Hollywood Hunter

Chapter 800.

Having been played a small trick on her by her own boss, Nancy Brill could only roll her eyes, thinking that such things, after all, involved too much for a man to really be honest with her, and all she could do was say, "Well, boss, let's get down to business."

Simon nodded, and did not continue to gag, once again looking down at the Diablo sales report in his hands, and said: "The first month sales of 2.1 million copies, this is a very stunning result, total sales of 10 million can be expected. However, as you must have noticed, of the 2.1 million, online sales accounted for 1.4 million, leaving only 700,000 for offline sales. So, what I'm saying is that Daenerys Entertainment can start its own online game store."

Nancy Brill stared again at the news, "Boss, I've asked you this question a million times, why did you agree to it today?"

"It used to be that the timing was wrong, and in the budding stage we needed to focus our resources on Igret so that we could maximize the development of our users' online consumption habits. Now that both the online environment and consumption habits have survived the initial growth period, even if we don't do it, other manufacturers are sure to emerge, and rather than that, we'd rather compete with ourselves."

Nancy chickened and nodded her head several times in succession, as if worried that Simon would backtrack, but then asked, "Have you discussed this with Ygritte's side, boss?"

"Sure."

Nancy remembered something and still didn't delve deeper around the topic, but couldn't help but ask, "Boss, does this mean that this antitrust investigation, um, you're going to take the initiative to split up Ygritte?"

Simon sized up Nancy's childish face across the room as he had in the beginning, "Don't you think you're being a little too curious?"

Nancy curled her lips, "Looks like I got it right."

"No, you guessed wrong," Simon shook his head, "Ygritte has such a strong advantage now, I'm not going to make any concessions."

Nancy trailed off, "Has anyone ever told you that you're a hypocrite, boss?"

"Well, that's what Jenny said about me the other day."

"......"

"Okay, no digressions," said Simon, changing back to the topic, "You have to understand, Nancy, this is not going to be easy. I'll give you two years to get this right, and for EA Mall, let's settle on this name, EA Mall, not only to publish only the self-produced games under Daenerys Entertainment, but also to bring in games from other manufacturers into our platform, and also, I don't want to see malicious price competition between your side and Ygritte's Game Mall, because it will not only affect the interests of both companies, but even It will damage the entire game industry at its very foundation."

Nancy trailed off, "Boss, you're giving me a hard time, then."

Simon ignored the small female executive's bitter look and said, "Daenerys has an advantage, too, doesn't she, with the online battle platforms from the Dune series onwards, a technology that isn't available over at Ygritte."

The online battling platform, in fact, is a reference to exactly the Battle.net system that Blizzard launched in 1997 from memory.

This time, however, Ygritte has been releasing games from the Dune series since a few years back, and after acquiring Blizzard's former Silicon & Neural Key Studios, two Warcraft titles, Warcraft and Diablo, which was released last month, have direct access to online battle platforms.

In fact, Simon initially hoped to develop a full-fledged online game, but the last few years' attempts have been less successful, if you don't count the two phenomenal casual games, Happy Farm and Happy Ranch, which were launched on the Ygritte platform, and the online battle platform, instead, has become increasingly popular with users.

It has evolved to the point where not only real-time strategy games like the Dune series and the Warcraft series, but also sports games, which EA was already best at previously, and some role-playing games, have launched online networking modes.

This is one of the most advantageous technologies for Danielle's Entertainment's gaming business.

Nancy, of course, understands where the strengths of her own gaming department lie, and sniffed, "So, boss, how about this: can we just transform our online battling platform client into the EA Mall, instead of using the web mode of the Internet Explorer ecology?"

The Internet Explorer ecosystem is arguably fundamental to Ygritte's monopoly on Internet interfaces.

Over the years, Ygritte has gone toe-to-toe with many tech companies to ensure the uniqueness of the Internet Explorer interface and the Internet Explorer ecosystem.

