Reborn Capital Madman

One of the most obvious characteristics of the personal computer industry during this period was that there was no unified industry standard, and product types could be described as hundreds of flowers blooming and hundreds of schools of thought contending.

Universal Computer, Commodity, and Apple Computer are called the "troika" of the personal computer industry by the media, which only means to stand out.

As for who can become the standard of the personal computer industry in the end, it is inseparable from the key factor of product technology.

Seeing that the sixteen-bit microprocessor was about to come out, Gao Xian personally supervised the research and development of next-generation products of Universal Computer Company. Because he was convinced that this upgrade would be enough to make most other standard personal computers ruthlessly eliminated from the market. .

Speaking of technology, there are two aspects that must be controlled in place, one is the amount of capital consumption, and the other is the quality of technical reserves.

From the "old scripts", it is easy to find both negative and positive examples.

For example, Atari is a very bad example.

When it comes to Atari, people often only know about its game console business, which was so successful that it helped Atari's parent company, Warner, support most of its business.

But in fact, Atari is also a personal computer company, which is enough to leave a strong mark of its own in the development history of the personal computer industry.

Atari's problem was that management was out of control during the development of personal computers, and many research projects that cost a lot of money were ineffective.

Perhaps when its business performance was good, Atari didn't care about this kind of waste of resources, but when the North American video game market collapsed in 1983, Atari's finances were in trouble, and it ended up with a game console and personal computer business. It was split up, but still could not escape the fate of being sold.

In contrast, ib is a successful example.

Big Blue, which originally didn't pay much attention to personal computers, just summoned a dozen engineers to form a technical research team. It took more than a year to launch ib-p, which eventually became the code name of the personal computer industry.

This credit must be attributed to ib’s technical reserves.

To give some specific examples, such as the system bus on the motherboard that cooperates with various components to work in unison, technical issues as detailed as the number of rows and columns of letters output on the monitor screen, and even the color of each pixel, etc., all require a feasible solution. and mature solutions, and Big Blue engineers can easily find the answer from their own technical reserves.

For the research and development of 16-bit personal computers that are increasingly involved, Gao Xian's control work is mainly reflected in the control of all project teams, whether their project settings are reasonable, whether the direction has deviated, whether the progress may encounter obstacles, etc., all in a small Pretend there is a score there, and those who fail will be dealt with without any delay.

According to the forecast given by Goyi, when the fourth-generation Universal Personal Computer using a 16-bit microprocessor is released as planned in the second half of 1978, the valuation of Universal Computer Company will greatly approach two billion US dollars. The goal.

Gao Xian believes that Gao Yi’s prediction is still very reliable.

However, at the end of the year, Gao Yi failed to play a good role as a consultant on the Star Wars project.

There is no big problem with the box office of the movie "Star Wars". The US box office set a new record of 250 million US dollars, firmly occupying the annual box office championship. Based on past experience, the global box office outside the United States will be similar. The results are enough for all stakeholders to wake up with laughter.

What's more, although the movie "Star Wars" ended its simultaneous release in thousands of theaters in North America, it still failed to show in many theaters, so much so that the marketing operations department and Lucas were considering another round of screenings.

In addition to the box office success of Star Wars movies, the revenue from peripheral products is also very considerable, and Goyi's mistake occurred in the video game "Space Invaders".

This arcade platform shooting game, which claims to be inspired by the movie "Star Wars", is priced at $500 to cope with the current fierce market competition.

As for the sales volume, Gaoyi's prediction is that it can reach 100,000 units, taking advantage of the global popularity of the movie "Star Wars".

However, the initial production of 20,000 units was quickly sold out. In order to get the ready stock as soon as possible, some orders even raised the price to US$2,500.

Currently, "Space Invaders" faces a huge risk of being caught off guard by its production schedule and being copied by a game manufacturer.

During the reflection process, Gao Yi believed that in the next two years, the global market demand for "Space Invaders" is very likely to reach 500,000 units. In order to minimize the losses caused by unauthorized imitations, consideration should be given to

Find peers to collaborate with.

Gao Xian did not question Gao Yi's professional ability, but he felt that it would be great if as much meat as possible could be left in his bowl.

Therefore, Gao Xian needs to make a special trip back to Hong Kong to coordinate the production capacity of the two major production bases in Singapore and Hong Kong. Looking at the current strong market demand for "Space Invaders", workers will definitely have to work overtime during the Spring Festival.

Before leaving, Gao Xian paid a private visit incognito and went to several bars. He found that people were enthusiastic about the "Space Invaders" arcade machine there, which was mainly reflected in two aspects. One was that the gameplay was simple and rough and gave a sense of accomplishment;

The other is that the dubbing is unique, which adds to the refreshing feeling of the game experience.

Gao Xian suddenly came up with an idea. The supply of "Space Invaders" exceeds the demand. Is it a bit like the "lipstick effect", that is, when the economy is in recession, lipstick sales increase significantly.

At this stage, the economies of Western capitalist countries are stuck in the quagmire of "stagflation" with both high inflation and unemployment, so many people use this game to relieve their inner depression.

Of course, Gao Xian definitely did not have time to prove this idea. After he had a good idea, he returned to Xiangjiang and personally coordinated the production capacity of the factories in Gao Xian Industrial Estate and Jurong Industrial Park in Singapore.

After all, this involves hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and is worth the hard work.

During this period, Gao Xian accidentally heard a piece of news that moved his heart.

During a dinner party with his subordinates, Li Ruoxi made a joke and said: "Yihe is so powerful in Xiangjiang, but there are times when we need help."

"I heard that not long ago, Jardine sold a piece of land in the New Territories to China Resources at a very low price. I guess they saw some business opportunities in the mainland and wanted to find help."

Gao Xian put down his wine glass and frowned: "Are you sure about this news?"

"Yes, there are quite a few people who know about this matter." Li Ruoxi wondered: "If you think about it carefully, it's quite strange. If Yihe wants to ask someone to do something, he should keep it confidential."