Rebirth of America, this is my time

After seeing off the visiting guests, Ethan returned to his busy life.

If I had to describe it in detail, it would be both painful and happy.

There are two sources of happiness. The first one is movies.

After Alien withstood the pressure of the market and delivered an impressive score of 10 million in three days in its first weekend, not only did it not suffer the same box office drop as ordinary movies in the second week, but it became more and more courageous. July was successfully entered with a daily performance of more than 2 million.

When July 1st came, its cumulative box office had reached 24 million.

Compared with the crazy trend of Star Wars, it is basically not much different.

Although there is a reason for this summer vacation, countless young people are enjoying a wonderful holiday, and their support has allowed the box office of Alien to continue to rise.

But excellent quality is the basis for the success of Alien. The best proof is the praise given by journalists and film critics from various media after watching Alien.

The second piece of news that makes Ethan happy is the sale of the Johnson console.

While they were speeding up production and frantically replenishing supplies, the market also gave positive feedback.

On the 27th, they delivered 500,000 home consoles to stores across the country. In the afternoon of the next day, calls came in from all over the country, saying that customers had snapped up the new consoles as soon as they were released.

Need them to supply again.

This fact made Ethan arrange the work urgently. While calling the person in charge of the factory, Michael Blanco, he told the factory to continue production with quality and quantity, and at the same time, he called the company's financial director, Alan. Marcy asked him to make appointments with several banks. Because the payment for goods has not yet been recovered, Destiny Game's liquidity is about to dry up. If it wants to continue production, it must obtain bank loans.

In the former, Michael Blanco agreed quickly after receiving the call.

The latter, Aaron Massey's side, caused some pain for Ethan.

Under the influence of a series of problems such as inflation, economic recession, the Vietnam War, and the oil crisis in the Middle East, the interest rates of various banks are currently extremely high.

After his search, the San Francisco bank with the lowest interest rate gave people the feeling of being robbed with a gun. Their one-year savings interest rate was 8%, and their one-year loan interest rate was 12.9%.

Ethan, we can't accept this interest rate.

Maybe it’s because the company’s treatment in the past four years has been so good, but it’s also possible that America’s habit of using sugar has played a role in him. At this moment, Allen Massey has gained weight, and he said to Ethan with his belly pressed: The loan interest rate of twelve point nine means there is no profit on our product.

This is totally working for the bank.

This fact made Ethan frown.

Although he has always known that America's economy was not very good in the 1970s and 1980s, and the poor environment was the reason why countless manufacturing companies fled, he has been operating the company with his own funds in the past few years. , the excellent cash flow brought by the arcade machine allowed them to not need loans for production, so at this moment, it was really the first time for him to face the horror of the market.

The one-year loan interest rate is close to thirteen points?

Which company can afford this?

However, the memory of his previous life also told him that the current situation was still good.

Because in the next one or two years, the loan interest rate may even soar to 20%.

In this case, even if they are making arcade machines now, it is impossible for them to get a loan for production. How can they obtain production funds if they refuse a loan?

Then you can only communicate with the underwriter and hope that they can settle the payment in advance.

Should you talk about this matter or Ballmer? Ethan asked.

I'll go talk. Aaron Massey took the initiative to take over the job and said, Steve is your secretary and is very busy every day, so I'd better do this kind of thing.

Furthermore, I have always been in charge of the underwriter's financial dealings. I know the figure of each payment, so it is more convenient for me to negotiate.

Okay. Ethan nodded and said, If you have anything, just tell me.

With the departure of Allen Massey, Ethan also rubbed his temples. When inflation comes, life for manufacturing companies is really sad. Rising costs and falling profits will give business owners a huge headache, and labor-intensive manufacturers will complain even more.

Fortunately, he was making video games and entertainment products. The arcade business in the past few years had allowed him to accumulate a lot of cash. If not, the only way he could go now was to accept financing.

After Alan Massie's communication, each underwriter also agreed to settle the payment in advance, but they had one requirement, which was to charge an additional settlement fee.

Not only that, there are also people taking advantage of the situation, and the lion wants nine percent.

In their words, there is no difference between early settlement and bank loans, but since everyone is a partner, they are willing to settle the payment with Destiny Game at a price slightly higher than the deposit interest rate.

When this number appeared, Allen Massey directly kicked the proposer out of the meeting room and declared that Destiny Games would never cooperate with them again.

