new path with optical discs...

She stood up abruptly.

Unhesitatingly, she grabbed Ethan's arms, turning him around.

"What are you doing?" Ethan was puzzled.

Evelyn stared at the back of Ethan's head and neck for a long while before finally saying, "I just wanted to see if you were an alien..."

"What?" Ethan was shocked, "What do you mean?"

"Because your brain is obviously not like a normal person's!" Evelyn explained, "I admit, JVC's video recorders are indeed very useful, but their competition has just begun!"

"Philips will definitely continue to develop new products for their VCR format, and so will Sony. How long has Betamax been around? Will they give up just because JVC released one video recorder? What about the research and development costs already invested? Who will bear those losses?"

To Evelyn, Ethan's ideas were simply fanciful.

Philips, Sony, and JVC had been officially at war for less than a year, and Ethan was suggesting that Philips might already be planning for the next generation?

Only someone unfamiliar with technology could make such a claim!

"Ethan, I think you've been spoiled by us."

Evelyn pouted, saying, "You're probably used to

 me making games and machines alone, Stephen (Wozniak) creating personal computers alone, Chuck (Peddle) developing chips with just a dozen people, Rudolf (Baer) making a circuit board game console and a dozen circuit board games with just five people, so you might not understand how much money normal research and development requires."

"If it weren't for Stephen and me working on it, a game like 'Pac-Man' would take a normal team of twenty to thirty people a year to write."

"Even if you paid them a salary of twenty thousand, you'd burn through six hundred thousand in a year."

"Our knowledge is not something normal people possess. I've consulted Vint alone on programming, and Stephen's father taught him military engineering concepts for missile construction. Who among the average people would understand that? You can't compare our efficiency to the general public's."

"Oh, Evelyn, I didn't mean that…" Ethan's sister's words woke him up. He was using knowledge from one world to analyze the entire event, which was unfair to those living in the present, "I was just making a simple guess…" he explained.

"I was just speculating based on The Wall Street Journal's report."

He shifted all the blame to The Wall Street Journal.

Seeing Ethan with his hands spread, looking aggrieved, Evelyn shook her head helplessly.

"Don't waste time on things where you can't find answers. For us now, designing a new game is more important than finding the perpetrator of the original incident."

"I know." Ethan didn't argue, readily agreeing.

His obedient demeanor made Evelyn sit back down and pick up her pencil to continue drawing.

Just when Ethan thought his sister didn't want to talk about optical discs anymore, the girl, buried in her creation, said, "If you want to know about optical discs, just go directly to Steven."

"What?" Ethan didn't understand his sister's meaning, "Steven?"

"Do you mean Spielberg?"

"Yeah." Evelyn nodded slightly.

"Why?"

Ethan was puzzled.

"Isn't he a Hollywood director? How would he know what an optical disc is?"

'...'

Evelyn paused at the question.

She stopped drawing with her right hand, looked up with a smile, "Wow… Ethan, I thought you were joking with me. I didn't expect you really didn't know about optical discs?"

"The patent for this technology is held by MCA."

"You heard right."

"MCA."

"The parent company of Universal, M, C, A."

Evelyn spelled out MCA's name slowly, then laughed and said, "So, if you want to know the latest about it, why not just ask Steven?"

"Didn't you say he's Universal's prince?"

"With him around, you can see any technology."

"You don't need to ask me because I definitely don't know as much about optical discs as they do."

WTF???

Ethan was stunned!

The patent for optical discs was in MCA's hands?

Damn!

What kind of plot twist was this?