Horrible! Actually playing this kind of game!

Chapter 502 406. What? ! Did pokeni acquire Marvel? !

The great success of "Mushishi" has finally eased pokeni's financial situation.

Otherwise, if the bullets are completely empty, Qing Zhiyuan really doesn't know how to face the upcoming console war next year.

Every penny counts now.

…

At the same time, various dramas are also going on at Sony.

Nobuyuki Idei, a successor who seemed unattractive and was even not favored by the outside world for a time, immediately started drastic reforms after becoming the president of the company.

When Idei was sent to Europe for training by Sony in his early years, he was influenced by the French New Wave film director Jean-Luc Godard and was full of enthusiasm for innovation.

It is precisely because of this that he foresaw the arrival of the Internet wave early.

Since Idei took office, he would go to the chairman Norio Ohga to have dinner and chat almost every few days, bragging to him about various things.

The legendary slap in the ears.

Nobuyuki Idei used the analogy of "meteorites and the extinction of the dinosaurs" to emphasize that the Internet was the meteorite that hit Sony and changed Sony. We must prepare for the difficulty of hardware growth.

In other words, it is to find Sony's second growth curve.

Over time, after seeing the rising Internet industry, including the growing various portal businesses, especially the rapid growth of Internet companies in pokeni, as well as the development trend of the Internet in the United States...

Norio Ohga also gradually believed in Nobuyuki Idei's judgment.

Being able to support Nobuyuki Idei to the position of president shows that Norio Ohga trusts him. Nobuyuki Idei represents Norio Ohga's will to a certain extent.

Therefore, the two people had a very good relationship in private before. After Izou took over, Norio Ohga naturally endorsed him.

"If you want to do something, just do it boldly."

Norio Ohga encouraged with a smile.

"Good chairman." That's what Idei Nobuyuki wanted from him.

…

When Nobuyuki Dei first became president, Sony’s senior executives were all Neon people, like a small circle.

As soon as this guy came to power, he laid off a large part of the senior management team and replaced him with a group of foreigners with international vision as the senior management team.

After Idei took office, the first thing he did was challenge one of Neon's authorities - the lifetime employment system.

Subsequently, Idei applied the advanced management methods he learned in Europe to Sony, reorganized the ineffective board of directors, transferred 30 senior directors, and drew a clear line between decision-making and execution.

And explained: "If we want someone as good as Welch to work for us, we must first set up a board of directors that satisfies him."

Jack Welch, chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE), is a very rare genius manager in American history.

Idei's rhetoric is just a metaphor. It clearly shows that if you need to recruit talents, you must first carry out reforms and adjustments.

In addition, the department presidents he selected are all young, and performance pay is used instead of seniority pay, which is not common in hierarchical Japanese companies.

Someone outside commented that he is "the entrepreneur who is least like a Neon person".

Faced with Sony's high debt at the time, Idei could only implement strict performance appraisals to cut costs, and put the high-cost battery technology and robotics business on the edge.

Engineers who used to have a high status in Sony are slowly losing their voice, and the cost of trial and error has become high.

Kozo Osone, the "father of Sony's Walkman," said: Under the pressure of performanceism, people at Sony "work bent over," and the atmosphere of innovation has gradually faded.

…

Less than half a year after Nobuyuki Idei took office, more than 30 Sony board members were eliminated, departments were reorganized, the company's internal system was significantly adjusted, and many old members were dismissed.

For this reason, Ohga Norio can hear complaints from people almost every day, even dissatisfaction from company executives and colleagues.

"This guy Idei is so crazy! He totally wants to bring down Sony!"

"He did this nominally to carry out innovation and change, but in fact he ignored the national conditions. The cultural atmosphere of Neon's companies and American companies are fundamentally different, so he had to do it this way.

Now members of various departments are lamenting that everyone has no passion for work.

I was completely overwhelmed by the performance and couldn't breathe.

Idei doesn't treat the company members as human beings at all.

If this continues, Sony will be destroyed sooner or later in his hands. "

"..."

In short, Norio Ohga originally wanted to be quiet before handing over all the company's affairs to Nobuyuki Idei, but now he was extremely annoyed by various things.

At first, it was possible to suppress it, but then more and more people came to the door every day, and the weight of the personnel became heavier and heavier.

Under such circumstances, Ohga Norio himself couldn't help but become a little suspicious.

He simply called Nobuyuki Idei over.

"Dei, can you be gentler? Do you know how many complaints I receive every day? The senior members of the company think you are going too far.

They thought there was something wrong with my vision and elected you to be the president of the company.

Now the company is in a mess. "

"President, how can reform be without pain?" Nobuyuki Idei explained, "Now the group's business is too bloated."

Yes, Nobuyuki Idei used the word "bloated".

“If we do not carry out reforms to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the group will be prone to problems in the future.

Just like a patient suffering from cancer, if the lesions are not removed at the beginning and the cancer cells are completely killed, it will only become more difficult to deal with in the future.

