Game Development Giant

Guo Taiming is a smart person, and smart people have very strong brainstorming abilities. Some things only need to be told one point, but for smart people, he knows the whole story.

Therefore, when Jace ignored the special talk and first talked to him about the matter of sending people to the mainland to investigate, he realized that this time Jace wanted to see him not as he expected, but just to talk about an OEM. The contract was so simple, but Guo Taiming didn't want to be brought into a circle that he hadn't prepared for in advance, so he continued to direct the topic to the biggest purpose of his visit this time.

"Haha, Mr. Li, let's talk about business." As Guo Taiming said, he picked up the tea cup and blew on the hot air and took a sip of tea before continuing, "I don't know how much OEM work Mr. Li needs. how much?

Although Jester wanted to talk to the other party about investment and cooperation in mainland China, the other party didn't want to talk now, and he wouldn't ask for trouble. Therefore, when Guo Taiming brought the topic back to the product representative he wanted, When the work came up, he just followed Guo Taiming's words.

"Then it depends on how many units you can provide each month." In Jester's view, one-time quantities are useless, and there is no need to rely on total output to co-operate with Nintendo. We can only look at the short-term results. shipments, and by the end of the year at the latest, the first phase of his production center in mainland China will be able to reach the designed production capacity. "Two hundred thousand units?".

Jester was very dissatisfied with this number, but there was nothing he could do about it. Today's Hon Hai is not the behemoth it will be in the future. With full production capacity, producing millions of units every month is like trying to get something out of a bag. Now it can provide 200,000 units every month, and it can increase to 300,000 to 500,000 units in two months. Wantai is already considered very good.

But these outputs are a drop in the bucket compared to Nintendo's inventory, let alone their daily output.

In Jester's memory, in its original history, nes was the annual toy sales champion in the United States from 1985 until the Sega MD was launched in North America in 1989, and the average annual sales were quite close. Ten million units. And its own production capacity, even if including Hon Hai, can only reach a little more than one-half of this number, and no more than two-thirds at most. Jester believes this. There are still very few companies that specialize in OEM. Generally, those who do OEM will have their own brands, only when the sales of their own brands are not good. They only do OEM for some big brands, but usually they mainly focus on their own brands.

This is also the problem that Jester faces when looking for OEMs in Japan. Although scattered Japanese OEMs have an output of about hundreds of thousands per month, they are unstable. Moreover, the contract is short-term, and Guo Taiming's Hon Hai has identified the prospects of the foundry industry from the beginning, so he does not create his own products. It is to let other companies who want to find OEMs feel confident about them.

This is where Guo Taiming was unique from the beginning.

The most important thing is that Hon Hai wins in terms of stability. Other small manufacturers that have their own products only do OEM business when their own products cannot be sold. They sign a short-term contract and after completion If we make our own products, the production capacity will not be stable, and the head office will not be able to make reasonable sales or other plans based on the production capacity.

Just like the OEM companies that Jester found in Japan, at the highest point, all the OEM companies combined could reach a monthly output of 300,000 to 400,000 units. But in fact, this is only theoretical. Now it can Maintaining a number of more than 100,000 or 200,000 units is a very good number.

"Is it stable?". In Jester's eyes, the stability of output is a parameter that is more important than production capacity.

Hearing this question, Guo Taiming pondered for a moment. The numbers he mentioned before were indeed accurate. He said that 200,000 units per month and 300,000 to 500,000 units in two months were not bragging. His factory We do have such capability at present, but this is without other foundry contracts.

And in Guo Taiming's eyes, Mars Entertainment, or Jester's status ranking in his eyes is not as high as that of PC manufacturers such as Compaq and HP. Although he is also optimistic about the possible revival of the video game industry, After all, this is just a toy. Even if it is revived, it will still pale in comparison to the future of the computer market.

In other words, it was impossible for him to extend the production cycle of the production tasks of these personal computer companies that he had finally negotiated in order to increase the production of Jester's products.

