NOTE: This will be really big. 3 chs today. ENJOY and gimme those Powerstones.
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[Titan HQ, New York] [Sixth Floor Strategy Room]
The sixth floor of Titan's New York headquarters had been locked down before sunrise, and by ten in the morning, the strategy room looked more like the command center for a technology war than an entertainment-company meeting.
A massive digital wall covered one side of the room, displaying three logos beneath the larger Titan Interactive banner.
TITAN INTERACTIVE
NEBULA FORGE INTERACTIVE
IRON LANTERN GAMES
A second screen showed engineering diagrams for Titan's console, processors, memory modules, solid-state storage, motherboards, cooling systems, GPUs, operating software, development tools, and an entire hardware ecosystem that officially did not exist outside the people sitting in the room.
Alex sat at the head of the long table with a glass of water near his right hand. Rachel stood beside the main display with a tablet connected to the room's presentation system, wearing a dark suit and the expression of someone who had already considered six ways every competitor might react.
The three gaming divisions occupied one side of the table.
Travis Owen represented Titan Interactive, the company's primary game studio and the team currently building Mass Effect. He had several years of production notes spread in front of him and looked more excited than nervous because he already knew what Titan's upcoming hardware could do.
Marcus Vale sat beside him as the public director of Nebula Forge Interactive, Titan's science-fiction, futuristic action, military, and horror-focused development label. Their job at the present is to create No Man's Sky. Well, just pretend to create. Rachel had built enough legitimate history around Marcus that nobody outside the room would ever question why Titan trusted him with expensive projects.
Serena Holt represented Iron Lantern Games, which would handle fantasy, dark adventure, role-playing games, medieval worlds, supernatural projects, and titles such as Dragon Age. She had already developed a reputation inside Titan for asking uncomfortable questions before expensive mistakes happened.
Across from them sat the people responsible for turning Alex's impossible technology roadmap into physical products.
Dr. Priya Raman headed Titan Graphics Architecture, where several teams were developing the Aegis GPU family and the dedicated hardware responsible for Titan's real-time ray-tracing system.
Elias Mercer led Titan Console Systems, overseeing the upcoming Titan home console, controller architecture, thermal design, manufacturing preparation, and certification process.
Noah Bennett ran Titan Platform Software, which included specific systems, graphics APIs, drivers, developer tools, compatibility layers, debugging software, and the internal engine technology that would connect Titan's games to Titan's hardware.
Maya Chen headed Titan Systems Hardware, giving her responsibility for memory, solid-state storage, motherboards, power delivery, networking components, and the supporting hardware required to build complete Titan PCs instead of isolated graphics cards.
Victor Salazar sat beside her as director of Titan Thermal and Power Engineering, where his teams handled cooling systems, power supplies, heat management, acoustic design, and the unpleasant reality that futuristic performance still produced very ordinary heat.
Rachel waited until the doors were secured before touching the tablet, and the main display changed to a single sentence.
PROJECT TITAN WORLD
Alex leaned back slightly as he looked around the table. "Everybody here already knows we're preparing something that's going to make the current market look ancient, although only a few of you understand how aggressively Rachel plans to use it."
Rachel gave him a calm look as she moved toward the display. "Aggressively sounds unnecessarily dramatic when strategically overwhelming works perfectly well."
Travis smiled while folding his arms. "That sounds significantly more threatening when you say it that calmly."
Rachel ignored the comment and brought up the first chart, which showed the current gaming market divided between consoles, graphics cards, PC components, operating platforms, game engines, publishers, and development studios. "Before anybody says the word monopoly inside this building, understand something clearly. We aren't going to create one through illegal exclusivity, collusion, market blocking, forced bundling, or any other shortcut that gives regulators an excuse to crawl through our walls."
Alex raised his glass slightly while listening. "I already made my Yoda speech about that problem, so legal has been warned."
Rachel's expression barely changed as several people around the table laughed. "Our strategy is simpler. We're going to make Titan the most attractive choice in every major category, then allow consumers and developers to choose us voluntarily. If ninety percent of the market chooses Titan because our products are faster, cheaper, easier to develop for, and supported better, our attorneys can defend that position much more comfortably."
