Reborn America, this is my time

Chapter 27 Signing the contract (for further reading)

"Yay! Cheers!"

Two hours later, cheerful voices rang out in Atari's office.

At this moment, the three people present had happy smiles on their faces.

Nolan Bushnell was very satisfied, because Atari had found a new way to expand their business when Mirohua had just imposed an innovation ban on Atari. .

"I wish Xinyou a great sale!"

Don Valentine was also very happy. As an investor in Atari, he spent $60 on Atari.If Atari was directly strangled to death by Mi Luohua, his 60 savings would be wiped out.

At this time, he is not the investment tycoon in the future, the 60 US dollars is his labor income, no one will give up his hard work, so Atari must find a way out.

And now, there is a way out.

"Happy cooperation!"

Ethan raised his glass and touched Nolan Bushnell and the others.

When the crisp sound sounded, the orange-yellow liquid also swayed and jumped up.

After Ethan threw out the retreat, the cooperation between the two parties was discussed very quickly.

As for the content of the contract, it naturally satisfied Ethan.

The contract is as follows: Ethan Jones and Evelyn Johnson will authorize the game "Snake" to be released by Atari for one year. For this, Atari needs to pay a sum of [-] US dollars license fee, and promised that in the next year, at least a thousand "Snake" game consoles will be manufactured for sale.

If you look at it from the perspective of future generations, this contract is simply a pediatric agreement. Compared with electronic games that can easily sell millions of copies, the number of a thousand game arcade machines is really too small.

But now it's 1975!This is not the era of mobile Internet!
You know, one year after the release of the well-known American "Pong", only 1974 units were sold in total!In [-], when Atari was sued by Mirov, after verification and confirmation by the court, the total shipment of "Pong" arcade machines was only [-] units!

But even so, the price of one thousand dollars per unit still brought Atari an operating income of 800 million dollars!

Therefore, in Ethan's view, agreeing in the contract to guarantee the production of [-] units is a very good start.

After all, the first bucket of gold...

To earn is to win!
The most important thing is to be famous!
As for the share, it is also very simple, 15.00% of the selling price.

Although Ethan still wants to go higher, if possible, he hopes to reach the height of Apple in the future, but the cost of arcade machines in this era is simply not comparable to that of the iPhone.

A screen like a TV, the cheapest notebook product costs $75, the material cost of the game motherboard is $150, plus sub-boards and miscellaneous spare parts, such as built-in speakers and custom joysticks, a The total cost of the whole machine will basically not be less than six hundred dollars.

When the gross profit is only 40.00%, letting Ethan take away 15.00% is the limit of Atari.

Because after deducting other expenses, the founders and investors of Atari can only get seven or eight percent.

Of course, the sales of game arcades are not actually the main revenue of video games in this era.

The real source of profit is actually the sale of game motherboards.

The game arcade motherboard replacement service provided by Atari is priced at 150 US dollars per order. After excluding materials, labor and transportation costs, the net profit of one order is actually as high as [-] US dollars.

Therefore, for this item, Ethan's asking price was quite ruthless. He initially wanted to take 30.00% of the selling price, which is 120 US dollars, but Nolan Bushnell and Don Valentine beat him to death Neither agree.

He said that the motherboard replacement service is actually an upgrade of Atari's sold products, which belongs to Atari's stock market. Ethan wants to take 80.00% of the net profit?It would be better to kill them directly!

But negotiation, that is to ask for a lot of money and pay back the money.

After a bit of back and forth, that number was cut to 18.00%.

In other words, Ethan would get $72 for every Snake motherboard sold by Atari.

It's almost half of the net profit.

While this number may seem small, the...

Other things in this era are not expensive!
After drinking the whiskey in the glass, Ethan couldn't accept the spicy feeling.

And his frowning appearance was also seen by everyone.

"Yo, Ethan, you can't drink at all."

The contract has been signed, and the rivalry is gone. Nolan Bushnell joked: "When I was your age, I was already killing all parties in nightclubs!"

"Yeah! Ethan, you have to work on your drinking capacity."

Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital, also said with a smile: "If you wait until you become a millionaire to practice, it will be too late, because at that time, there will be many beautiful girls flying towards you. !They want to get you drunk! They want to have a good night with you!"

The singing and harmony of the two made the atmosphere of the scene very hot.

But Ethan waved his hand and said, "I can drink, but I drink too fast."

"Hahaha~" The two laughed.

"real!"

"We know it! We know it! We know it all!"

That stubborn appearance made them laugh even more happily.

After chatting, everyone did not forget the business. Nolan Bushnell took out a stack of checks from the office drawer, intending to pay the authorization fee of [-] US dollars to Ethan, but when he was about to write, he again stopped.

"Ethan, do you want one check or two checks?"

Now that the cooperation has been reached, Ethan will naturally not hide the copyright issue, and directly took out the document authorized by Evelyn Johnson, otherwise they would not be able to sign the contract.

