America: My Time

Chapter 84 The Storm (Part 1)

Chapter Eighty-Four: The Storm (Part One)

The size of the North American market has repeatedly challenged the perceptions of Wall Street giants. As Japanese companies develop the European and Asian markets, their estimates of the gaming world have been constantly revised. Such a huge market, an orderly market (under the control of the gaming world), has unlimited potential. An open platform allows the gaming world to continuously fleece other gaming companies. The more gaming companies that join the platform, the more the gaming world fleeces!

It was precisely because Morgan Stanley assessed the gaming world and the global gaming market that they paid more attention to John's Dreamworld and Nvidia Semiconductor. If the gaming world alone has such a large market, how big will the personal computer market be? Perhaps these two companies are insignificant now, but as the personal computer market continues to expand, their market value will naturally continue to rise!
In the first generation of arcade games, everything was pieced together using external resources. After having their own R&D teams, would the second generation of arcade games still use chips from other companies? Obviously not. The fact that Nvidia was spun off without any revenue is a good illustration of this.

Nvidia is currently researching graphics cards and GPUs, a move that Wall Street bigwigs see as clear preparation for the second generation of arcade games, and they've already seen results. Taiwanese semiconductor foundry ASUS is the manufacturing company, forming a complete supply chain from research and development to production.

Many Wall Street bigwigs believe that Nvidia and ASUS are John's preparations for the second generation of game consoles in the gaming world, so they are very optimistic about the future of the gaming world.

The market value of the gaming world is currently skyrocketing, and John's decision to go public at this time would be a huge success. This is only the gaming world's first round of financing, and it is also a great investment opportunity.

Communication with Sony went smoothly, but communication with Panasonic and Hitachi was less ideal. Panasonic and Hitachi hadn't anticipated the booming gaming world and didn't expand production like Sony, putting them under considerable pressure.

Although John had informed them in advance, whether they could guarantee sales and supply during the North American Christmas season remained a major issue! It must be said that they were much more conservative than Sony in terms of investment and expansion! Of course, this was also related to the different products they manufactured; arcade games, home consoles, and handheld game consoles are different!

As John continued to prepare for the gaming world in Japan, a storm brewed in the United States. Although Morgan Stanley tried to conceal the acquisition, the deal between Morgan Stanley and Legendary Entertainment was leaked!

This incident instantly shocked the entire United States! What is Legendary Entertainment? It's just a newly established entertainment group. Although Legendary Toys is selling very well and has good cash flow, Legendary Entertainment still doesn't have enough funds to acquire the two companies. Legendary Entertainment also doesn't have any loans from American banks. Where will the funds come from? This has become the focus of attention for many media outlets!

Acquiring two major companies requires a huge amount of capital, which cannot fall from the sky. There must be someone supporting Legendary Entertainment's acquisition and expansion. Who exactly is the force behind this? This is a question many people are eager to know.

The acquisition of Neon, backed by Neon Bank, was a whopping $40 billion. When this news spread, Warner Bros. was stunned. Their Hollywood big brother hadn't even settled in before being overthrown by their enemy, and without giving them enough time to prepare.

Why would a Japanese bank lend money to Legendary Entertainment? This was the question everyone was eager to know. Unfortunately, they couldn't interview the Japanese bank; only major media groups were qualified to do so. Legendary Entertainment, Morgan Stanley, and the Japanese bank had an agreement regarding this loan, preventing the release of its details.

After much investigation, all that was ultimately found was that Neon Bank believed in Legendary Entertainment's repayment ability, which was interpreted by the public as Neon Bank believing in John's repayment ability.

In fact, this is the key point. Neon Bank is unfazed by the risks. While many American banks might worry about Legendary Entertainment's repayment ability, Neon Bank isn't; on the contrary, it offers the best possible terms. Many people are eager to find John, hoping to get the information they want from him, but they can't. Even Legendary Entertainment's CEO, Robert Iger, is intentionally avoiding media attention. Legendary Entertainment hopes this fire burns as brightly as possible, attracting more attention and enabling them to achieve their next plans. The higher the attention, the more beneficial it is for Legendary Entertainment—this is the consensus within the company!
Because of this major upheaval, many people began frantically digging into everything about Legendary Entertainment. Every company under Legendary Entertainment was thoroughly investigated, and the results shocked them. Legendary Entertainment's earning power was astonishing; all the companies under the Legendary Entertainment Group were profitable and experiencing good growth, which was truly terrifying.

