Super Tycoon

Trip Hawkins, the CEO of 3DOS, the former CEO of EA, and one of the founders, still retains a lot of shares in EA.

Before that, EA only made games, which was inconsistent with his philosophy. He believes that making game consoles should make more money, like Nintendo.

So he personally lobbied many big companies, and finally established 3DO. Unfortunately, the first generation of products hit the street. Although the global sales volume of 3DO has reached 20 million units, it is produced by many brands together, the most important of which is Songxia 3DO, and the sales volume is less than 10 million units.

Compared with Sega's Saturn, it seems to be much stronger, but in fact it is still in a loss.

The main reason is that at the beginning of making money, some shareholders will pay dividends, and the follow-up company has no funds to develop at all. Coupled with another problem with the company's business philosophy, Song Xia and others thought it should be a second-generation 3DO, which truly has 3D functions. The company led by EA believes that it should specialize in games and give up hardware.

Tripp hesitated for a long time, and had to admit that 3DO had failed, so he disbanded the hardware department, sold off the hardware assets, and Songxia also withdrew.

Now the company's main revenue is from selling games, and some previous patent licensing fees. It seems that the company is not bad. According to the market value, it still has about 200 million US dollars, so it is not considered a small company.

However, the company's debt is extremely high, the debt ratio exceeds the baseline of 70%, and its ability to resist risks is extremely low. If you are not careful, you may become insolvent.

After discussing with other directors of the company, Tripp decided that some powerful companies should be selected for merger. After thinking for a long time, everyone voted to try with Blizzard first.

Originally, they could have a better choice, such as merging with EA, but EA disagreed and only accepted 3DOS to be merged into EA, that is, it was acquired and the brand was directly abandoned.

This makes other shareholders unhappy, and it is impossible to end up cheaping your EA. As a shareholder of EA, Tripp couldn't say much, so he could only agree to try with Blizzard.

But now who doesn't know that Blizzard's major shareholder is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhiduoxing Group? But after contacting for a while, the president of Zhiduoxing Group actually came.

In a member club in New York, Trip Hawkins met Zhang Yang.

Although he looks very young, it can be seen from Blizzard's Allen's posture that he is one step behind, it is not fake.

"Mr. Hawkins, hello, I'm Yang Zhang."

"Mr. Zhang, please sit down. I take the liberty to invite you here to talk about our cooperation. Can I ask a question first?"

Zhang Yang sat on the sofa and raised his legs: "Excuse me."

"When will your company's new generation of game consoles be developed? Is the 3D function comparable to that of Uranus?"

The secretary Xiao Wang was immediately unhappy. What do you mean by that? Doubting the research and development capabilities of our Zhiduoxing? We have launched a new generation of game consoles, how can there be no 3D function?

Besides, we will launch it later, of course the performance is stronger than that of Uranus, you are looking down on people.

Seemingly seeing the displeasure of Zhang Yang and his party, Trip Hawkins explained: "Because our company is developing 3D games now, this is also the trend in the future, and 2D will gradually be eliminated."

"So if your company's new game console does not have 3D capabilities, we may have to renegotiate our cooperation."

"Yes." After Zhang Yang answered, he asked again: "So is there any game that your company is currently developing? I am referring to some masterpieces of games, not those shoddy games."

Also in game development, Nintendo invested 40 million U.S. dollars for Super Mario 64, which also made this game a hit. At present, it has sold nearly 10 million copies, and it has already earned back.

Let alone 40 million U.S. dollars for ordinary companies, the development cost of a game is not even 4 million U.S. dollars, and many are only 400,000 U.S. dollars. Can the effect be the same?

It's no wonder that Nintendo often has some masterpieces of games,

The ratings and sales are very high, so I am willing to spend money.

"Our sequels of Might and Magic and Heroes are under development. These are very popular series of games, and they will definitely live up to expectations. If your company joins 3DOS, with our cooperation, we will definitely be able to take off together like Namco and Sunny. "

Zhang Yang curled his lips. Namco not only cooperates with Suni, but also cooperates with Nintendo. Even Zhiduoxing has bought some games, and Sega Bandai also has them. This is an independent game production company, and it is also the top in the world. It is best at The most important thing is the game on the home console.

3DOS self than Nangong Meng? Where's the face from?

Zhi Duoxing is of course stronger than Suini, so this means that after the cooperation, Zhi Duoxing will decline?

This Tripp is not very good at talking.

"As far as I know, your Might and Magic and Heroes are not 3D. Are you going to develop real 3D now? Besides these, do you have anything else?"

"There are still some under development, all of which are commercial secrets. After Mr. Zhang joins the company, he will naturally know about them."

It sounds so good, if you can't explain it, just talk about commercial secrets. If he remembered correctly, the 3DOS in his previous life would be finished within a few years, and there were only a few games that could be remembered, and the rest were just street goods.

"Your company's debt is very high, how to solve this problem?"

"There is no need to worry about this. Our shareholders are all big companies, each of which is strong. If Zhiduoxing takes a stake, we can also reduce the debt ratio and allow the company to develop in a healthy way."

Tripp Hawkins' heart skipped a beat. The company's debt ratio is a problem. It was because of this that it failed to attract investment before. Is it the same this time?

"However, we hope that your company can complete the new generation of game consoles as soon as possible, otherwise there is no need for us to cooperate." Tripp decided to put on a high profile to show that the company has no operational difficulties at all.

Hearing what Tripp said, Zhang Yang finally couldn't help laughing: "Since your company has this attitude, we have to think about what I want to cooperate with. Alan, Xiao Wang, let's go."

Zhang Yang got up directly, there was no need to continue the conversation, this was just to get their Zhi Duoxing involved. What a company with such a high debt ratio, and so many conditions, who is used to your troubles?

"Our 3DOS company has to think about it again. Maybe it is more appropriate to cooperate with Nintendo and Sega Bandai."

Tripp also thinks that Zhiduoxing is not suitable for cooperation, and they don't even have 3D game consoles. If they developed 3DO with all their heart, the second generation of 3D game consoles would have been on the market long ago. I really don’t know how Zhiduoxing became the number one in the industry.

The negotiation broke up unhappy. After Zhang Yang and the others left, they met Joe, the person in charge of NWC under 3DOS Company, in another place.