As for the issuance of checks, Ethan of course wanted to write two checks. After all, he had agreed with Evelyn from the very beginning that the income from "Snake" would always be split in half, but, in terms of the amount, He has ideas.

"One piece is three thousand, one piece is two thousand, and then give me another one thousand cash."

"I think there should be no problem with this?"

This proposal made Nolan Bushnell very strange, but he still complied with Ethan's request.

He wrote two checks to Ethan, and took out a neat stack of twenty dollars from the office safe.

Count half of them and hand them to Ethan for him to count.

After confirming that it was correct, Ethan smiled and said, "So, I'll just wait for the game to be released?"

"Well, at least fifteen days, at most one month, we will finish the first batch of machines."

Nolan Bushnell thought for a while and said, "At that time, we will invite our former partners to the company to experience the machine. If you are interested, you can come and have a look, and we will call you in advance."

"Okay, see you later."

"Goodbye."

After everything was done, Ethan got up to leave, and when he left, Steve Jobs, who was waiting for the result, also took the initiative to see him off.

Ethan did not refuse the kindness of the future Gang Leader Qiao.

After leaving the gate of the factory area, Ethan also waved at Old Joe to see him off, beckoning him to walk with him for a while longer. After Atari's factory completely disappeared, he gave away the fifty twenty-eight bills he had just asked for. The knife was handed to the other party.

"This is..." Steve Jobs was puzzled.

"Your reward." Ethan Jones said with a smile: "If it weren't for you, I might not be able to reach the happy cooperation with Atari like I am now. You deserve it. Accept it."

"But... that's too much."

Steve Jobs hesitated, but at the same time, he didn't say no.

"Oh! Brother! You gave me more than a thousand dollars!"

Ethan Jones raised his voice and stuffed the money directly into his hands.

"Besides, this money is not for free! Just now Nolan told me that after the "Snake Game" machine is ready, it will invite partners to come and inspect the machine. I am very interested in this, so you should remember Go to my house and call me."

"Also, I don't know the eloquence of Atari's sales staff for the first time, but I think your sales skills should be excellent, so I will ask you to help me out when the time comes."

When Ethan said this, Steve Jobs was not polite.

His eyes flickered, he glanced at the beautiful knife in his hand, and smiled, "Okay, then I'll take it."

"That's right, brother!" Ethan raised his eyebrows and patted his shoulder with his hands.

Jobs put the money in his pocket, "Isn't that why you asked me to come here?"

"of course."

"..." Ethan's answer stunned Jobs for a moment, then he smiled and said, "Then I'm leaving?"

"Hmm~" Ethan waved his hand, signaling him to get out of here.

This performance made Jobs turn around and leave.

However, after a while, he trotted back again.

This situation makes Ethan very strange.

But when Jobs gasped and told him that Nolan Bushnell actually asked him to go to the trade fair today, and arranged a bounty task for cooperation and a reward of [-]... Looking at the man who waved again and left again Figure, Ethan laughed.

If before that, he still felt that the appearance of Steve Jobs was a little unreal, then now, he is sure that the person in front of him must be the real Steve Jobs.

Because in his memory, Steve Jobs at this time was very short of money.

So short of money that one person loses all the prize money in "Brick Breaker".

Ethan admitted that he just wanted to get in touch with Steve Jobs, he just wanted Steve Jobs' body... Bah!It's the body of a gluttonous apple!That's why Steve Jobs was paid $[-].

And now...

"This guy is quite honest?"

Looking at the bouncing apple walking on the road, Ethan smiled.

　Note: ① Jobs’ remuneration for “Brickbreaker” is as follows. Nolan asked Jobs to make the game “Brickbreaker” and promised to reward Jobs with one hundred dollars for every transistor used less, because at that time, The most expensive cost of the game motherboard is the transistor. The less the game motherboard is used, the lower the cost of the game motherboard. Then Jobs handed this thing over to Wozniak, and the master only used 44 electronic components to make the game The main board was made, so Nolan gave Jobs a bonus of 450 US dollars and 5000 US dollars for making the game. However, Jobs only gave Wozniak 44 yuan, and the remaining 75 yuan was all paid by himself. pocket.Decades later, Wozniak said in an interview that he didn't care about the [-] yuan at all, he just felt that Jobs lied to him, he was very sad, but at the same time he also said that he could understand Jobs This is because Jobs was very poor at that time, and his adoptive parents spent almost all their savings to pay for him to go to college.Then there is another thing, Wozniak's "Brickbreaker" is not the "Brickbreaker" released by Atari, because all the engineers at Atari don't understand how Wozniak uses The game was made with [-] transistors. Even if they were given circuit boards, they would not be able to imitate them. Therefore, Nolan's money was actually wasted. ②The price of "Pong" is calculated by myself. Du Niang said one hundred dollars a piece, Nolan himself said that the cost of the screen is [-], and the motherboard is close to two hundred, which is totally wrong.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)