|
Background Accolade Inc. is known well as a game software company. We have an excellent credentials in the intensely competition of PC sport games. The flagship series released by Accolade are Test Drive, Hardball, and Jack Nicklaus championship Golf. Test Drive is a driving simulation game; Hardball is a baseball simulation game; and Jack Nicklaus championship Golf is a Golf simulation game. They have attracted countless customers. You can taste the spirit and the flavor of sport with precision. We have been polishing skills of graphics and animations. Accolade locates in San Jose, California. We are a group of computer engineers at Accolade. We need encyclopedic knowledge of computer and flexibility. The description of this job is a systems consultant that suggest the system and a negotiation with maker; therefore, the management is especially significant. |
|
Problems In the past we have developed games that run on Sega equipment, and we have not had any problems with compatibility. Sega just developed its new Genesis console to run all of its new games, and all of the games we have been developing will not run on it. Now, as a group of engineers, we need to decide how to deal with Sega's new Genesis console. There are three ways for us: not to develop any games for Sega's new Genesis console, to pay Sega's software licensing fee and make the new games, or to use reverse engineering to discover the source code of the console and continue to make the games we are working on. We have decided to use reverse engineering. |
|
Reasons If we reveal the source code of Sega's new console through reverse engineering, we will be able to create a lot of new games with it and make profits in the future. Actually, reverse engineering takes time and money; however, as the result, we will be able to make so much profits that they can compensate the cost of reverse engineering. For example, according to our experience, just one popular game generates over $220,000,000. It must be enough to compensate its production cost. We also thought twice about Sega's legal action against us. The potential cannot be ignored; however, according to the past, Sega has not claimed about the source codes in spite of our activity. Thus, we expect that Sega won't take legal action either. Two things that we didn't choose are not to develop any games for Sega's new Genesis console and to pay Sega's software licensing fee. The reason why we didn't choose the former option is that we are not willing to lose the revenue of millions of dollars because profits of making software for old Sega consoles must be going to decrease from now on. The reasons why we didn't choose the latter option are that the licensing fee of $200,000,000 per software game developed, even if we succeed, does not suit comparatively by the profits of $220,000,000; moreover, it is difficult to create such a popular game. We cannot expect any profits by these two methods. On the other hand, to use reverse engineering will give us largest amount of profits when it succeeds. We have to have some stakes in this situation. We assumed that Sega's new console will be prevailed among the customers, our new product will be popular, and Sega won't take legal action against us. However, these stakes are worth having for us because of the profit when that stakes succeed. Therefore, we decided to use reverse engineering as the best decision we can make. |
| Colleagues |
|
Kentarou Akiyama (s1090003) Youko Abe (s1090007) Masaaki Iio (s1090010) Akira Igarashi (s1090011) |