game trailblazer

Chapter 280 Crazy Point Com
Annoyed, Kutaragi Ken wanted to share his unhappiness with others, but he was too embarrassed to say it out loud. After all, the past and present life of the PS game console is too closely related to the PS game compatibility function of the DreamBox128 console. Is it necessary for him to admit it for so many years? I have been raising tigers for a long time.

Although Ken Kutaragi was very embarrassed, the problem still had to be solved after all, so he summoned his capable generals to study the solution together in the conference room.But after pondering, researching and researching, facing the imposing attack of the DreamBox128 mainframe, they can't think of any good solution to the problem. The only thing left is to find a way to make the PS2 go on the market earlier. Catch up with the Christmas golden season at the end of the year, maybe it can keep its current leading position.

After making up his mind, Ken Kutaragi immediately assigned tasks. On the one hand, he dispatched capable men to speed up the PS2 research and development work as much as possible, trying to catch up with the commercial war at the end of the year; Dragging their legs back and poaching their feet, in short, they will not be able to go on sale comfortably.

Wishful thinking jingled, but then there was a bad news. Just after the E3 exhibition ended, VisualSystem Group released a shocking news. The DreamBox128 host will be officially launched on July 7 this year, and will It landed in the United States, RB, China and other places at the same time. The first game is no less than 15 games, but there are slight differences in each region, including "Dragon Quest 7" and "Heartbeat Memories 2" released in RB. Sales of "Street Fighter ZERO3", "Major League Hockey 2000", "Major League Rugby 2000", and "Resident Evil: Code Veronica" and "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" for the world , "Pro Evolution Soccer 4", "Gran Turismo 2" and so on.Even if you don't look at those games that belong to the follow-up market, such as "Final Fantasy 9", "Silent Hill 2", etc., just the first game is enough to attract the attention of many players.

This news is not good news for Sony, Nintendo and Sega, but Nintendo is still obsessed with the flashback of N64 at this time, trying to use N64 to delay time, and then use the super performance of subsequent models to win in one fell swoop, just like the original When the Super Nintendo played against the Sega MD.At this time, Sega had no choice but to make a stand at the E3 exhibition to warm up the North American market. Who would have thought that not only the limelight at the exhibition would be basically taken away by the DreamBox128 console, but the release time in North America would be behind People, it turned out that a good warm-up activity turned into clearing the way for others.

Facing this embarrassing situation, Akihiro Shoichiro felt nothing but helplessness in his heart. The performance of the Dreamcast mainframe has become a certainty. It could have been supported for a while by talking more about games and less about performance, but DreamBox128, PS2 and "" The three big mountains of "Dolphin" came down one after another, and the shortcomings of the Dreamcast mainframe were completely exposed in front of everyone.It is impossible to improve the performance of the Dreamcast console in the short term, because Sega no longer has enough financial resources to play this trick of updating the console, and the Dreamcast console has been released for less than a year, and players cannot accept such behaviors. , then the only thing he can do is to beg his grandpa to tell his grandma everywhere, hoping that some game developers will take pity on Sega and give them some games.

"How could the majestic Sega company be reduced to what it is today!" Nezuko Shoichiro thought helplessly, feeling a sense of sadness in his heart.

In the end, only Sony Computer Entertainment was left with the intention to pay attention to the news and plan to do something.Although the situation in front of him is not very good, Ken Kutaragi does not intend to ask the headquarters for help. After all, at the beginning of the year, he still looked infinitely beautiful, and he will be desperate to ask for help in a blink of an eye. It will definitely not be good for his future development, because He is an ambitious person, and the little president of Sony Computer Entertainment can't fully satisfy his appetite. If he can pass this time safely and use PS2 to create another glory, maybe he still has the opportunity to master the bigger game. Therefore, he is unwilling to be disrupted by the DreamBox128 host, and more importantly, he is unwilling to be attacked by some people who want to use this inexplicable relationship.