Such words did not scare the underwriters. They said that Allen Massey's behavior was to actively tear up the contract, and they would hire a lawyer to fight Destiny Game in court.

But unfortunately, they didn't have this opportunity.

Because the group of underwriters that Aaron Massey kicked away were merchants in Washington State. After they returned home angrily, as soon as they got off the plane, they learned that their shopping mall had been closed down.

There are many reasons for this, including faulty fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems, electrical use that was not regularly risk assessed, on-site emergency response plans that were never drilled, suspected expiration of permits, and state and local on-site inspections. The questions are waiting for you...

When all kinds of trivial problems appeared at the same time, these shopping mall owners were immediately confused. While waiting for them to dial the phone numbers of the congressmen who usually sponsored them and ask them to solve the problem, the congressmen who were originally very kind to them were all at a loss. Changed face.

The congressmen told these bosses bluntly that it doesn't matter if they take some money, but if they take some money, they have to go in.

They only have twenty-four hours to deal with the problem. If the mall does not open after twenty-four hours, a report letter will be submitted to the IRS. By then, they will have violated Section 7 of America's Internal Revenue Code. 1,201. Anyone who intentionally evades or resists America's tax regulations and payment obligations in any way will be subject to a fine of half a million dollars and five years in prison.

When charges and punishments appear at the same time, no matter how stupid these people are, they know that they have hit a brick wall!

They were waiting to learn that the guy who was punishing them was the president of the Washington State Bar Association. He and his son had just participated in the first national video game competition hosted by Destiny Games last week, and he was also the developer and developer of the grading standards for Destiny Games. One of the supervisors, his wife is from Wall Street, and his wife’s best friend is the owner of the Post, an old-school Jewish financier who overthrew Tingzong. Not even two hours after landing, these people were in a hurry again. took a flight back to the Bay Area.

They found Allen Massey quickly and without hesitation, and said with an epiphany that the previously negotiated share was already a huge fortune, so there was no problem in settling the payment in advance, and they didn't need any borrowing fees, and Willing to bear all handling fees.

When the first birds flew out and were shot down before even flapping their wings, other shopping mall owners immediately gave up their desire and expressed their willingness to pay in advance.

So, that night, Alan Massie handed over the completed contracts with many merchants to Ethan. Each merchant agreed to settle the payment in advance and charge a 1% handling fee, which made Ethan very satisfied.

What made him even more satisfied was that the supplementary contract stipulated that in the future, Destiny Games would only supply goods to each company if the previous batch of payments was settled, which directly blocked the problem of possible insufficient cash flow.

Although based on their current sales of 3.5 million units and a retail price of 199.99 US dollars, a 1% handling fee is almost 7 million US dollars, but compared with bank loans, this is It's very less, and if we really want to calculate it, this time it is indeed their lack of consideration and it is a de facto breach of contract. To compensate the underwriters a little, that is the basic principle of doing business. As for nine percent?

Human nature is greedy.

But if you really want to be greedy, you must have the capital to be greedy!

Your fists are not as big as mine, but you want to take advantage of me?

It would be merciful if I didn't throw you in!

Okay, let's continue production.

Ethan put down the document and said: Notify the marketing department's dispatched specialists and ask them to keep an eye on those store merchants. Today's incident will definitely cause dissatisfaction among some people, so...

I understand. Allen Massey nodded.

After he left, Ethan also called Gates' father's phone number.

Thank you. He said concisely and got to the point.

The middle-aged man on the other end of the phone laughed out loud and responded very straightforwardly: You're welcome.

At the same time, he also extended an invitation to “come to Washington as a guest if you have the opportunity.”

Okay. Ethan responded with a smile.

After solving the crisis of shortage of liquidity, Ethan Jones had almost finished the work in his hands, and just as he was thinking about it, he could finally take a break and watch the sales of his own console every day like watching stocks. As the price continued to rise, on July 1, a piece of bad news reached his ears.

Julis Noble, who was far away in Neon, called across the ocean and said——

Boss, the Sony you asked me to pay attention to has made some moves.

They held a press conference on July 1st, Neon Time, to show the public a product called TPS-L2, a portable tape player.

When Norio Ohga took out the TPS-L2 from his jacket pocket at the press conference, there was an uproar because no one thought that the tape player could be so small.

Waiting for Norio Ohga to say that the capacity of their standard tape is one and a half hours, that is, ninety minutes later, the fact that one tape is equal to one album made all the media shout for a change in the world.

