America: My Time

Chapter 24 Influence
Chapter Twenty-Four: Impact

The game world easily retaliated against all its 'enemies,' thoroughly humiliating the guild organization while remaining unscathed. This outcome infuriated Warner. They had initially hoped to teach the game world a lesson, creating an opportunity to acquire it, but their plan instantly failed. Failing to suppress the enemy only demonstrated their strength; instead, they provided free publicity for them – a foolish move.

In order to successfully shift the blame, the media pushed all responsibility onto the guild organization, while also praising the game world. After all, the game world was so well prepared, with all invitations recorded, leaving no opportunity for them to distort the facts!

Previously, GameWorld was just a fledgling, insignificant gaming company. After this incident, fueled by the media frenzy, GameWorld's name spread throughout North America. Orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars made GameWorld a household name and caused a sensation in North America. Now, even a fool can see that this is a lucrative business.

The hundreds of millions of dollars is just the first order. More orders will be placed based on market demand. The market response is positive and explosive growth is expected!

At this point, American manufacturing companies, and even game companies, had to take the existence of Game World seriously and wanted to get a share of the profits from the orders. However, their plans were immediately thwarted. Game World had signed long-term orders with Panasonic, Sony, and Hitachi, not one-off orders, but orders that would last for several years.

After discovering the potential of the game world, other game companies wanted to join its system and release their games through its platform. However, they were rejected by the game world. The reason for the rejection was simple: the game world's platform was not yet stable and needed time to be tested.

To limit Panasonic, Sony, and Hitachi's involvement in game console development, Game World imposed equal requirements on the licensing agreements. In addition to a 10% sales share, there were additional conditions, such as prohibiting the production of similar machines during the cooperation period and allowing development for one year after the cooperation ended. This greatly reduced the threat posed by Panasonic, Sony, and Hitachi. Under the enormous temptation of profits, these three giants naturally had no choice but to comply.

Starting from scratch? What a joke! Although they have decent technical reserves, they are complete novices in the game industry. Licensed production is not a problem, but for them to develop their own games, it will take a long time and require accumulating experience. Most importantly, they have serious deficiencies in game manufacturing. Game consoles can be manufactured by circumventing patents as long as a certain cost is paid, at most paying more patent fees. But game development is difficult; without good planning, there will be no good results.

The gaming industry clearly has huge potential for orders. If everything goes smoothly, there will be hundreds of millions of dollars in business every year. But because of his own greed, he insists on developing his own game console and games, giving up the profits he has already made. I'm afraid those manufacturing companies that did not participate will laugh themselves to death and jump out to take his place!

The three major Japanese home appliance giants, who had signed huge orders but were now facing a major headache, had left. They needed to produce the products as quickly as possible and then establish sales channels. While the latter wasn't too difficult—each of the giants already had a foundation in North America and only needed some simple adjustments—the production task was heavy and the timeframe was short. The game industry also had requirements: if market sales were booming and orders increased, each company had to prioritize supplying the North American market.

After the departure of the three major home appliance giants, the gaming industry began to expand rapidly. Several headhunting companies cast their nets everywhere to poach talent. As it was a new company, there was little internal strife, and the salaries, benefits, and stock options were very high, which was a huge temptation for anyone. So the poaching work went very smoothly.

Although the guilds were thoroughly humiliated, they refused to swallow their anger and continued to harass the game world, using production as a pretext to incite politicians to make irresponsible remarks and suppress the game world.

The idea was good, but the game world completely ignored them, and even the California government, where the game world was located, remained silent. Whether the game world built a manufacturing plant or not was not a big deal to them. The game world was hiring a lot of people in California and was a huge help to the local economy. At this time, they absolutely could not offend this guy, otherwise, if he got angry and moved away, it would be a big problem. It's not like only California in the United States allows companies to operate!

The game world's frenzied expansion stunned Wall Street. They had expected to quickly share in the profits, but were instead greatly disappointed! Now, they wanted to understand where the game world's money came from. While theaters and major retailers placed direct orders, a portion of the orders were from the game world itself, and many smaller theaters opted to lease rather than purchase arcade machines directly. This required a substantial amount of capital, and the game world, being a fledgling company, couldn't possibly have such large cash reserves!
Wall Street quickly found the answer: Game World used its three major arcade machines as collateral to obtain a loan from Mitsui Bank. Since Sony had acquired the arcade machine production license, Mitsui Bank, as a member of the Mitsui Group, naturally had to provide strong support, directly granting Game World a credit line of $100 million.

One hundred million dollars is more than enough for the gaming world, with plenty to spare, because the gaming world doesn't manufacture game consoles or sell them directly; it only collects licensing fees. Its expenses are minimal, even negligible. In this lavish feast, Wall Street didn't get a single dollar.

In the eyes of Wall Street, the behavior of those in the gaming world is wasteful. If they were to produce their own products, they would definitely make a greater profit. Just look at Atari; production is very profitable, with overall profits definitely exceeding 10%.

It's true that manufacturing can be very profitable, provided you can keep up with market demand. Do these American workers have that capability? Would they be willing to work overtime to produce game consoles for companies? That's impossible. These workers only enjoy the company's benefits and never contribute anything to the company. Overtime is out of the question for them.

The gaming world simply cannot satisfy the needs of the entire North American market, and no manufacturing company in North America can do it! In this era, only Japan can meet the needs of the North American market.

Japanese companies of that era were truly remarkable. Their employees were incredibly dedicated, working overtime was nothing unusual for them, and they were willing to give everything for the company. This was something that American companies couldn't do, and even European companies couldn't do. It was precisely because of this dedication that Japanese companies were able to grow so rapidly! The reason why Japan was able to become one of the world's leading countries in the 1980s was precisely because they had such dedicated employees and a cost advantage.

In the United States, there is almost no concept of a private company among publicly listed companies. In their view, the company does not belong to you, but to everyone. If the company can maintain a good rate of return, you can continue to be the boss. If you do not meet the requirements of Wall Street, they will easily oust the founder. This is the norm on Wall Street and also the norm for American companies.

The gaming world can't be a private company; going public is a must, and John was prepared for that from the very beginning! Of course, going public isn't easy. If Wall Street knows you're short of money, they'll swallow up most of your shares, leaving you with very little. Almost all listed companies end up with less than 10% of the shares they own, and John doesn't want to follow in their footsteps!

Without production, there's no financial pressure, no need for financing, and therefore no influence from Wall Street. A 10% licensing fee is considered insane, unbelievable, and wasteful by Wall Street, but John sees it as the best, most suitable, and most advantageous option for him. Under this management, he'll at least receive 10% licensing fees. If he were to operate as a normal company, producing the goods himself and raising funds, how much profit he'd have left is uncertain.

A 10% license would generate good profits for both John's gaming world and Japan's three major home appliance giants, resulting in a win-win situation for both parties! Without the licensing restrictions, the three major home appliance giants would be even happier, but that's impossible!

This time, everyone witnessed John's success once again, but this success was different from the previous ones. The game world clearly had greater potential, greater room for development, and more astonishing profits, which far surpassed those of software companies. At this point, it would be foolish for anyone to ignore John's success.

From that moment on, John entered the sights of those old guys and the eyes of Wall Street! Although John's game world was not officially profitable, it was only a matter of time. Now everyone could see the development potential of the game world, and everyone wanted to get a share of the profits. However, they had no way to interfere. The game world was not short of money, and even John himself was not short of money, so they had no way to use any means to get involved.

(End of this chapter)