The Prototype Awaits
“Follow me if you dare!” Kim Dae-seok strode forward and called out, “Oh Jung-geun, Xbox team leader?”
“Y-yes! That’s me, Oh Jung-geun.” Xbox team? He hadn’t even known such a concrete organization had already been formed.
“Welcome to San Francisco. We have a car waiting. Please follow me.”
Kim Dae-seok took the lead, and Oh Jung-geun and his team members fell in behind. Staring at the back of Kim Dae-seok’s head, Oh Jung-geun felt a dozen questions bubbling up: Where are we going? What exactly am I supposed to do? He knew the answers would come in time and that the wait wouldn’t be long, yet the uncertainty still made him deeply uncomfortable.
This was nothing like his days at Ilsung. Back then, every decision had required exhaustive prior research and meticulous planning. Oh Jung-geun, who had joined Ilsung in the early nineties, was a true “Ilsung man” through and through. To him, ID Group felt even more unpredictable than Mirae Group.
Mirae Group’s guiding spirit could be summed up in Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon’s favorite retort: “Have you ever tried it?” Whenever executives arrived with reams of data urging caution, Jeon would simply ask whether they had actually attempted the venture. Ilsung’s philosophy, by contrast, was “Even a stone bridge must be tapped before crossing.” No new market was entered without exhaustive study, and even then only if every doubt had been resolved. As a result, Ilsung’s default strategy had always been to follow.
Oh Jung-geun had never imagined a company could be more reckless than Mirae—until he encountered ID Group, led by the prodigy Yoo Jae-won, which had become the world’s largest IT conglomerate in barely ten years. The realization left him stunned.
He had been summoned to San Francisco because of the Xbox. Though he had been with ID Electronics for several months, he had never once heard the name “Xbox” until the sudden order arrived. It had dropped out of the sky with no warning. He had assumed it was merely a project being handled by the American subsidiary—until he himself was called up, solely because he had once overseen the Aladdin game console project at Ilsung.
This was how ID Group operated. Whenever a new business was launched, suitable personnel were pulled from across the organization to form a task force. Many of the group’s successful products had been developed this way, from the Tiffany Phone to the early versions of the Android operating system. Once Yoo Jae-won started something, the company either created a new team or assigned it to an existing one and pushed through to mass production—and every single project had succeeded. The sheer destructive power of one genius’s vision was on full display.
Oh Jung-geun had also realized early on that Yoo Jae-won was no ordinary genius. The geniuses he knew excelled in a single field and were often average or worse in everything else. Yoo Jae-won was different. Politics, mathematics, music, computers—he dominated multiple domains. In politics especially, true genius had been almost nonexistent until now.
After being summoned by Vice Chairman Choi Kang-wook and learning he was headed to San Francisco, Oh Jung-geun had revisited everything he knew about Yoo Jae-won. That was when he came across two recent headlines:
— Ilsung Group Chairman Choi Hyun-hee sentenced to seven years in prison in the first trial; taken into custody
— DH Hotel president sentenced to five years on appeal; suspended sentence precedent broken
Choi Hyun-hee had been a figure whose very name made any Ilsung man flinch. Oh Jung-geun himself had reported directly to the chairman while handling the Aladdin project. Meeting Choi had been an ordeal; the stress began the day before, worrying about mistakes or unanswerable questions. His sudden, razor-sharp queries always struck at the heart of the matter. Failure to answer properly brought immediate reprimands that translated into lost bonuses and stalled promotions.
Choi’s influence had extended far beyond the group. “Ilsung manages everything” was no empty boast. Politics, prosecutors, even the Supreme Court had felt his reach. That was why the seven-year sentence was unthinkable by past standards. Even with multiple charges—slush funds, industrial accident cover-ups—the length still exceeded expectations. Oh Jung-geun had anticipated five years, followed by a suspended sentence on appeal. A first-trial sentence of seven years made any suspended sentence on appeal nearly impossible. The only remaining option was a medical suspension of sentence, but even that was no longer guaranteed.
The newly created Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (Gongsucheo) had changed everything. It served as a genuine check on prosecutors and the courts, and it was already proving effective. The DH Hotel president’s failure to receive any reduction on appeal was a direct result of Gongsucheo’s involvement; the agency had dismantled the police protection surrounding the hotel’s nightlife operations. Even the mighty Daehan Ilbo had raged, but its framing power was no longer what it once was, and public support for Gongsucheo remained strong.
Behind all these changes stood Yoo Jae-won’s influence. Few remembered that he had been the first to file charges against Choi Hyun-hee. Oh Jung-geun himself had only realized it during his own investigation. The idea for Gongsucheo had first appeared in Jeon Myeong-heon’s presidential platform—drafted by Yoo Jae-won. What had once seemed unrelated now revealed itself as a meticulously layered plan. This was high-level political genius of the highest order.
At that moment, a white mansion came into view. Among the luxury homes lining the hill overlooking San Francisco Bay, it stood out unmistakably. It was Chairman Yoo Jae-won’s residence.