Almost everyone believes that this is a revolutionary product that will affect the entire world and change the landscape of the entire music industry. Inconvenient and portable vinyl records may become a thing of the past.

To be honest, when Julis said that Sony released a product called ‘TPS-L2’, Ethan’s mind immediately went blank because he could not find ‘TPS-L2’ in his memory.

But after Julis briefly described the appearance of the 'TPS-L2', Ethan immediately knew that the 'TPS-L2' the other party was talking about was the 'Walkman'.

Although Ethan doesn’t know why the first release name of ‘Walkman’ is ‘TPS-L2’, it’s not important anymore, right? Because he never thought about studying tapes from the beginning. Now, Sony and Philips are lagging behind him in the progress of optical discs, so the release of Walkman by Sony means that for him, the competitors have an excellent cash cow...

Okay, that's bullshit.

The release of the product ‘TPS-L2’ means that Sony has officially entered the field of portable players. Their hard work in this industry will become a huge explosion when CD players are released in the future.

When Sony brings a good experience to the public in the field of music players, all products released in the future will receive priority attention from the public. This is the power of the brand and a symbol of accumulation.

But even if Ethan knew all this, he couldn't stop it at this moment.

It’s not that he doesn’t know how big the Walkman market is, but that others developed it too early and accumulated too much. When Sony’s products have matured and all patents have been successfully registered, it will be difficult to catch up from the beginning. Unpleasant things. If it is a key technology that can choke people's lives, then Ethan will choose to develop it independently no matter how much money he spends. But if it is a consumer-grade product that has no future...

Since magnetic storage is destined to be eliminated, let Sony make the money.

After listening to Julis' report, Ethan expressed his gratitude to the girl for her hard work, and just when he was about to hang up the phone, the girl on the other end of the phone said, Boss, there is one more thing.

What?

Philips also sent people to Sony's press conference.

What? This news made Ethan frown.

He guessed the reason in the next second, Did they announce their cooperation at the press conference?

Yes. Julis said directly: Philips representatives and Norio Ohga jointly announced at Sony's press conference that they would cooperate to develop a digital optical disc project.

They will work closely together to share their knowledge and skills and inject vitality into this nascent industry.

Although the words Julis said were very empty, no different from the application exam, Ethan still captured the information. The cooperation between Philips and Sony meant that they decided to jointly develop digital discs and formulate standards. At the same time, the already-allied They decided to officially confront the Destiny Game.

Because the words injecting vitality into the nascent industry were obviously meant for him. At the moment, only Destiny Games has not announced its own digital disc project. The meaning of these guys is also very simple. Since Ethan does not choose to cooperate, let's compete to see whose project is more awesome.

Their cooperation does put some pressure on Ethan, but their declaration of war...

In Ethan's opinion, it's like a child playing house and saying I'm going to hit you, no threat.

Real attacks are all silent!

Behind all the notices, there is a guilty conscience!

And just when Ethan was thinking that with Philips and Sony jumping like this, he would have to break up these hard-working kids no matter what, before he could formulate a plan...

On July 3, an unannounced attack occurred.

That afternoon, Ethan received another call from Julis. Just when he thought Sony had done something wrong again, the girl on the other end of the phone said hurriedly: The boss is in trouble! Nintendo Kyoto Chip Company There are large-scale chip chargebacks over there!”

what?

Ethan didn't understand.

Julis Noble continued: Hirashi Yamauchi just called me and said that overnight, most Neon companies have canceled orders for MOS 6502!

Companies that produce computers no longer want 6502! Companies that produce arcade machines don't want 6502 either!

They seem to have found a new substitute! They gave up purchasing 6502 directly!

Because now they would rather lose the order deposit than continue supplying goods to Nintendo!

??? Ethan frowned after hearing the news.

'What the hell? ’ His thoughts were racing, ‘Did Neon create its own CPU? ’

‘This is impossible! ’

Note: ① The article that magnetic storage has no future is written from the perspective of ordinary people. In fact, magnetic storage has not died out until now. The current magnetic tape can already reach a capacity of 45TB, and the global storage market is still in the hundreds. More than ten percent, the market even grew last year. The reason for this is that it can safely store data for fifty years at a low price, which is very useful for storing cold data. But from the perspective of ordinary people, if the tape is gone, the magnetic storage is gone.