Nancy says the words and basically doesn't get her hopes up.

Yet again, to her surprise, Simon just nodded, "That's a great idea, but the website is still open."

Nancy was slightly stunned and couldn't help but say, "Boss, have you ...... been stimulated in any way lately?"

Simon shook his head with a calm face, "No, but the women do get a little too much and the bed is too tiring."

"......"

"Okay what's the problem?"

"Lots of questions."

"Then don't ask," Simon decisively refused, saying, "In short, your goal is to have the EA Mall up and running within two years, and you need to attract outside customers in addition to Daenerys Entertainment's own games. Ygritte's side will provide us with the necessary technology and licenses such as the Ypay payment interface, and my request is simple: competition with Ygritte is definitely needed, but not vicious competition, and you need to target other online game marketplaces outside of ours."

Nancy nodded earnestly, taking note.

Simon looked at the memo beside him and added, "And, next, continue to expand your acquisition efforts and initiate acquisitions of any studios that have potential."

Nancy Benton disagreed again, "Boss, there's no need for that, as a film director, you must know that it's rare enough for a creator to create one or two classics, it's impossible to stay forever, in fact, it's even more so for game studios."

"You can change the acquisition model appropriately, but the strategy of expanding your acquisition efforts remains the same," Simon insisted, "Nancy, I'm certainly aware of the problem you're talking about, but the target of our acquisition is not those teams at all, it's game ideas."

"Boss, I seem to remember you saying before that ideas are the cheapest."

"Of course ideas are cheap, the problem is that this thing of turning ideas into games is not cheap, and the odds of turning ideas into hit games are even less. Nancy, games at this stage are still predominantly 2D, but you've certainly noticed the growing trend towards 3D games, and when you think about the cost of animation at Pixar compared to 2D, you can see that the cost of making 3D games will increase rapidly in the future. By then, it will be very expensive to turn ideas into games. The most guaranteed strategy is to make sequels. Unlike movies, which are often hard to break out of the trilogy curse because of actors and other factors, games can be made all the time, and it's not impossible for a series to be the tenth or even the twentieth, like Japan's "Super Mario". So, now is the last time for us to collect hot ideas at relatively low prices, or should we not call them ideas, but IntellectualProperty, IP, like the various types of rights that Daenerys Entertainment owns, so you get the picture?"

Nancy stopped arguing and nodded, "Understood."

"That's the first thing," Simon looked down at his memo again, looked up again, and said, "The second thing, regarding Blockbuster, no surprise, Sony and Toshiba will be officially launching DVD players by the end of the year, Blockbuster's online operation has been very successful in recent years, but with the With the advent of the DVD era, Blockbuster's online operation strategy needs to change if it doesn't want to be eliminated."

"Boss, I've also noticed this problem, but the advent of DVDs will definitely drive the proliferation of piracy more easily than video tapes."

Simon remembered that the VCD industry over there in China was actually based on the piracy chain, and of course had a deeper understanding than Nancy, and said, "It's inevitable, but just like with video tapes back then, there were some people who initially questioned the possibility of video tapes causing piracy to proliferate, with the result that video tapes have now more than doubled the size of the Hollywood film industry. As for DVDs, the same goes for DVDs, and we cannot afford to make the mistake of the record industry's determined resistance to the Internet in recent years, so we need to proactively embrace and even control this trend."

"In that case, boss, what's Blockbuster to do?"

"It's simple, increase the layout of the online business, increase the construction of the Parkview logistics system, and the ultimate goal is to abandon the physical storefronts and achieve a fully networked operation."

Nancy inexplicably felt a little breathless: "Boss, isn't that too aggressive?"

"You can run some tests right now," Simon said, without answering directly, "on the DVD mailing test, unlike Blockbuster's current semi-online model of ordering online and having to go to a designated store to collect the tapes, this time you can do it in one step, directly to the user's home, and again Recycling through the mail. You know, the cost of mailing DVD discs is more than enough to support this operating model compared to videotapes."

