America: My Time

Chapter 51 Miniature Computers

Chapter 51 Miniature Machine
The booming sales of the gaming world are evident from the disastrous state of Atari, so loans are not a problem for John. Even if someone tries to use loans to cause trouble, it won't work. There are many banks around the world willing to lend to high-quality clients like John with strong repayment capabilities!
Legendary Entertainment is no longer the weak and feeble company it once was. With the global broadcast of the Transformers animated series and the global reach of Legendary toys, Transformers toys are also selling like hotcakes. Wall Street bastards know how profitable toys are; just look at a few toy companies in the US, and you'll understand. Moreover, Legendary toys are manufactured in Taiwan, where costs are even lower than in the US.

With the huge success of Legendary Toys, Legendary Entertainment no longer needs to extract revenue from the game world and can be completely self-sufficient. Although Legendary Toys currently only has one IP, those familiar with Legendary Entertainment understand that this is just the beginning. Legendary Entertainment will create many more IPs, as evidenced by its increased investment!

Following its acquisition of Dick Clark Television Productions, Legendary Entertainment began investing in television series and reached a cooperation agreement with NBC, a series of actions demonstrating its rapid expansion. However, some are puzzled as to why Legendary Entertainment has yet to acquire a newspaper business, which seems unusual.

Newspaper business was indeed in John's plans, but the situation in the local newspaper industry was not ideal. Top newspaper companies were not for sale and could not be acquired; small newspapers would only waste his time and energy, and he was unwilling to waste his energy on local newspapers, which had no 'financial future', at least not now!
While the newspaper industry was doing well in the 80s, John valued television networks and movies more. Rather than wasting money on newspapers, he preferred to invest in the development of television networks and movies, giving Legendary Entertainment a truly solid foundation.

"What a genius! This kid is really amazing. Legendary Entertainment is not to be underestimated. Look at the miracle he created with just one animated film. Global distribution shows vision and courage. It's incredible. As long as he doesn't mess things up, Legendary Entertainment won't have any problems. This one toy alone is enough for Legendary Entertainment to live on for many years."

"Yes, he is indeed a genius. He dared to make a global layout in the toy industry, breaking through his own bottleneck in one fell swoop. With Legendary Toys and Legendary Animation, Legendary Entertainment will be the next media giant. In comparison, Warner is far inferior. Just look at this kid's layout and his big picture vision, and you can tell that he is an ambitious guy. Warner is making a big mistake in making an enemy of him. Now that Atari has fallen, it won't be long before Warner will also be threatened."

"No way! Warner is one of the Hollywood giants, and its resources are far beyond what a new company like Legendary Entertainment can match. Moreover, Warner firmly holds the advantage in both the record and film industries. It's practically impossible for Legendary Entertainment to challenge Warner in these two sectors!"

"Impossible. What you consider impossible is feasible in this kid's plan. Have you forgotten MTV? Do you think that if Legendary Entertainment were to develop it, Warner's artists would be hindered? Promotion also needs a platform. We all underestimated this little guy. He's more cunning than we thought. It's precisely because MTV is small and goes unnoticed that everyone overlooks its role, and the same goes for ESPN."

"Boss, I just don't understand why this kid is so fixated on the entertainment industry. The game world and the dream world clearly have greater potential, but he seems oblivious to it and has no intention of expanding. It's baffling!"

"Nothing much. Geniuses have their own ideas. You might think that Game World and Dream World haven't expanded, but is that really the case? While Game World hasn't acquired or merged with other game companies, their staff is growing rapidly. Clearly, Game World has its own plans. As for Dream World, it's even harder to say. The software industry is a nascent sector, and nobody knows its potential. It's normal to be cautious with such an emerging industry. We don't see any new products from Dream World yet, but we'll soon learn about them. This kid won't let things slide. Right now, his focus is still on the entertainment industry, and that's our opportunity. Young people always have many dreams!"