In the late stages, when the disease is terminal, there is no way to save it. "

Norio Ohga frowned. In fact, he knew more about the company's affairs than Nobuyuki Idei. It was for these reasons that he let Idei do it.

Sometimes replacement just requires a manager who can use the knife and be ruthless.

Now it seems that Nobuyuki Idei actually met his expectations.

"Then can you hurry up? It's been taking a long time, and I can't bear the pressure."

"Okay, Chairman."

…

The company's internal reforms and major strategic adjustments were all completed after Idejing came to power.

These moves were seen as crazy by those within the company.

A neon company must become an O\u0026M company, regardless of whether it is suitable or not.

And there are a lot of layoffs and department reductions.

When Nobuyuki Dei was doing these things, what many people thought of was another guy——

Qing Zhiyuan.

To a certain extent, the two of them are quite similar. They both carried out drastic reforms of the company with thunderous methods.

It's just that Qing Zhiyuan's changes are smaller, because Sega is not as big as Sony.

The situation of Nobuyuki Dei and the resources he holds are very different from those of Qing Zhiyuan.

Qing Zhiyuan is the chairman and has absolute power. He can make changes as he wants.

But Nobuyuki Idei is just a CEO, and many things have to be voted on by the board of directors. If it weren't for Chairman Norio Ohga's desperate support, reforms like Idei's would have touched the cakes and interests of many people. Kicked off the board.

Let alone serving as president, I'm afraid I won't be able to keep my position.

But Norio Ohga believed in him unconditionally, which allowed Nobuyuki Dei to complete his idea.

…

After July, Sony carried out some department integration and reduction, and also shifted its business focus, slowly shifting its original products from electronic hardware to "content output".

In other words, Sony not only makes electronic products and PS game consoles, but also makes games, making many, many games.

I also want to make movies, TV shows, and music... and make a lot of entertainment content.

Idei proposed a DDK (Digital-Dream-Kids) plan, that is, "Digital Dream Trendsetters".

On July 10, Nobuyuki Idei said this when facing reporters:

"Mr. Ibuka is a pioneer of transistors, Mr. Akio Morita is a pioneer of Walkmans, and Mr. Norio Ohga is a pioneer of CDs. We must be a pioneer of digital dreams."

He believes that hardware will not always maintain high growth. If Sony wants to survive, it must develop software and entertainment content.

…

Qing Zhiyuan's heart skipped a beat when he saw the news media reports.

Sony's new president seems to be more capable than he thought.

Being able to perfectly foresee the digital era in the future is quite remarkable, and he is also able to carry out comprehensive and substantial reforms within Sony. This courage and means are really rare in the world.

You must know that Qing Zhiyuan is a time traveler from the future, so he naturally knows the development direction of the times and can easily make judgments about the big times.

As for Nobuyuki Idei, he obviously made his decision based on his own experience, market analysis, and a keen sense of the future.

This is quite remarkable.

Anyone who can predict the future can basically achieve success. The key is that this person also has super strong execution ability.

It took less than half a year to transform Sony into what it is now.

honestly,

Qing Zhiyuan felt a deep sense of crisis for the first time.

It was like seeing another time traveler.

There is not much time left for pokeni.

…

In fact, Qing Zhiyuan's hunch was right.

In July, Nobuyuki Idei, who was worried about having no way to attack the president of North America, finally seized the opportunity.

On July 17, 1998, Sony announced in its quarterly financial report:

17 of the 26 films launched by Colombia suffered losses, with losses totaling US$150 million.

The book amount of the company's investment assets decreased by US$2.7 billion, and there was an operating loss of US$510 million "dealing with outstanding lawsuits and contractual compensation", bringing the cumulative loss to US$3.2 billion.

This figure shocked Hollywood and Wall Street, and the media even asserted that Sony's acquisition of Colombia suffered a complete failure.

Prior to this, although Nobuyuki Dei was the president of the group, Schulhoff had always had the final say in North America. This person, together with the two producers from Sony Pictures below, were basically spenders. .

Because Sony executives knew nothing about the film and television industry, after acquiring Columbia Pictures, they spent a lot of money to acquire Peter Cooper, the producer of "Batman" and "Rain Man", and his Partner Jon Peters poached.

Cooper and Peters are the kind of playboys that exist everywhere in Hollywood. They are very particular about life enjoyment and office decoration. However, Sony's parent company has always been afraid of interfering too much in their daily lives due to the pressure of public opinion and their incompetence in the film business. business;

The Los Angeles Times even published a cover article accusing Sony executives of being ignorant of film and television production and negligent in management, and that managers spent money to fool their investors.

This was the case during the period of Norio Ohga, but Norio Ohga did not deal with it, but left these "black sheep" to Nobuyuki Dei.

Now I finally got the chance.

So Nobuyuki Idei directly applied to the board of directors to remove North American President Schulhoff, and at the same time fired Peter Cooper and Jon Peters.