Seeing Guo Taiming's expression, Jester understood what he meant. Indeed, he also knew that in a short period of time, the potential of the computer market was indeed not comparable to that of video games, but in the end, personal computers were actually Price competition, because the prices of all accessories are open and transparent, it is impossible to have a business like Dell that can make a thousand dollars by just adding a hard drive.

But the problem is that the low profits of PCs have nothing to do with OEM companies. They do not sell PCs. For them, they only need to produce. Therefore, the industry with the larger market is more popular with OEM companies.

As for game consoles, although they are highly profitable, the market is small and only produced by one or two large manufacturers. For example, Nintendo's FC/NES has sold a total of more than 60 million units. It looks like a lot, but in fact Spread out over the years, it is only a few million units a year, with the best-selling peak of 10 million units.

To be honest, it is impossible for a pure OEM company to grow with this kind of quantity, but the PC market is different. If the sales volume of NES/FC is replaced by PC - 60 million PCs, it may even be possible in the next few years. The sales volume of the PC market in one year is not enough.

For an OEM company, the difference is really huge. Although the current annual profit of Mars Entertainment is among the best among new technology companies in Silicon Valley, this is not the case for Guo Taiming, who is dedicated to OEM. For people, it is meaningless.

This is also the reason why Jester does not intend to operate his production base in the mainland for a long time. It is because he only produces for himself. Even if it is arcade machines, home machines, and handheld consoles, if all the production bases are located in the mainland, it will not work. It could be bigger, so from the beginning, Jester had the idea of ​​waiting for Guo Taiming to invest and build a factory in mainland China in a few years, and wanted to use his manufacturing center in Shanghai to form a joint venture with him.

"Mr. Li, to be honest, I can't guarantee that we can maintain 200,000 units every month. It's just that we don't have many other OEM tasks recently. We can reach this output in the last three to four months." ." Guo Taiming relaxed his eyebrows, he didn't tell any lies, he was being honest.

Jester had already decided to sign this order from Hon Hai, but he didn't want to reveal his decision so quickly.

But the main reason why he met Guo Taiming this time was not just about OEM work, but about investment in the mainland. Originally, Jester planned to wait for Guo Taiming to go to the mainland for inspection in person before contacting him to discuss the matter. But now that we have met, and since we don’t know if he will have time when we arrive, it’s better to just talk together.

Therefore, Jester avoided answering the OEM question and deliberately changed the topic back to the direction of investing and building factories in mainland China: "Mr. Guo, do you have any intention of investing in and building factories in mainland China?"

Hearing Jester's question, Guo Taiming just frowned.

"Mr. Li is also interested in OEM?" After just a moment, Guo Taiming's frowning eyebrows quickly relaxed. He smiled and said, "I am not opposed to joint ventures, but the premise is that I want to hold the controlling share. , investors cannot interfere with my management of the company - of course I have financial supervision rights, why, is Mr. Li still interested?"

This is half true. Guo Taiming does not have much liquidity in his hands. If he wants to expand his scale, he needs a lot of funds. Small investments are just a drop in the bucket for him, and he is not interested. And large investments , and he doesn’t want to affect his right to speak when other people’s capital comes in. The problem is that there are not many investors who will ignore it after investing a large amount of money.

Therefore, Guo Taiming simply stated his conditions directly to make Jester retreat, but he did not insist on speaking. If Jester could agree to his request, a joint venture would not be impossible.

Unexpectedly, Jester nodded beyond Guo Taiming's expectation.

"It's a very reasonable condition. As a founder of a company, you naturally want to be responsible for the company and watch it grow. As an investor, the main purpose is to get benefits from the company you invest in. The profits he wants, their dictating to these companies are sometimes counterproductive, but their intentions are good. After all, no one wants their investment to be wasted - but the question is, Mr. Guo, do you think you can do it? Let investors get the profits they want?"

Hearing Jester's words, Guo Taiming had a look of surprise on his face. His eyebrows were raised, and his eyes that were dull from staying up late suddenly showed a shrewd look. He said to Jester This slightly interrogative question was not answered directly, but asked a rhetorical question.

"So, Mr. Li has this intention?"