Video Game Empire

"Hyde, the accumulated capital I have invested in AOL has exceeded 300 million U.S. dollars. You want to fully acquire it for 200 million U.S. dollars. This is impossible, not to mention that this is not a problem that you can negotiate by raising the price."

Li Xuan saw that Hedwalker wanted to interject, and waved to him to signal that he had finished, "My expectations for the future of AOL are far beyond the imagination of you and the rest of the company's management. In my opinion, the next ten years will be A great transition period for the world to transform into the information age.○

The meaning of the Internet to human beings is like the steam engine 150 years ago, like the electric light bulb 100 years ago, it will once again bring earth-shaking changes to the entire human race. The future of America Online will be one, with a market value exceeding 10 billion. Even a giant company with hundreds of billions of dollars, what price do you think the company has to pay now to persuade me to sell aol company?"

Li Xuan had a faint smile on his face, but Walker's company offered $200 million, which was very sincere to AOL.

In fact, even if the price is 200 million US dollars. There have been many controversies within the company. After all, AOL has been losing money since its inception, and no one knows how much more money it needs to put in. Walker also uses AOL as the nation's largest online Internet service company, with more than 2 million users. Only barely suppressed the voice of opposition.

Since the company has invested heavily in laying optical cables in the United States, it is natural to maximize profits. If the local business is the company's present, then the Internet service is the company's future. Because of the large-scale infrastructure investment in the past two years, the company's financial statements are not good-looking. At this time, Walker needs the gimmick of the Internet to increase the imagination of shareholders for the future.

"Hyde, this is an online portal jointly established by Hong Kong Telecom and Hong Kong ATV Media Group. Not long ago," Li Xuan received Hedwalker in his study room. . The screen is aimed at the guest sitting opposite.

Walker didn't understand what the boss meant, but he still focused his attention on the website in front of him. Although Walker can't read the Chinese characters on the screen, its layout is somewhat similar to aol's homepage. And Li Xuan's subsequent explanation. It also confirmed his conjecture.

"This is a comprehensive information website that provides real-time online updates of all kinds of important news in Hong Kong and the world. To a certain extent, it is somewhat similar to the news service provided by AOL. The biggest difference between the two is that this The Voice of Asia website is completely free and earns revenue through advertisements on the page"

Li Xuan continued to explain in detail, "aol has defined itself as a network access service provider in the past few years. In the eyes of outsiders, aol has specially developed a content in order to attract users to use its own network services. An all-encompassing virtual community that provides users with online chat, news, games and other content

But aol itself is not a basic telecom operator. He needs to rent a telecommunications network like a division. Therefore, if a basic operator like your company is also directly terminated, then third-party companies such as aol will naturally be at a natural disadvantage in terms of cost.

I'm sure you must be aware of this as well. Only hope that through the acquisition of aol company in one step, eliminating the need to start from scratch a specialized network service subsidiary From this point of view, the merger of aol is a good thing for mutual benefit and win-win.

However, I never thought of positioning aol as a provider of network access services. This is only a last resort in the early days of Internet development in the United States, with few users. The penetration rate of computers in Hong Kong is far less than that in the United States, and many households cannot afford such expensive appliances. However, due to its small size, Hong Kong is ahead of the United States in basic network construction, and the speed of Internet development brought by this has also surpassed that of the United States.

For example, the Voice of Asia website has an average daily click volume of more than 5 million times, which is equivalent to every Hong Kong person visiting this website once a day. The advertising effect brought by this website is enough to make countless businesses coveted

AOL is still adopting the model of charging users a monthly service fee, while the Voice of Asia has created a new business model that uses free content to attract page views, and then discounts these traffic through advertising fees. I think Hong Kong's Today, the global Internet will be tomorrow, and free will make the Internet an incomparably vast and open world

With the continuous improvement of the network communication facilities in the United States, the voice of Hong Kong model is the direction of AOL's next transformation. It will strive to become a great Internet content provider and AOL is now mainly engaged in network access services. can be sold to

Because this is what basic communication operators should do, but you didn't look down on this bit of mosquito leg meat before, but now if the company can add 2 million network users all at once, and become the largest network service operator in the United States, it will be very important to the company. It is an excellent opportunity to boost shareholder confidence.”

Li Xuan said a lot, which made Walker's eyes brighter and brighter. However, he is also a little puzzled. If AOL sells this part of the network service business, then it will basically only be an empty shelf, and what is the difference between being acquired by the company.

However, Li Xuan's next words quickly cleared his confusion: "Of course, what AOL sells is actually the data of its 2 million online users. The aol community, which was originally a value-added service to attract users to the Internet, will be transformed into Free and open"

Another time and space. AOL's model of providing basic Internet services with a monthly fee has obvious advantages in the early stage of development when Internet content is scarce. So the peak of aol company is actually in the 1990s. The turn-of-the-century merger with Time Warner, in particular, maxed out AOL's bubble. Since then, it has been stagnant. After the burst of the Internet bubble, the market value has dropped to only a fraction of the peak period. And AOL is no longer the star company that dominated the US Internet industry in the early 1990s.

Therefore, Li Xuan plans to adopt the model of Yahoo's traffic to monetize advertising fees in advance. The reason why Yahoo in later generations has become a second-rate company is actually due to his own decision-making mistakes. At least its traffic turned into advertising fees, allowing it to successfully achieve profitability during the ice age when the Internet bubble burst. Its failure stemmed from missing out on the search business on which it was built. This allowed Google to succeed.