Noah leaned toward the table while studying the chart. "So you're building dominance through ecosystem preference instead of technical lock-in."
Rachel pointed toward him with the tablet. "Exactly, and I want that distinction understood by every department before launch. Competitors can exist. Developers can support them. Consumers can buy them. We're simply going to make every one of those decisions increasingly difficult to justify."
The screen changed again.
STEP ONE: WIN DEVELOPERS BEFORE WINNING CONSUMERS
Travis glanced toward Alex before turning back toward Rachel. "That part explains why you wanted the SDK accelerated ahead of the console casing."
Rachel brought up a timeline showing developer-kit distribution. "Gamers don't buy architecture diagrams. They buy games, and hardware without software becomes an expensive decoration under somebody's television. Our first target is every serious studio capable of building something worth playing."
Noah opened his own tablet and pushed several technical diagrams to the main display. "Titan SDK already has the first stable toolchain running. Developers will receive the Titan Ray API, the Aegis shader compiler, the Titan profiler, the asset-conversion pipeline, debugging tools, memory analysis, performance capture, and compatibility documentation. We're also building import support for common production software, so teams won't have to rebuild their entire workflow before touching our platform."
Serena looked through the features before resting her hands together. "How much are we charging for the developer package?"
Rachel answered while advancing the slide. "Nothing for qualified studios during the first twelve months. Development kits will be subsidized, technical documentation will be included, and Titan engineering support will be available directly to approved teams. Smaller independent studios will receive a separate program with reduced certification costs."
Marcus gave a low whistle while reading the support structure. "That's going to make publishers very interested."
Rachel looked toward him. "I want them interested before they understand how far behind everyone else is going to look."
Alex smiled faintly while turning one of the hardware reports. "Developers shouldn't spend eighteen months learning how to make one reflection appear correctly. Give them the tools, teach them how to use the hardware, and get their games running before the public can even buy the machine."
Priya brought up a rendering diagram. "That matters especially for ray tracing because most current engines weren't designed around dedicated intersection hardware. We can accelerate old rendering methods easily, although proper real-time ray tracing needs developers thinking differently about lighting, materials, reflections, and scene structure."
Alex tapped the table lightly. "That's why Mass Effect leads the demonstration. Travis already has the development team working directly with the new renderer, so the audience gets something built around the technology instead of a patched tech demo."
Travis smiled as the main screen switched briefly to Shepard standing inside a reflective Citadel corridor. "The current internal build already has native 4K running on the engineering cards. Reflections, dynamic shadows, and the first global illumination pass are working, although we're still tuning performance around larger combat spaces."
Alex looked toward him with visible satisfaction. "You're going to have the most watched game trailer in the world before people even know when it releases."
Rachel moved to the second stage.
STEP TWO: CREATE DISBELIEF
A thirty-second countdown appeared beside the words PROJECT AEGIS.
Rachel enlarged the launch schedule. "The first teaser releases on March twenty-seventh. Anywhere between thirty seconds and one minute. And there won't be any hardware photographs, no price, no specifications, and no explanation beyond what appears on screen."
Marcus read the proposed teaser notes. "You're showing Mass Effect running in native 3840 by 2160 with real-time reflections and lighting, then refusing to explain how it happened."
Rachel gave him a faint smile. "Correct. I want arguments. I want people accusing Titan of using prerendered footage. I want forum threads explaining why the video is impossible. I want graphics programmers writing essays about why nobody can do this in real time on consumer hardware."
Alex laughed softly while tapping the table. "Then we invite the loudest skeptics to New York and let them touch the machine themselves."
The screen changed.
TITAN TECHNOLOGY DAY
APRIL 10, 2009
INVITATION ONLY
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-[POWERSTONES & REVIEWS]--
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[6 advance chs] [All chs available for all tiers] + [Streamer in Modern Family> 29 chs> All chs available for all tiers]