Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Chapter 96 Bushnell

As the saying goes, fertility does not flow to outsiders’ fields. After the number of Philosophers exceeded 100 employees, Tang Huan asked Tang Wenmao to open a Chinese restaurant nearby to provide catering services for the company.

Tang Huan, the boss, not only satisfies his appetite, but also serves as a good example. Zheru’s employees are more and more like Chinese food.

The place to dine with Bushnell is arranged in Tang Huan’s office. The exquisite four meats and four vegetables, plus a soup, are prepared in accordance with the custom of Chinese food. Although there are many tricks, the amount of each dish is not large. , While ensuring that two people enjoy it, it is not too wasteful.

The food waste problem of the world’s number one power has always been serious. There is no need to learn from this bad habit.

The bearded Bushnell was very free and easy. After sitting opposite Tang Huan, he took a sip of the appetizer soup made from tomatoes.

Tang Huan looked at each other with a smile, and he could see that Bushnell lived a very selfish life.

It’s no wonder that this person is only thirty-six years old this year. He has already relied on his own entrepreneurship to turn from an ordinary person to a rich man. He has tried the psychedelic hippie lifestyle, and he also has the experience of holding power. It seems Even the wife has been upgraded. It can be said that this life is rich enough and naturally has the capital to be free and easy.

“I heard that you have been away from Atari for a while, where are you currently making your fortune?” Tang Huan asked inquisitively and said the opening.

“Now I am in charge of Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza-Time Theaters, which combines fast food, games and entertainment.”

Speaking of this, Bushnell showed a sad look on his face, “When he left Atari last November, he signed a seven-year non-competition agreement with Warner. Otherwise, huh, I have to, huh…”

Tang Huan uttered an unmoving expression, feeling lost in his heart. It seems that his first choice is no longer working. In the next few years, Bushnell will not be able to engage in a business that competes with Atari.

This is not surprising. How could the managers of Warner leave hidden dangers for Atari, which they bought at a high price, and their business methods should be so old-fashioned.

As the third long-established film company in the United States, Warner, which has changed hands several times, has expanded its business scope. It has long been no longer limited to its old business. It is a testament to its involvement in the field of electronic game consoles.

In 1966, Jack Warner sold his shares in Warner Pictures and Warner Records to SevenArtsProductions for $32 million. This is a company created by Elliot Hyman in Canada, namely Elliot Hyman and hHyman. Kenneth Hyman, a company owned by the brothers.

Since then, Warner Corporation changed its name to Warner Bros. Seven Arts Films, and Jack Warner remained as the company’s president.

Two years later, the Heyman Brothers sold the shares of Warner Corporation they held to pany, the Kinney National Corporation, for $64 million.

Ted Ashley, namely Ted Ashley, was the main messenger who prompted Steve Rose, president of Kinney National Corporation, to buy Warner Bros., and after the successful transaction, he took the position of the new president of Warner Corporation, and then changed the company name. Back to Warner Bros. Pictures.

Faced with these successive transactions, Jack Warner was frustrated and decided to retire, becoming the last one of the four founders, the Warner brothers, to leave.

Although the number of movie audiences is declining, the new owners of Warner Corporation still believe in the box office appeal of stars, so they signed contracts with many box office stars at the time.

In addition, in 1969, Warner Corporation bought DC Comics and produced a series of blockbuster movies such as “Superman” and “Batman”. Box office stars and the above-mentioned movies adapted from comics made Warner in the 1970s lucrative.

Not long after the purchase of Warner Corporation, Kinney National Corporation changed its name to Munications or Warner Communications Corporation.

It was this company that expanded its business scope and included Atari in the bag, and later bought Six Flags theme park.

Following the historical trajectory, by the end of the 1980s, the star-oriented Warner Communications merged with the investment-friendly Time Company to become the more famous Time Warner Company.

In 2000, Time Warner bought AOL, whose stock price was soaring in the dot-com bubble, with the courage to fear death, and changed its name to AOL-Time Warner.

The Atari faced by Tang Huan hides these old foxes who are well versed in capital operations. Bushnell is so docile and docile by others, it is normal.

However, Tang Huan believes that Bushnell will resign from Atari and leave the company he founded. Warner must pay a generous compensation accordingly.

Of course, this is a personal privacy issue, and Tang Huan is not interested in asking about it.

Although it is impossible to take Bushnell into account, but seeing him unwilling, Tang Huan decided to take advantage of the situation and increase the suspicion between Bushnell and Warner, lest the two sides come together again in the future. go with.

So, Tang Huan asked sympathetically: “When you sold Atari to Warner, didn’t you agree on a power distribution structure?”

“Of course there is an agreement. Long-term hiring of me and other employees is one of the conditions. In addition, I negotiated a fairly favorable bonus plan and got a guarantee. After Atari was acquired, I will be in the product Have autonomy on the line issue.”