"But, boss, Blockbuster's current business model, I think, is excellent enough, or Blockbuster wouldn't have a current market cap of $37 billion."

"If we don't eliminate ourselves, Nancy, we'll just end up being eliminated by someone else."

The small female executive who has always been in a strong female state finally showed some struggle in her expression: "This, it's very painful."

Simon was serious: "A little pain up front, but it'll be comfortable later."

Nancy blushed and glared at Simon, "Boss, you're going to get sued for harassment sooner or later if you look like this."

"Are you going to sue?"

Nancy paused, then nodded intimidatingly and vigorously, "Yeah."

"Well, no kidding," Simon continued, "The fact is that DVD and even the HD DVD they are working on at Sony is still just an overkill. The ultimate form of Blockbuster should be streaming. Completely ditching the physical model of video tapes and DVDs and streaming purely over the internet, so someday in the future, according to you, Blockbuster will have to suffer again if it doesn't want to be eliminated."

Nancy didn't go along with the drive this time, but said, "In that case, boss, should we buy out Blockbuster in its entirety."

"The stock price is a little too high for that right now."

"I understand, but what I mean is, start preparing now for the next internet bubble to burst."

The former Blockbuster was rapidly declining with the advent of the Internet era.

This time, the market capitalization was as high as $37 billion precisely because the successful semi-online model fit into the new technology concept that was currently the most sought-after in the capital market. However, Daenerys Entertainment's stake in Blockbuster has now fallen from an initial 35% to 28% due to a number of acquisitions and equity incentives over the years.

Although as the largest shareholder, Danielle Entertainment still maintained strong control over Blockbuster, it didn't even have absolute control after all. Since her own boss placed so much importance on this company, Nancy felt that buying it all and holding it completely in her hands was undoubtedly the best choice.

Simon considered for a moment and said, "Now that we have been frequently questioned about the monopoly as the largest shareholder of Blockbuster, next, if there is a chance, just buy more shares to achieve 51% absolute control, which is much less resistance than eating it completely."

Nancy mulled that over and found that to be true, and nodded in agreement.

They chatted about a few more details until lunchtime, when they finished their morning's work.

There was actually some music business.

As one of the two presidents of the Daenerys Entertainment Group under Amy Pascal, after a number of adjustments, Nancy was now primarily responsible for the three main divisions of gaming, music and home entertainment. By the way, if you want to seek a breakthrough for the next continued growth of Daenerys Entertainment, these three businesses are exactly a good direction.

Of course, there's actually the cable business that another president, Robert Iger, is in charge of.

All in all, in addition to the core movies, Daenerys Entertainment's TV, games, music and other aspects of the business still have a lot of potential to explore.

Especially games.

This is the most important thing that Simon has been very concerned about, after all, when this part is done well, according to the saying, but more profitable than drug trafficking, and, the most important point, the volume of the game industry is no less than the film, which is actually the reason why Simon suddenly relaxed and decided that Daenerys Entertainment can build its own online game mall to compete with Ygritte.

The plate was big enough to accommodate two top online publishers more than enough.

It would also boost competition.

Simon had always placed a lot of importance on maintaining competition, born out of misfortune and death, and any industry that lacked competition, not to mention the grandiose reasons of affecting the consumer experience and such, but the industry itself, would definitely stagnate.

And then there's the music side.

In recent years, because of the rise of the internet, the record industry has been crashing almost as fast as it has been falling, especially after the launch, and the decline has been even more rapid.

Simon, of course, is well aware that the record industry is the foundation of hardware products.

However, because of the record industry's stubbornly resistant attitude, for a short period of time, Simon's attitude was to let the industry decline on its own, even if it consequently hit Denise Entertainment's own music business hard, until the major record giants took the initiative to make the compromise and cooperation it deserved. The acquisition would also allow Daenerys Entertainment to further expand its record business.