Chapter 171: Chapter 167: Zog’s Thousand-Layer Scheme
As it happened, the fluorescent layer on the screen also emitted ultraviolet light. To Zog’s eyes, this meant the colors didn’t just fail to blend properly—they were contaminated with a host of other hues.
Given that the other races were either too small in number or weren’t the primary consumers of the Zog Group’s products, the company didn’t aim for a one-size-fits-all Magic Vision Device.
Once their market share grew, Zog Group could develop a targeted Magic Vision Device that they could use.
As for Zog himself, it was a bit awkward that the boss couldn’t use his own company’s product.
Metal Dragons automatically unlocked the ability to transform into a Human at a certain age, but Five-Color Dragons had no such feature.
And Zog was currently the only known Five-Color Dragon who wanted to watch Demon Vision.
He had always been a Dragon who valued cost-effectiveness.
Designing a custom Magic Vision Device just for himself wasn’t cost-effective, so he found a cheaper solution.
He would have a pair of glasses made to filter out the invisible light.
The effect was immediate.
Thanks to this experiment, Dr. Fabric effortlessly churned out a paper on the color vision characteristics of a particular race. With that, his performance metrics for the entire year were met, not just for the past six months.
Furthermore, the study of vision in races other than Humans was a completely new field.
And what was the point of an achievement if you didn’t show it off?
He had even "arrogantly" stated in his paper that it required no citations.
’Who knew the doctor, who was normally so serious, was secretly so smug.’
Finally, with the plan settled, the black-and-white Magic Vision Device production lines in the Northern Domain were set to be fully converted to produce color models.
Everyone could see that black-and-white models had no competitive edge against color ones. The price difference wasn’t huge, and the color devices could still play black-and-white content, offering complete backward compatibility.
Thus, there was no need to keep the black-and-white production lines. Only one was to be preserved as a memento, destined for the future Zog History Museum.
The museum—still just a pie-in-the-sky idea—would one day display the developmental history of everything the Zog Group had ever created.
Zog was confident he would live long enough to see those gadgets become historical artifacts.
However, even with the production lines fully converted, the Northern Factory’s maximum output was only 800 to 1,000 units per day. This was nothing compared to the massive factories on Earth, which could churn out tens or even hundreds of thousands of units daily.
What surprised Zog even more, however, was that the market failed to absorb this daily output of less than 1,000 units.
After an initial few weeks where demand outstripped supply, distributors everywhere began reporting that the color Magic Vision Devices were becoming difficult to sell.
’Why is this happening?’
Zog didn’t quite understand.
’Where did we go wrong?’
The marketing push was top-tier. Social circles, Demon Vision commercials, retail stores, newspapers, magazines—they had pulled out all the stops on promotion.
Admittedly, customers who bought one now couldn’t watch anything in color yet, as the color signal hadn’t been rolled out.
Having the Magic Vision Device itself parse the color parameters would have significantly increased the cost of each unit.
Instead, the color parameters would be encoded directly into the Magic Crystal Stone duplicates at the broadcast source and sent out together.
’Could it be that people don’t believe this Magic Vision Device can actually display color?’
’No, that can’t be it.’
The new Magic Vision Device even had a feature analogous to a DVD player. Yuno’s team had developed a low-cost Magic Crystal Stone that couldn’t project on its own but could be played when connected to the device. The price of this "pseudo-Magic Crystal Stone" was just one-ten-thousandth of the projecting version.
Plus, every purchase of a new Magic Vision Device came with complimentary pseudo-Magic Crystal Stones of the three feature-length Shadows of Evil that Zog Film Studio had released to date.
That alone should prove it was capable of displaying color.
Besides, the advertisements had already promised that color signals would begin broadcasting with the official release of *Tom and Jerry*.
’What a headache.’
Zog’s claws unconsciously scraped against his Dragon scratching post as he pondered the problem.
Dragons needed to sharpen their claws too, but their scratching posts weren’t made of wood, cardboard, or sisal rope. This one was made of enchanted Tikal Alloy, the strongest metal currently known.
But since it was metal, the resulting sound was bound to be unpleasant.
Nearby, Elsa was being driven absolutely mad.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.
"Boss, could you please stop scratching that thing?"
"Boss? I rather preferred the defiant look on your face when you used to call me Xiaozhuo."
"Fine, Xiaozhuo? Can we please—"
"Alright, you’ve just lost next month’s salary."
"What! Zog, you black-hearted Dragon! Don’t you know I have loans to pay off!" Elsa shrieked, flailing her arms.
"I’ll give you a chance. Tell me why the Magic Vision Devices are stagnating. If you can, you’ll get your salary next month as usual," Zog said offhandedly.
He didn’t actually expect any constructive advice from Elsa.
"Do you even have to ask? It’s because they’re too expensive, of course," Elsa answered instantly.
"How are they too expensive? They only cost a little more than the black-and-white ones, and they come with freebies."
"But the black-and-white ones are expensive too! Most people had to save up for months just to buy one of those. Now, a little over a year later, a color version is out. They want one, but they can’t afford it."
Elsa said, stating it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
’That... makes sense.’
Zog thought about it, and it really did seem to be the case. The iteration cycle for his Magic Vision Devices was almost as fast as the mobile phone market.
He’d already earned several years’ worth of their money, and the populace was simply tapped out.
So, in the first few weeks, all the wealthy nobles who wanted one had bought one. All that remained was the vast, less affluent market, which naturally led to stagnating sales.
Still, he was better than the mobile phone companies. His iterations were genuine improvements. To say those other companies were just squeezing out updates like toothpaste would be a compliment.
"You can have your salary back," Zog said.
’So, how can I make it affordable for them?’ he wondered.
Compared to the previous generation, the main change in this Magic Vision Device was the picture tube.
The audio, power supply, and signal reception components were all identical. Even the new feature for playing pseudo-Magic Crystal Stones could be removed if necessary.