Because of the butterfly wings fanned by Li Xuan, the 9-year American Internet is actually similar to 992 in another time and space. Internet surfing has become a fashionable hot topic in the whole society, and the technical and political preparations for the Internet's take-off are all ready. For example, graphic browsers have appeared, and half a foot and the next president of the United States stepping into the White House vigorously advocate.

AOL's network services business is worth at least $500 million. If AOL sells the related business to the company, the huge cash income is enough to make it take three or four years. You must know the reason why aol company has suffered large-scale losses in recent years. The main reason is that the cost of developing a new user is much higher than the monthly service fee charged to the user.

In fact, AOL is relying on Li Xuan's style of local tyrants who are not bad money and can afford to lose money. As a result, it only took four years to accumulate 2 million users and become the largest network service company in the United States.

If you only count the investment in aol company in the past few years, Li Xuan sold the main business with 500 million US dollars, and this transaction will lose at least 100 million yuan. But Li Xuan spent billions of dollars to accelerate the growth of the Internet industry in the United States, and established the aol community as the largest online access address in the United States, laying a good foundation for the next transformation into a portal website. These potential benefits allow Li Xuan to reap billions or even tens of billions of dollars in return in the future. So he doesn't really lose at all. .

What's more, Li Xuan still has a big killer in his hand, and now it is on every computer that uses Dongfang system software. A graphical browser is preinstalled. Next, the default home page of the graphical browser will be set to the home page of the aol website. If AOL has such an advantage in the right time and place, it can't become a big player in the Internet age, then Li Xuan simply finds a piece of tofu and kills him.

Hedwalker came to Hong Kong for inspection on behalf of the company. In addition to having a sincere talk with the boss behind the scenes, there are naturally many other business affairs. For example, the company and Hong Kong Telecom are both basic telecom operators, and the two companies can learn a lot from each other. Hong Kong Telecom is naturally far inferior to the company in terms of scale. However, his experience in emerging fields such as mobile communications and the Internet is worth learning from.

Headwalker nominally negotiated with Huaxing on the establishment of a pilot CD network in the United States. The main point of difference between the two parties is that Huaxing hopes to build four test sites in one go, namely Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast, and New York and Washington on the east coast.

And the company's layout in the mobile communication business is mainly located in the West Coast and southwestern states, and the layout has just begun on the East Coast. Therefore, if we build test sites in New York and Washington, the company will not be able to leverage the existing foundation. Everything has to be started from scratch, and the investment will be much larger.

New York is the economic center of the United States, and Washington is the political center of the United States. These two places are the battlegrounds for Huaxing to promote the CD network in the United States. If the CD network can succeed in these two places, it will undoubtedly be of great help to its subsequent official recognition in the United States.

After Huaxing Company agreed to make concessions and increase the proportion of investment in the pilot cost of building the CD network, Hedwalker's representative company signed a cooperation intention agreement.

During his next inspection trip in Hong Kong, he discovered a unique industry in Hong Kong. Of course, this industry is no more familiar to Chinese netizens in the market outlook than Internet cafes. That's right, there are Internet cafes on the streets of Hong Kong for 9 years.

In fact, Hong Kong today and the mainland in the late 1990s really have a lot in common. For example, after decades of economic development, although there has been great development, it has not yet achieved the level of prosperity for everyone. Compared with ordinary households, the price of computers is still an expensive luxury.

Many families can't afford a computer, but the computer has become a fashionable thing, so the model of using its time-sharing rental soon appeared. The Internet cafes now appearing on the streets of Hong Kong are actually more like the computer rooms that appeared in China in the late 1990s.

Because most of the computers inside are not connected to the Internet, most players use them to play games. It's just that Chinese netizens in the late 1990s played games like Red Alert, StarCraft, and Warcraft. And now they are playing the Lord of the Rings, a single-player game that was just released by Dongfang Games not long ago.

This stand-alone rpg game, adapted from Tolkien's novel of the same name, was finally released after a long-awaited release, instantly conquering computer game fans around the world. To say that the level of this Lord of the Rings rpg stand-alone game~www.readwn.com~ is similar to that of another time and space Daewoo company released in 995.

But for 9-year-old game fans, this is an epoch-making excellent work. Of course, because the game is too delicate, the configuration requirements for the host are also quite high, and it needs the latest abc6 computer to run.

The price of abc6 computer in Hong Kong is as high as 30,000 to 40,000 Hong Kong dollars. Many players who can't afford it, or who already have an old computer at home and are reluctant to replace it, naturally all flock to Internet cafes to see the world's best computer game.

According to a statistic made by Dongfang Commercial not long ago, the number of newly opened Internet cafes and computer rooms in Hong Kong has increased to 22, and the total number of abc6 units purchased has reached 2,000. It accounts for one third of the total sales volume in Hong Kong since the listing of abc6. In the future, new Internet cafes will continue to be opened. When this market reaches saturation, it will at least bring 10,000 units of abc6 sales to Aikang.

In the United States, Europe and other regions, there are no Internet cafes similar to Hong Kong yet, but the increase in the sales of abc6 after the launch of the Lord of the Rings game should not be underestimated. It can be said that Li Xuan's idea of ​​using high-end games to drive computer configuration upgrades has achieved obvious results.

Of course, Walker is concerned with the computers in the Internet cafes that can connect to the Internet, and these computers are also not allowed to be idle for a moment. And these computers are more colorful, or chatting with friends in the city who have not met for a long time in the virtual community. Or post some of your own comments, essays, travel notes on your personal homepage. Or browse the world news just updated a few seconds ago on VOA