Magnificent, truly magnificent.
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Japan, there lived a very wealthy and very silly company. While they had had some successes in the past, they had recently fallen on somewhat harder times, but were still committed to “doing the right thing” and moving forward in their industry. The company made little black boxes which made a lot of people very happy, and were just about getting ready to announce the newest of their black boxes, when they were approached by a team of engineers whose smiles were as fake as their Rolex watches.
“Mr Hirai sir,” the lead engineer said to the head of the company, “we’ve heard that you’re looking to make a new magic box to entertain the people.”
“Why yes,” said Mr Hirai, “we have been looking to do just that! Do you know anybody who could help us?”
“Well,” said the lead engineer, “we can design you a new box, which we can guarantee you will make a profit on every unit sold. All we need is an advance of several billion dollars and we’ll have your box ready for Christmas.”
Mr Hirai liked the sound of a box which made money – their most recent box wasn’t the moneyspinner that the company had originally hoped for – so he gave the engineers their money and let them go on their way.
A few months later, they returned to the company to finally announce their new console, but before doing so they showed it to Mr Hirai.
“But, the package looks empty!” he exclaimed in shock, having sunk several billion dollars into the project.
“What are you talking about?” said the lead engineer, “can’t you see the high-end multimedia platform that we’ve created here? We made it so it would be visible to consumers of discerning taste and vision such as yourself!”
In slight shock, Mr Hirai looked a little closer and announced “Oh, I just couldn’t see it at first. That certainly is very high-end and multimedia. We should announce it to our shareholders.” And so, with great aplomb, Mr Hirai took the box down to the conference centre he had booked.
“Look at this box!” he said to the assembled masses. “Look how pretty it is! It is a product for all high-end, discerning customers, but those who don’t have taste are unable to see it!” The room was slightly nervous at this stage, but then the man from IGN announced: “my word, that is one of the most beautiful boxes around today. I pity those unable to see it!”. He was followed by the woman from Kotaku, who said that it “heralded a bold new vision for the company.”
Very soon, the whole room was caught up in praising the box, and Mr Hirai breathed a sigh of relief. Until, that was, a small voice from the front row pipped up “but there’s nothing there!” The person in question was, however, quickly called a Nintendrone and ripped to shreds by the assembled masses.
The End
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