Chapter 973: Racing Against Time
Zhou Jiangping climbed out of the game pod, and the expert from earlier conducted another round of tests on him. The results still showed no issues.
After watching Zhou Jiangping’s trial run, the attitudes of the others softened considerably.
Everyone present were respectable figures with status and reputation, and with leaders from the Game Committee here, no one would act like children scrambling for a toy. They all maintained restraint. However, from the look in each person’s eyes, the anticipation for this new type of VR game pod was unmistakable.
Zhou Jiangping still hadn’t calmed down from his earlier excitement: “After experiencing neural-link VR, I really don’t want to spend any more time in the real world. The gap is just too huge!”
Zhang Zhongxiang chuckled: “Is it really that serious, CEO Zhou? Can the virtual world really be more appealing than the real one?”
Zhou Jiangping said, “Chairman Zhang, you don’t understand that feeling. Have you ever tried long-distance running? When you run, there’s a breaking point. Just before you reach it, you feel exhausted, gasping for breath, like you’re about to collapse at any second. But once you break through that point, you suddenly feel lighter on your feet, as if inertia is pushing you forward, and your whole body radiates strength from the inside out!”
“In the real world, it’s incredibly hard to experience that feeling because you have to endure a long period of suffering beforehand. But in a neural-link VR world, you feel that way every single moment! You feel like an athlete with boundless energy, your body in peak condition—whether it’s a long run or high-precision shooting, nothing is a challenge!”
“In the real world, you’d need day after day of grueling training to get that feeling. Some long-distance runners achieve that level of physical fitness only after running for over a decade, and if they stop training, their condition quickly declines. You have to understand how rare that ‘feeling’ is in reality, but in the virtual world, anyone can have it!”
“No wonder I feel out of sorts after coming out. Right now, my old bones feel like they’ve aged twenty years in an instant. How could that not be uncomfortable?”
Chen Mo corrected him: “To be precise, VR technology made you feel twenty years younger.”
Zhang Zhongxiang smiled: “Hearing CEO Zhou say that, even I want to give it a try.”
Everyone present had either wealth or influence. After listening to Zhou Jiangping, they all understood the true value of this VR game pod.
It was all about the “feeling.” For these people, “feeling” was the most luxurious thing of all.
Take Zhou Jiangping, for example. He had plenty of wealth and could buy most things he wanted, but the one thing he couldn’t buy was health.
He was too busy to find time for exercise, let alone reach an athlete’s level. And even if he kept up with training, he would still age, his physical condition steadily declining. For him, this new VR game pod was far more than just a gaming machine.
Its greater significance lay in giving people like Zhou Jiangping access to a “feeling” they could never achieve in real life—and for that feeling, they would pay any price.
Zhang Zhongxiang pondered for a moment: “I’ll go in and try it too.”
No one tried to stop him this time, because everyone else was eager to try it as well…
Zhang Zhongxiang sat down in the game pod, and Chen Mo personally guided him through the game.
Qiao Hua said to Chen Mo, “The new game pod will need to go through some procedures before it can be officially released and promoted, but judging by the current situation, it should move quickly. By the way, does the pod have a name yet?”
“A name? It’s been ready for a while.” Chen Mo glanced at the group. “The Matrix Game Pod. Matrix.”
…
…
Actually, Chen Mo didn’t need Qiao Hua’s reminder. After seeing everyone’s trial experiences, he was already clear: this thing would go into rapid production and promotion.
The current technology couldn’t 100% prove it was harmless to humans, but so what?
Remember, this was a new technology that could upend the real world. If even leaders and wealthy businessmen couldn’t wait to take one home, then even if there were some resistance, it would be overcome.
Moreover, the Matrix Game Pod represented an entirely new industry, one whose future profits and scale might even surpass tobacco, alcohol, personal computers, and mobile phones…
Faced with such enormous profits, would anyone give up just because of a little unknown risk? Impossible.
Even if they knew there was a slight risk, they would still push it through aggressively. There were plenty of real-world examples of that.
Besides, in the field of VR games and VR devices, the country had always been slightly behind. If the new VR game pod went global, it wouldn’t just be a turnaround—it would be a massive first-mover advantage. If they hesitated too long and a foreign company brought it to market first, they’d be at a disadvantage.
After all, no one knew exactly how far along foreign research companies were. Assuming they were moving fast was only natural.
…
While everyone else was racing against time, Chen Mo was quite relaxed, even finding time to check on the development progress of *Detroit: Become Human*.
Being this “idle and casually working at the same time” was a rare state of being.
With the Matrix Game Pod prototype ready, more details could be added to *Detroit: Become Human*. As the first next-gen VR game, it might not achieve absolute perfection, but that was fine. Its significance lay in testing the waters, lifting the curtain on next-gen VR just a little, and pushing the era’s understanding of VR forward. That was enough.
The Matrix Game Pod project was also classified as top secret. Before its official announcement, any leaks had to be strictly prevented.
Additionally, a special expert team was studying the pod’s applications in military, medical, and other specialized fields. There was also some debate about its overseas promotion strategy.
Some people even naively suggested that the pod should only be sold domestically and never allowed across borders, to prevent other countries from copying it and erasing their advantage.
That was obviously impossible. No one would turn down money. Selling overseas would boost foreign exchange reserves and trade surpluses. Only a fool would hoard it.
As for whether the Matrix Game Pod could be copied, the expert team’s analysis was: yes, but it didn’t matter. The manufacturing technology wasn’t complicated, but the core value lay in the program that decoded brain and neural signals. Without that program, building the pod would be useless.
That program would be heavily encrypted, and the pod’s system would be highly closed, requiring constant online verification—much like some gaming consoles from Chen Mo’s previous life. Trying to crack it? Sorry, it wouldn’t be that easy.