Only then did the team members seated beside him begin to murmur. Oh Jung-geun’s own expression barely changed. The fact that Chief of Staff Kim Dae-seok had personally come to the airport made the meaning clear: a direct meeting with Chairman Yoo Jae-won.
His mind grew turbulent. In his Ilsung days, such a summons had almost always meant a scolding. Now he was about to meet Yoo Jae-won for the first time, with no hint of what awaited him. The uncertainty was more nerve-wracking than any meeting with Choi Hyun-hee had ever been.
Knock, knock.
“Chairman!”
“Come in.”
Yoo Jae-won, deep in work at his study desk, answered reflexively while his fingers never paused on the keyboard. He was in the middle of a particularly promising stretch of code and reluctant to stop. Still, the knock belonged to someone who would only interrupt for something important.
“The Xbox team has arrived. Team Leader Oh Jung-geun and five others have been safely escorted here.”
“Ah, understood. I’ll be right out.”
The mention of the Xbox team made Yoo Jae-won brighten. Even the private program he had been reluctant to pause was set aside. After all, it was personal work; official business took precedence. He changed out of his comfortable work clothes into a crisp suit—necessary, he felt, to preserve the image his employees held of him.
When he descended to the living room, six men ranging from their mid-thirties to early forties sat stiffly on the long sofa. They had been offered cold drinks after their long journey but had not touched them, clearly too tense. Just as the man at the far end raised his glass, Yoo Jae-won appeared.
Everyone shot to their feet.
“Please, sit comfortably.”
Yoo Jae-won took the seat opposite them with the ease of someone who had done this many times. The team members followed suit.
“Thank you for coming such a long way.”
“Not at all, sir!”
Yet the fatigue from the long flight was written plainly on their shoulders.
“You must be exhausted, so I’ll get straight to the point. As you’ve probably heard on the way here, we’ve formed an Xbox team. Following the announcement at IDDC 99, ID Group has decided to enter the game-console market, and the console’s name has been set as Xbox. In addition to all of you, dozens of other talented individuals have already been gathered for the team.”
“So we weren’t the only ones,” murmured the man at the back. Yoo Jae-won nodded.
The Xbox team was already operational and continuing to expand. Some divisions were already working: the console design team and the joystick team. Even the mainboard fabrication had begun. But a game console was far more than hardware. Hardware was actually the easiest part. Creating the operating system came next. The hardest task was securing games that would run on the finished machine.
“Team Leader Oh Jung-geun and the rest of you have been given the mission of securing third-party developers in Japan. In particular, I understand you have close connections with Japanese game companies, Team Leader Oh?”
Oh Jung-geun’s expression shifted to understanding. “You’re referring to Sega, aren’t you?”
His previous work had involved distributing Sega’s Mega Drive consoles in Korea, which had naturally built relationships with the company. The other team members who had accompanied him to San Francisco had similar backgrounds.
Only then did the knot of tension in Oh Jung-geun’s chest loosen slightly. If he had been asked to design a console from scratch or break into distribution networks, the task would have seemed impossible. Leveraging existing Japanese connections, however, felt manageable. Many of the Sega executives he had worked with during his most active years were still there.
“Virtua Fighter 3 must be brought exclusively into the Xbox camp.”
Sega’s reputation had faded since the turn of the century. The turning point had come the previous year when their ambitious Dreamcast console flopped spectacularly. The hardware design had been excellent, but PlayStation’s dominance proved insurmountable. The enormous development costs of Shenmue had only accelerated the decline. Yet the innovative legacy of Virtua Fighter remained, and Yoo Jae-won intended to bring that legacy to Xbox.
“Please reach out to Capcom and Konami as well. Biohazard looks like a lot of fun. Ah, and Tekken too.”
Yoo Jae-won’s ambitions were vast. Though the console shared a name with a certain other machine, he had no intention of following in its footsteps. To ensure genuine success, he planned to secure a massive number of killer titles. That meant not only Sega but multiple Japanese developers would be approached to create Xbox-exclusive games.
“So our mission is to secure third-party support in Japan,” Oh Jung-geun summarized, reading Yoo Jae-won’s intent perfectly. Everyone present except the one who had worked on the mainboard had connections to Japanese game companies. Yoo Jae-won’s casual reference to “Japan duty” had left them uneasy, but they had not forgotten that at least one person had been brought specifically for mainboard optimization.
Japan was not a country where personal connections were the absolute priority the way they were in China, yet having prior relationships was still far better than starting from zero. Yoo Jae-won was prepared to offer powerful incentives to any proven third-party developer. Securing the listed titles for Xbox would not be difficult.
“We’ll go over the details starting tomorrow. For now, would you like to see the actual Xbox prototype?”
Oh Jung-geun’s eyes widened. The console had only been announced recently—how could a working prototype already exist? Surprise quickly gave way to fierce curiosity. He had been assigned to the project because his superiors had ordered it, but now he had become a genuine gamer. The thought that a functional system already existed was astonishing, and the idea of seeing what the world’s acknowledged genius had created filled him with excitement.
The rest of the team felt the same. They rose almost as one. Smiling at their reaction, Yoo Jae-won stood and led them toward a hidden room.