Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 279: Interweaving of Light and Darkness
After seeing off the visiting guests, Ethan returned to his busy life.

If I have to describe it specifically, it is a mixture of pain and happiness.

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

After "Alien" withstood the pressure of the market and delivered a beautiful answer of 10 million in the first three days of the weekend, it not only did not experience a cliff drop in box office like ordinary movies in the second week, but it became more and more courageous, and successfully entered July with a performance of more than 2 million per day.

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

Compared to the crazy trend of "Star Wars", it's basically not much different.

Although the summer vacation was partly to blame, as countless young people were enjoying their wonderful vacation, their support kept the box office of "Alien" rising.

But the excellent quality is the fundamental reason for the success of "Alien". The positive reviews given to the film by various media reporters and film critics after watching "Alien" are the best proof of this.

The second piece of news that made Ethan happy was the sales of Johnson's console.

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

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

Need them to supply again.

This fact forced Ethan to make urgent arrangements. He called the person in charge of the factory, Michael Blanco, and asked him to continue production with guaranteed quality and quantity. He also called the company's financial director, Alan Massey, and asked him to meet with several banks. Because the payment for the goods had not yet been recovered, the working capital of Destiny Game was about to run out, and if it wanted to continue production, it had to borrow money from the bank.

As for the former, Michael Blanco agreed quickly after receiving the call.

The latter, Aaron Massey, brought some pain to Ethan.

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

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

"Ethan, we can't accept this interest rate."

Perhaps it was because the company had treated him too well in the past four years, or perhaps it was because of America's sugar habit that Allen Massey had gained weight. With a big belly on his shoulders, he said to Ethan, "The loan interest rate of 12.9 means that our products have no profit."

"This is simply working for the bank."

This fact made Ethan frown.

Although he had always known that the American economy in the 1970s and 1980s was not very good, and the poor environment was the reason why countless manufacturing companies fled, but in the past few years he had been operating the company with his own funds. The excellent cash flow brought by the arcade allowed them to not need to borrow money for production, so at this moment he was really facing the horror of the market for the first time.

The one-year loan interest rate is close to thirteen points?
Which company can afford this?
However, the memories 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 percent.

In this case, even if they are making arcade machines now, they cannot get loans for production. How can they get production funds if loans are refused?

Then we can only communicate with the underwriters and hope that they can settle the payment in advance.

"Is it you or Ballmer who should discuss this matter?" Ethan asked.

"I'll go and talk to you." Alan Massey took the initiative to take on the job and said, "Steve is your secretary and is very busy every day, so I'll go and take care of this kind of thing."

"Besides, I have always been in charge of the underwriter's financial transactions. I know the figures for each payment, so it would be more convenient for me to negotiate."

"Okay." Ethan nodded and said, "If you have anything to say, just tell me directly."

With the departure of Alan Massey, Ethan began to rub his temples. When inflation comes, manufacturing companies will have a hard time. Rising costs and falling profits will give business owners a splitting headache, and labor-intensive manufacturers will suffer even more.

Fortunately, he was making electronic games, which were entertainment products, and the arcade business in the past few years had allowed him to accumulate a lot of cash. Otherwise, he would have no choice but to accept financing.

After Alan Massey's communication, all underwriters agreed to early settlement, but they had one request, which was to charge an additional settlement fee.

Not only that, there are also people who take advantage of the situation and ask for 9%.

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

When this number appeared, Alan Massey directly kicked the person who made the proposal out of the meeting room and declared that Destiny Game would never cooperate with them again.

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

But unfortunately, they didn't have this opportunity.

Because the underwriters kicked out by Aaron Massey were merchants in Washington State, after they returned home in anger and as soon as they got off the plane, they learned that their own shopping mall had been sealed off.

There are many reasons, such as faulty fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems, electrical equipment that has not been regularly risk assessed, emergency response plans that have never been exercised, suspected expiration of permits, and problems with state and local on-site inspections, etc.

When all kinds of minor problems arose at the same time, these mall owners were suddenly confused. When they called the congressmen who sponsored them on weekdays and asked them to solve the problems, the congressmen who had been very friendly to them all changed their faces.

The lawmakers told these bosses bluntly that it doesn’t matter if you take some of the money, but if you take some of the money you will have to go to jail.

They only have twenty-four hours to deal with the problem. If the mall is not open after twenty-four hours, a report will be submitted to the IRS. At that time, they will violate Article 7201 of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, intentionally evading or resisting America's tax regulations and payment obligations in any way. They will definitely be fined $500,000 and five years in prison.

When the charges and sentences appeared at the same time, no matter how stupid these people were, they knew they were hitting a wall!
After they learned that the guy who was punishing them was the president of the Washington State Bar Association, who had participated in the first national electronic game competition hosted by Destiny Game with his son last week, and was also one of the setters and supervisors of the Destiny Game grading standards, and his wife was from Wall Street, and his wife's best friend was the boss of the Post who had overthrown Ting Zong, an old-school Jewish financier, these people hurriedly flew back to the Bay Area less than two hours after landing.

He found Alan Massey at lightning speed, and said as if he had suddenly realized that the share they had discussed before was already a huge fortune, so there was no problem in paying the bill in advance, and they didn't need any borrowing fees, and he was willing to bear all the handling fees.

When the first birds to stand out flew out and were shot down before they could even flap their wings a few times, the other shopping mall owners immediately put away their desire and expressed their willingness to pay in advance.