……

While Ken Kutaragi was still struggling with how to drag DreamBox128 back, Zhang Lexing was sitting in his office doing some noble activities - holding meetings through video connections.The theme of the meeting has nothing to do with the upcoming DreamBox128 console. It’s not that Zhang Lexing doesn’t care about it, but after years of deployment, he has already got enough resources and there is no shortage of talents who can play his own role. The United States, RB, etc. He doesn't have to worry about this kind of mature market at all. The only thing he can worry about is the domestic market, which is a place that has no successful experience. Everything has been done, and he can only wait quietly for the final result.

The theme of this video conference is actually very simple. It is a strategic discussion on investment strategies, and it is also a discussion about Orient Industrial Group, Visual System Group and Universal Entertainment Group and their investment strategy adjustments. The most talked about in the meeting is the recent hot spots Technology stocks, especially Internet concept stocks are crazy.

As the millennium approaches, one of the hottest topics is the legendary "Millennium Bug", and the other is the wildly rising Internet concept stocks.It is not clear when Internet concept stocks started, but the most famous one is the one in 1996, when Goldman Sachs, the most famous investment bank on Wall Street, packaged and listed an unknown small company with poor financial records. The company has only been established for two years, with less than 50 employees, and its estimated revenue for one year is only US$540 million. However, after Goldman Sachs' perfect packaging and operation, its 300 million IPO shares rose from the issue price of US$13 on the day of listing. It soared to more than $30, and two years later, it rose more than 12 times. This small company has an interesting name called Yahoo.As one of the early investors, Zhang Lexing has made a lot of money from this company, and by the way, he has also added success to his investment record, but it can also be seen from this that once a company is posted on the Internet How crazy labels can be.

From then on, there were almost no companies like Netscape that would honestly operate the company to make a profit before going public, and everyone began to learn to be smart.Investment banks have discovered that IPOs can still operate in this way, and companies have discovered that IPOs can still be played in this way. Those balance sheets are not important at all, and it doesn’t matter whether they can make profits. The important thing is to be able to fool around. Fooling the VCs, it doesn’t matter when the VCs find out that the company is not making any money at all, they can find an investment bank, and everyone gang up to fool the stock market investors. This is the legendary Internet concept IPO, so the hot potato has passed to the next bad luck In the hands of ghosts, entrepreneurs have more banknotes to make bigger pies, venture capitalists get back the banknotes they almost lost and made a fortune, and investment banks get a lot of commissions from it, and then go on In the end, it is only up to the unluckiest investors to take the last stick.

So since 1998, all kinds of websites that involve the concept of the Internet, that is, all kinds of websites, have embarked on the road of IPO with the help of investment banks. Those who buy books online, buy fresh products online, and sell toys online, One after another, beautiful stock market fairy tales are constantly being born. At this craziest time, as long as anything is followed by ".com", it will be worth a hundred times.Zhang Lexing still remembers a joke that described this situation. It said that there were two beggars begging in a New York subway station. The first beggar wrote "beg" (begging) on ​​the broken cup. Ten dollars, the second beggar wrote "" on the cup, and it turned out to be hundreds of thousands a day, and someone also discussed with him about listing on NASDAQ.

Naturally, Zhang Lexing will not let go of this kind of good time for raising money. With the proper blowing, coupled with the support of market research and analysis reports, the investment funds he directly or indirectly controls and the investment departments of his subsidiaries have drawn a lot of power Dabbled in this feast, and he made several investments himself, such as investing in GeoCities (Global Village, a company that provides personal homepage services) for US$200 million, and then sold it at the beginning of this year for nearly US$9 million. Yahoo, which has a lot of money, invested in Lcos (Lex, an Internet portal) and assisted in its successful IPO. Today's stock price has exceeded 145 US dollars per share, and the initial investment of 200 million US dollars has swelled to 9.5 million US dollars.

The investment funds directly or indirectly controlled by Zhang Lexing and the investment departments of its subsidiaries have also made a lot of money in this trend, and even the relatively short-established Orient International Investment Bank (spun off from Orient Holdings) The investment business department was merged with some acquired small and medium-sized banks, mainly engaged in securities issuance, underwriting, trading, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, investment analysis, venture capital, project financing, etc. I also made a small profit in the process.