While Legendary Entertainment Group is relatively small, its profits are incredibly high. With lower loan interest rates, its profitability would easily cover this heavy burden. Furthermore, Legendary Entertainment's aggressive expansion isn't limited to the major acquisition that has been revealed; other areas are also growing steadily. It's a company with great potential, especially Legendary Animation, which is attracting considerable attention.

By leveraging the power of neon lights to complete an animation, and then having the animated toys sell like hotcakes, this series of actions moved all animation companies and put immense pressure on the major toy giants, causing a terrible impact. All the toy giants had to take Legendary Entertainment Group seriously. Grouping allowed them to share resources and gave them greater potential!

At this point, toy giants and animation companies had to reflect on themselves. If Legendary Entertainment could succeed, why couldn't they? They also had their own IPs, so could they learn from Legendary Entertainment's model, enter deeper into the market, and make their IPs truly circulate to generate huge profits?

The idea is good, but it's not easy to do. First, can they make the most of their own IP and share resources? Second, can they get global publicity? If they can't, their previous efforts will become a huge burden on the company, and may even crush it!
Legendary Entertainment wasn't the first in Hollywood to do this; Disney did it too, but it went largely unnoticed, and Disney didn't generate the same massive, shocking acquisition that stunned the entire United States. Most importantly, their focuses differed. Legendary Entertainment focused on global distribution and leveraging its IP's popularity. Disney lagged behind, lacking the freedom and strong support that Legendary Entertainment enjoyed.

At this point, toy companies saw the lower costs of overseas manufacturing and were tempted, but they couldn't simply do it because they had a large workforce. They couldn't just lay off all their employees; that would provoke a strong backlash from the toy guilds, a consequence those toy giants couldn't afford!

John didn't have such concerns. Doesn't the US have its own manufacturing plants? No, it does, but they're too small. The US's own manufacturing plants only have a few designers. They mainly design and then produce the top-of-the-line, limited-edition figures!

The more one learns about Legendary Entertainment, the more one can appreciate John's incredible abilities and be amazed by his hard work. It's astonishing that one person could support such a large industry and produce so many works. This has allowed many people to witness John's monstrous writing skills, leaving everyone in awe.

However, this sparked a new round of doubts, questioning John's abilities. Warner Music, naturally, was behind all of this. Warner Music didn't want John to have an easy time. Comparing their own situation to John's, they suspected his musical work might be fabricated, that the songs were bought—a complete buyout of the works, including the copyrights. This was common practice in the record industry, and in Warner Music's eyes, it became another 'trump card' to attack John; they wanted to destroy his reputation!

Warner Music's move was ruthless. In their eyes, this was John's Achilles' heel. As long as they hit his Achilles' heel and exposed the issue of song buyouts, John's reputation would be severely damaged, and the entire Legendary Entertainment would be thrown into a huge crisis, suffering a major loss of reputation, and no one would trust Legendary Entertainment anymore.

Although Warner was warned by Wall Street, they selectively ignored the warnings when faced with a life-or-death situation. They were confident that they could successfully thwart Wall Street's plans and make it impossible for Wall Street to do anything about them. After all, this was not Warner acting on its own, but rather being pushed by countless tabloids.

Warner Music itself didn't participate; instead, it incited the tabloids to spread rumors and doubts about John's character and his musical creations. If John couldn't find a way to refute these rumors, he would be swept away by the tabloids, his public image completely destroyed.

Even if Morgan helps Legendary Entertainment acquire Universal and NBC, and even completes the purge of their top executives, these two companies will continue to suffer under Legendary Entertainment's notoriety, and may even disobey its commands, leading to a terrible crisis of trust within them. If this happens, Legendary Entertainment will be dragged down by its reputation, losing everything it has, even its bestselling Transformers franchise!
(End of this chapter)