Bushnell shrugged helplessly, “But the promises of those capitalists, you know, turned out to be **** in the end.”

Tang Huan sighed regretfully, “To tell you the truth, I took the liberty to invite my man today because I wanted you, a pioneer in the video game industry, to help me run the Xiaobawang game console. By the way, I can prove that since you can create Atari, then you can also defeat Atari. But you have reached a non-competitive agreement with Warner, so you can only give up.”

“Since the Atari can be created, it can also be defeated.” Bushnell chanted a few times with excitement, then slapped his thigh sullenly, “Ah, what you said is what I want to do, but My current scope of work has been limited by Warner. What can I do, those **** capitalists.”

Tang Huan smiled secretly in his heart. At present, you and I are both bosses and belong to the capitalist category. I don’t know who you really want to scold, man.

“However, even if I can’t go out in person, you can defeat Atari, it’s just a matter of time.” Bushnell said in a statement.

“Why do you say that?” Tang Huan put on a posture of listening respectfully.

“Ray Casal, a businessman selling shirts, has carried out a personnel cleaning after he took office. The outstanding technical strength I have accumulated has been quickly weakened, and many people have left.” Bushnell said to himself. His successor looked disdainful.

Although it feels normal for Casal to adjust personnel after taking office, Tang Huan naturally needs a full set of plays, and he echoes, “That is really self-defeating. In this way, the company’s creativity is bound to be affected.”

“Tang, although we met for the first time, it was a bosom friend, and I think so.” Bushnell showed an expression of acquaintance hate late on his face, “After a few of the best programmers left Atari, this year Activision was established in early October, and most of Atari’s organization and work were nearly collapsed.”

Looking at the gloating look on Bushnell’s face, Tang Huan suddenly realized that Activision is not the famous Activision company. In the original time and space of 2008, Activision merged with Vivendi Games to form a new “Activision Blizzard” company, making Blizzard Entertainment its subsidiary.

The creators of Activision are Jim Levy, the music industry’s Jim Levy, and Atari’s four top programmers David Crane, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, Alan Miller, BobWhitehead is Bob Whitehead.

It can be said that Activision, as the first third-party game publisher, was born out of Atari.

Because of this deep relationship, the first product released by Activision was a game cassette used on the Atari 2600 game console.

Because of complex conflicts of interest, Atari sued Activision, and finally lost. Other manufacturers took the opportunity to land on the Atari 2600 platform and developed a large number of games of varying quality. Grab food.

In the past life, Atari’s collapse was greatly related to the loss of control over its own hardware platform. It was unable to eliminate all kinds of inferior games that caused user dissatisfaction. Nintendo learned its lesson and created a strict margin system. , Thereby maintaining the orderly and long-term development of the game machine.

“Although those people are the core technical force, I am afraid you have more than that.” Tang Huan complimented.

“It’s true.” Bushnell nodded triumphantly, “But what’s the use? Crane doesn’t care about the subsequent upgrade of the Atari 2600.”

Speaking of this, Bushnell chuckled, “The actual game performance of the Cassidy game console is so good, I bought a few when I was curious, took a look at it, and found that it beats the Atari 2600 in terms of hardware specifications. When I developed the Atari 2600, the memory was still relatively expensive, so it was only equipped with 128 bytes, which is far from being a little overlord.”

As soon as the conversation changed, Bushnell scolded angrily: “Casal, a short-sighted guy, doesn’t understand the current level of development of the semiconductor industry at all. He has not improved the Atari 2600 for a long time, and defeat is inevitable. The result is Moreover, the game console competitors on the market are not the only ones from Xiaobawang. The more recent the product, the better the performance.”

“According to you, I can rest assured.”

Tang Huan laughed, but there was no joy in his eyes.

These words of Bushnell are only one-sided words. The current game console market has just taken shape, and there is a mess, and conventional theories cannot be applied.

Therefore, the popularity of the product may not be insured solely by the technological gap.

Isn’t Microsoft’s DOS just an example in the past life? Although it is behind, it still makes a lot of money.

It would be naive to believe Bushnell’s mouthpiece.

However, the other party has let himself know a lot about the current situation of Atari, which is not without gain.

One of Tang Huan’s strengths is to talk to people when he meets people, talk nonsense to people, and deal with all kinds of people.

Bushnell was satisfied with the hospitality. When he parted, he put on Tang Huan’s shoulder and said: “When you have time, go to my ChuckE.Cheese’sPizza-Time Theaters for a visit. It is very interesting.”

“We will definitely visit then.” Tang Huan agreed, and personally put Bushnell in the car and watched him leave.

When Tang Huan walked back from the side of the road, he happened to meet Tripp Hawkins again.

“It seems that God’s will is like this, and EA must be born in his own hands.” Tang Huan’s eyes flashed and he thought to himself.