Time flies, and summer vacation is fast approaching. Game World and Legendary Toys are both selling like hotcakes, drawing everyone's attention to the eighteen-year-old John, whose net worth is skyrocketing. The summer sales boom exceeded many people's expectations. While arcade sales were also steadily increasing, sales of home consoles and handheld game consoles were even more phenomenal. At this point, the North American game market was truly dominated by Game World, with other games collapsing. A new era had begun!
This is the era of the gaming world, and as it continues to conquer new territories, its power is undeniable. This summer, the most talked-about topics are the gaming world and Transformers. Meanwhile, John has quietly left the United States!

The curtain was about to rise on gold futures, and John needed to be prepared. Because his funds weren't abundant, John didn't have many problems to deal with. Offshore fund companies in England and Hong Kong were already prepared. When June 20th arrived, the price of gold finally hit its lowest point, and John ordered the two companies to immediately begin buying with a 20x leverage. Although the leverage was high, John's funds were limited, and he truly listened to his parents and kept his promise, not using any other funds, only those he had prepared beforehand to complete his plan in the gold futures market. Precisely because of the limited funds, the operation was completed quickly.

On this day, John was incredibly excited, eager to know if his arrival had influenced changes in the world, and whether the financial markets were still developing along their original trajectory. Only time would tell.

One day, two days, three days passed, and everything unfolded as I remembered. The gold market showed no unexpected changes; everything was normal. Normalcy meant my investment would yield substantial returns, so I needed to prepare in advance, handle everything carefully, and prevent others from eyeing my funds!
John needed a bank, his own secret bank. Although the funds might not be large, and it wouldn't be conspicuous in the financial market, he still needed to be careful; these funds were crucial to his larger future plans. Soon, an inconspicuous small bank appeared in Switzerland, and another in Luxembourg. Don't put all your eggs in one basket—that was John's true thinking!
While John was frantically laying the groundwork for the future, especially in the financial sector, Dream World finally released its new product database software. Its appearance caused a huge stir in the IT industry. Dream World's database software could run on personal computers, not mainframes or minicomputers!

This was just the beginning. With Meg Whitman as the dedicated CEO, Dreamworld's development entered a fast track. Software engineers no longer had to worry about trivial matters; they only needed to focus on software development, while other tasks were handled by specialized personnel, greatly increasing software development capabilities.

John initially didn't want Dreamworld to get involved in hardware and wanted to spin off a portion of the team into a new company. However, this wasn't the case within Dreamworld, and even Meg Whitman felt it was inappropriate. Although doing both software and hardware would face a monopoly crisis, Dreamworld was just a new company, with IBM, Apple, and many other companies ahead of them. Therefore, in discussions with Meg Whitman, John had to change his mind and agree to retain hardware development.

However, for the sake of the development of Dream World, John also made clear provisions for hardware research and development: focus on minicomputers and laptops, and do not directly compete with personal computer companies like Apple, whose technological reserves are far beyond what Dream World can currently match.

While manufacturing personal computers wasn't particularly difficult, the guilds were too troublesome, and John didn't want to deal with them, lest he inadvertently plunge Dream World into crisis! If production could be done overseas, it should definitely not be done in the US; the American workers were all a bunch of lords, lords he couldn't afford to offend!

With database software in place, the successful development of an operating system wouldn't be far off. Software development at this stage wasn't as difficult or complex as it would become later. However, Dream World had its sights set on a graphical operating system, not the DOS instruction set. Yes, Dream World wanted to steal the thunder, to secure the patent for a graphical operating system before Apple could.

Since they were destined to be enemies, there was no room for mercy. Previously, they lacked the strength to confront Apple, but things were different now. Dream World had developed and no longer needed to put up with Apple's mistreatment. After several months of development, the balance of power had shifted; now Apple needed Dream World, not the other way around.

John restricted Dream World's research to minicomputers because the configurations of personal computers at that time were insufficient to run graphical operating systems, making minicomputers the best option. Once the minicomputer research was successful and they held the patents for graphical operating systems, everything else would be secondary! Patents were what he desired most, and they were the foundation of Dream World!
(End of this chapter)