Chapter 499 ID Company's "Wolfenstein" And NVIDIA RIVA128 Graphics Card

Thinking of this, Li Xiaofan, who was still excited after playing the game, simply picked up the phone and called Lin Muchu, who was working in the Y-lab startup incubator in Silicon Valley, San Francisco.

"Mr. Li, why are you still awake so late? Is there anything important?" Lin Muchu asked on the phone.

"Nothing particularly important. Muchu, do you usually play video games? Do you know that there is a game company called ID Software in the United States?"

Lin Muchu shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Li, I rarely play video games, and I don't know much about the game company ID Software you mentioned. However, Mr. Li, I see that Gu Qijun often plays some video games when he is free. He may be more proficient in this industry. How about I call him over?"

"Well, you call Qijun to answer the phone."

Then, Lin Muchu called Gu Qijun from the office next door.

Gu Qijun asked on the phone: "Mr. Li, are you talking about the game company ID Software that launched the game "Quake" last year?"

"Yes, it is this company. Qijun, do you know about this company?"

"Haha, Mr. Li, you really found the right person. I am a loyal fan of the ID Software series of games. I really like the 3D "Quake" game they launched last year."

"Oh, then please introduce this company to me!"

"Okay, Mr. Li. This ID Software company was founded six years ago in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. Before establishing ID Software, several founders including John Carmack, John Romero and Adrian Carmac were employees of another company called Softdisk. Among them, the engine engineer John Carmack was the soul of the later ID Software company!"

"When John Carmack was still working at ID Software, he developed Adaptive tile refresh slice adaptation refresh technology, that is, graphics processing technology suitable for horizontal scrolling, so he and his colleague Tom Hall began to remake "Super Mario Bros. 3" on the Nintendo SFC platform on the PC platform, and John Romero and Adrian Carmack, who also worked at Softdisk, also joined. Later, the four of them privately developed a horizontal scrolling platform jumping game called "Commander Keen", which was also the first horizontal scrolling game on the PC platform. As soon as this game was released, it was a success in both evaluation and sales, and the four resigned and jointly established the current ID Software company 6 years ago. "

Gu Qijun continued to introduce:

"John Carmack and other four founders worked together to create ID Software, while the Commander Keen series of games were hot-selling, John Carmack successfully conquered the 3D graphics display technology, and then John Romero proposed the idea of ​​the game Wolfenstein 3D. Five years ago, 1ftware made Wolfenstein, which took advantage of the smooth scrolling effect achieved by JC in 1990 to the extreme, and it was so realistic that ordinary users simulated the real world on the PC for the first time. After the release of this Wolfenstein game, it not only achieved great commercial success, but also pioneered modern FPS games! It was this Wolfenstein FPS shooting game that made me start to be fascinated by computer games..."

"Then, two years ago, 1ftware released DOOM, which brought computer games into the 3D world. DOOM outlined realistic scenes that had never been seen before, and DOOM was the first game to support online connection. Then, last year they released Quake, which allowed computer games to run in a real 3D world for the first time, taking realism to a higher level, and was the first to support 3D acceleration cards..."

It is worthy of ID Gu Qijun is a loyal fan of ID Software's games. When talking about every game of their company, he knows them like the back of his hand.

After the introduction, Gu Qijun asked on the phone: "Mr. Li, are you interested in this ID Software company and want to invest in this company?"

"Yes, I am interested."

"That's great, Mr. Li. In fact, I have long wanted to suggest you to invest in similar electronic game industries. Later, seeing that the industry direction you set for our incubator is biased towards high-tech industries such as semiconductors and electronics, I am embarrassed to mention this game industry to you."

Li Xiaofan smiled and said: "Games and digital entertainment industries can also serve as a supplement to our group's investment. If there are good projects, we can still invest!"

"Mr. Li, in fact, in addition to ID Software, another game company called Bethesda Softworks in Maryland is also quite good. Three years ago, they launched the game "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" on the DOS platform. "The Elder Scrolls" is a very classic role-playing RPG game, loved by gamers around the world..."

The Elder Scrolls has a huge influence on gamers around the world. Even Li Xiaofan played the Elder Scrolls Adventure: Redguard in his previous life.

However, when Gu Qijun mentioned Bethesda Softworks, Li Xiaofan remembered a merger and acquisition case in his previous life: in September 2020, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media Group for $7.5 billion in cash. Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax Media is tied with GitHub as the third largest acquisition in Microsoft's history, second only to LinkedIn and Skype.

The most valuable business of ZeniMax Media Group is mainly composed of Bethesda Game Studio and ID Software.

"Qijun, when you have time, go to ID Software and Bethesda Softworks to contact them and see if they are willing to accept our investment?"

"Okay, Mr. Li!"

"Qijun, I thought of another thing. At the end of last year, NVIDIA, which we invested heavily in, launched the world's first 128-bit 3D processor RIVA 128 and released a graphics card series based on the NV3 graphics core. NV3 is NVIDIA's first graphics chip to support Microsoft Direct3D acceleration, and it is also the first 128-bit graphics chip to provide a hardware triangle engine. I wonder how this RIVA 128 graphics card product is performing in the US market now, especially how it is evaluated in the gaming industry?"

At the end of last year, NVIDIA, which received a large investment from Li Xiaofan, launched the Riva 128, a 128-bit 2D and 3D accelerated graphics core chip that uses a 0.35-micron production process. Its geometry processor can perform 500 million floating point operations per second and generate 1.2 million triangles, all of which are generated by the built-in hardware triangle processing engine. This is a major selling point of Riva 128.

"Mr. Li, although the image quality of NVIDIA's RIVA 128 graphics card is not as good as 3dfx Voodoo, with a pixel fill rate of 100M/s and good support for OPEN GL open graphics library, RIVA 128 completely surpasses Voodoo in non-GLIDE API games. At present, our players still recognize this RIVA 128 graphics card very much!"