So, that night, Allen Massey handed over the contracts he had signed with many merchants to Ethan. The result that each merchant agreed to settle the payment in advance and charge a 1% handling fee made Ethan very satisfied.

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

Although based on their current sales volume of 3.5 million units and a retail price of US$199.99, a 1% handling fee is almost US$7 million, but compared with a bank loan, this is very little. Moreover, if you really want to calculate, this time it was indeed their inconsiderateness and it was a de facto breach of contract. Giving the underwriter some compensation is the basic principle of doing business. As for the 9%?

Human nature is greedy.

But if you really want to be greedy, you must have the capital to be greedy!
Your fist is not as big as mine, but you want to take advantage of mine?
It's only out of mercy that I don't throw you in!
"Okay, let's continue production." Ethan put down the documents and said, "Notify the marketing department's dispatched specialists and ask them to keep a close eye on those store owners. This incident today will definitely cause dissatisfaction among some people, so..."

"I understand." Alan Massey nodded.

After he left, Ethan also called Gates' father.

"Thank you." He went straight to the point.

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

At the same time, he also extended an invitation, "Come visit Washington if you have the chance."

"Okay." Ethan replied with a smile.

After solving the crisis of shortage of working capital, Ethan Jones had almost finished the work at hand. Just when he was thinking that he could finally take a break and keep an eye on the rising sales of his own console like watching stocks, 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, Sony, the company you asked me to pay attention to, has made some moves."

"They held a press conference on July 2st, neon time, to unveil a portable cassette player called the TPS-L."

"When Norio Ohga pulled out the TPS-L2 from his shirt pocket at the press conference, there was an uproar at the scene because no one had expected that a tape player could be made so small."

"After Ohga Norio said that the capacity of their standard cassettes was one and a half hours, or ninety minutes, the fact that one cassette was equal to one album made all the media shout that the world had changed."

"Almost everyone believes that this is a revolutionary product that will impact the entire world and change the landscape of the entire music industry. Inconvenient vinyl records may become history."

To be honest, when Julis said that Sony released a product called 'TPS-L2', Ethan's mind went blank because he couldn't find 'TPS-L2' in his memory.

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

Although Ethan didn't know why the first name of 'Walkman' was 'TPS-L2', it didn't matter anymore, right? Because he had never thought about researching tapes from the beginning. Now, Sony and Philips were behind him in the progress of optical discs, so the 'Walkman' released by Sony meant that his competitors had an excellent cash cow...

Okay, that's bullshit.

The launch of the 'TPS-L2' product means Sony's official entry into the field of portable players. Their hard work in this industry will lead to a huge explosion when CD players are released in the future.

When Sony brings good experience to the public in the field of music players, all future products released 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 market for Walkman is, but others developed it too early and accumulated too much. When Sony's products are mature and all patents have been successfully registered, it is a thankless task to catch up from scratch. If it is a key technology that can hold back the market, then Ethan will choose independent research and development no matter how much money he spends, but if it is a consumer-grade product with no future...

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

After listening to Yulis's report, Ethan expressed his gratitude to the girl for her diligence and responsibility, and just as 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 attend Sony’s press conference.”

"What?" This news made Ethan frown.

The next second he guessed the reason, "Did they announce the cooperation at the press conference?"

"Yes." Julis said directly: "Philips representatives announced at Sony's press conference together with Norio Ohga that they would cooperate in the development of the digital disc project."

"They will work closely together, share what they have and what they don't have, and inject vitality into this nascent industry."

Although Julis' words were very empty and no different from those in an essay test, Ethan still captured the information in them. The cooperation between Philips and Sony meant that they decided to jointly develop digital discs and set standards. At the same time, they had already formed an alliance and decided to officially fight against the Destiny Game.

Because the words "injecting vitality into the new industry" were obviously meant for him. At the moment, only Destiny Game had not announced its own DVD project. The meaning of these guys was also very simple. Since Ethan did not choose to cooperate, let's compete to see whose project is more awesome.

Their cooperation was indeed a bit stressful for Ethan, but their declaration of war...

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

The real attack is always silent!
Behind all the previews, there is a guilty conscience!

Just when Ethan was thinking that he would beat the poor kids to death no matter what, with Philips and Sony jumping like this, before he could make a plan...

On July 3, an attack occurred without warning.

That afternoon, Ethan received another call from Julis. Just when he thought Sony had done something weird again, the girl on the other end of the phone said hastily, "Boss, it's bad! There has been a large number of chip returns at Nintendo's Kyoto chip company!"

"what?"

Ethan didn't understand.

Julis Noble continued, "Yamauchi Hiroshi just called me and said that overnight, most Japanese companies canceled their orders for MOS 6502!"

"Companies that make computers don't want the 6502 anymore! Companies that make arcade machines don't want the 6502 anymore!"

"It seems they have found a new substitute! They simply gave up purchasing 6502!"

"Because now they would rather lose the order money than have Nintendo continue to supply them!"

"???" Ethan frowned when he heard the news.

'What the hell?' His mind raced. 'Neon built its own CPU?'

'This is impossible!'

Note: ① The article says that magnetic storage has no future. This is based on the perspective of ordinary people. In fact, magnetic storage has not died out. The capacity of magnetic tapes can reach 45TB. The global storage market is still above %, and the market even grew last year. The reason for this is that it can store data safely for years at a low price, which is very useful for storing cold data. But from the perspective of ordinary people, the end of magnetic tapes means the end of magnetic storage.



(End of this chapter)