…

When he received the news, Schulhoff was so angry that he yelled at Nobuyuki Idei that this guy didn't know what film and television production was at all. He gave Sony Pictures just some cold numbers from a layman's perspective. Sentenced to death.

This is completely unfair. Nobuyuki Idei obviously had a premeditated plan to kill me!

The infighting on Sony's side is heating up.

Schulhoff united many board members to impeach Nobuyuki Dei, saying that he abused his power, wanted to bring down Sony, and expressed concerns about Sony's future.

Nobuyuki Idei proposed that Schulhoff and the two Playboy producers should be reorganized on the grounds that Kami Corporation's messing around, squandering, and causing huge losses to the company...

The two sides are at war with each other, either you will die or I will die...Sony's situation has become complicated.

…

But for pokeni, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The war between Nobuyuki Dei and Schulhoff was actually foreseen in the strategic plan formulated by Satoru Iwata.

The fact that Norio Ohga gave the position of president to a board member like Idei, which means that a war will inevitably break out between him and the board members.

Schulhoff is equivalent to Norio Ohga's touchstone for Idei, and Idei naturally knows this very well.

Therefore, long-term pain is worse than short-term pain. Instead of waiting until the future to fight, it is better to take advantage of the present to deal with the opponent in one go.

The war within Sony is like a bomb that detonates and brings about a series of chain effects.

The first is that Missoni North originally planned to acquire Marvel with an offer of up to US$400 million, but the board of directors rejected the proposal.

Nobuyuki Idei’s reason is also very simple. If you want to buy, it’s not time to buy now. You, Schulhoff, have made such a big mistake, and you don’t even look at what your financial reports look like, so you still want to buy?

The purchase of Columbia Pictures was already criticized, and now it is necessary to spend a lot of money to buy Marvel?

Just wipe your butt clean first.

…

Therefore, in the case of Sony's internal fighting, Marvel was also very crisis-conscious, proactively interrupted its acquisition plan with Sony, and quickly fell into the arms of pokeni.

In the end, under the mediation of Satoru Iwata, Pokeni successfully acquired Marvel for US$400 million.

When he saw the news, Qing Zhiyuan finally breathed a sigh of relief.

I checked the copyright and found that both Spider-Man and Iron Man are still there.

a!

The key is that not only pokeni wants to acquire Marvel, but Marvel is also in need of money due to its financial crisis, and it is a helpless move to be forced to acquire it.

As the current chairman and publisher of Marvel, Stan Lee actually hopes that his dream company is Sony rather than pokeni.

It was just a way of trying to make ends meet, and he also expressed extreme helplessness.

So when he held a press conference, the 66-year-old Stan Lee smiled bitterly the whole time, and the smile on his face was as ugly as possible.

However, Stan Lee also has some acting talent. When facing reporters' questions, he still tried his best to take care of pokeni's face.

“It’s a real pleasure to be able to cooperate with a company like pokeni, which has many talents and world-class technology.

I believe that with our joint efforts in the future, Marvel can do better. "

Taking care of pokeni’s face is taking care of Marvel’s face.

That is to take care of Stan Lee's face.

Iwata's speech was more conscientious, "Many people may be skeptical and controversial about Pokeni's acquisition of Marvel, but I think that from the perspective of corporate strategy, the acquisition of Marvel is undoubtedly A win-win choice.

For us, pokeni is the premier game maker in the world.

We can turn amazingly imaginative things that can only be seen in comics in the past into games that can be experienced, operated, and immersive.

For example, can you imagine being able to use Spider-Man to jump back and forth in the city in the game?

Can you imagine using Iron Man to fly in the sky in the game?

I believe everyone has had the same dream in their lives——

I dreamed of becoming a superhero.

Dream about saving the world.

For the neon teenagers, in our dreams, we are Astro Boy, we are the Super Saiyans in Dragon Ball, and we are Nobi Nobita with Doraemon.

For children in the United States, their dreams are Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, or the Hulk.

However, no matter who we are, no matter where we are, or what country we are citizens of, we all have the same truest and best wishes for mankind.

We all want to save the world and dedicate ourselves to world peace.

The same goes for gamers. We use games to transform the world, so that children’s dreams can be realized and continued in games...

Therefore, I believe that the cooperation between pokeni and Marvel must be the beginning of a beautiful dream.

I also believe that everyone will see this day in the future, when pokeni allows players’ dreams to be realized in it. "

At the press conference, Stan Lee sitting next to him was stunned after hearing Satoru Iwata's speech.

Iwata Satoru's words seemed to awaken some of the dreams and throbs buried deep in his heart.

What a great thing it is to be able to continue the dreams of children. How can we deny this just because the other party is a company that has never produced a decent well-known film and television company?

…

At the end of Satoru Iwata's speech, there was thunderous applause at the press conference.

The media reporters were encouraged by his words, but...

Is it really possible?

What will the combination of pokeni and Marvel look like in the future?

…

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There is another chapter tonight