With the influx of returnees returning to China and venture capitalists from abroad, since the beginning of this year, "network concept" and "Internet" have become hot words, frequently mentioned by many domestic media , And words such as "burning money", "staking land", "storytelling", "venture investment", and "listing IPO" are often on people's lips.At this time, if someone doesn't know how to talk about "website" and "Internet", it will definitely leave an impression of "you are out" in other people's minds, and working on a website will become a Many people's new dream, because you don't need to know too much there, even if you only know how to type on a computer, you can get an income of 5000-[-] yuan.

In a big city like BJ, dotcoms (.com) with a lot of money forced by venture capitalists in their hands have filled the streets and alleys with all kinds of advertisements, even the emerging bus body and The advertisements on the stop signs were also taken over, almost all of which were monopolized by Internet companies. The towering advertising signs on both sides of the famous Baiyi Road were also occupied by various Internet companies such as ChinaRen and Sohu.Yitang.com, which claims to be the Minghuang generation, has tens of millions of dollars in exchange for a few pages of business plans from American venture capital. It is high-spirited to point out the country's current situation, smashing advertisements, giving annual salaries, and losing money. Drifting Bottle, and even filmed a TV series inexplicably.And those dotcoms with less money in their hands are not to be outdone, they specialize in a certain area if they can’t afford national advertisements, and send things instead, such as ballpoint pens with URLs printed on them, mice with corporate logos Pads, etc., a lot of odds and ends are cheap for a lot of university club activity organizers.

The Internet bubble is gradually rising, but the successive high returns have made many people lose their eyes. Zhang Lexing's investment fund and the heads of the investment department of its subsidiaries seem to have this tendency, and they are still optimistic about the future of Internet concept stocks. Views, and even intend to continue to tilt resources in this regard.But Zhang Lexing knows that the Internet concept stocks will soon encounter a bubble burst, which will even drag down people's overall impression of high technology. There is no difference between drifting, so he held such a video conference to unify everyone's thinking and adjust the direction of investment.

"Everyone, you should have read the survey data in the email. In 1994, the total market value of the US stock market was about 6.3 trillion U.S. dollars, but at the end of last month, the total market value had reached 15.8 trillion U.S. dollars. The ratio of market value to GDP , from 1995% in 50 to 120% in a few years, but the company's profits only increased by 38.2% in the same period. In the 1982 years from 1995 to 13, the ratio of market value to GDP rose from 25% to At the same time, the company's profits increased by 50% during this period. This shows that the bubble in the market is already very serious, especially for those Internet high-tech stocks. Many companies are not profitable at all, and even their revenue is only a few million US dollars, but the market value is higher than many traditional companies with revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars, which is very abnormal..." Zhang Lexing flipped through the information in his hand and said, "So I think it's time to adjust the direction of investment!"

Zhang Lexing remembers that the high-tech stocks crashed around April next year. According to his thinking, it is now possible to gradually reduce the holdings of stocks related to Internet companies in his hands to avoid heavy losses at that time. You can invest part of it in traditional industries, such as real estate, or you can keep a part of it. When high-tech stocks really collapse and the market value of some companies that have been peeping for a long time plummets, you can pick up the cheap ones.

It's a pity that Zhang Lexing's words did not arouse much response. Many people's eyes are now only those figures of Diancom's crazy rise. It will be so fast, real money is in front of them, and they are not willing to give it up easily.Fortunately, Yang Xinxin firmly stood on Zhang Lexing's side. Relying on the shareholding advantage of the joint venture between the two, the new investment plan was forced to push forward in the end.

From now on, Dongfang Industrial Group, Visual System Group and Universal Entertainment Group will gradually reduce their holdings in the stocks of Internet companies they hold in their hands, and even sell them completely. However, Zhang Lexing will not reduce all of his holdings in key companies like Cisco that involve network infrastructure. , At least until April next year, it will maintain no less than 4% of the shares, so that it can at least retain a seat on the board of directors.The business of Orient International Investment Bank has also been adjusted. It no longer mainly focuses on those Internet companies, but with the help of Standard Chartered Bank and Citigroup, which have already obtained controlling shares, it will focus more on assisting certain companies. Strong and promising companies go public in Hong Kong or the United States, such as large companies in finance and energy. On the one hand, they can take the opportunity to make some money, and on the other hand, they can also take the opportunity to infiltrate control into more industries.

(End of this chapter)