"Mr. Wang, what do you think is the point of playing games?" Du Wenqiang asked with a smile.

"Meaning? I think games can change people, bring happiness, and make people live a kind of spiritual pleasure!" Wang Shi frowned and replied.

If it had been before he came to Hong Kong this time, he didn't think there was any point in discussing this issue at all. One of the most common words that comes to mind when playing a game is plaything. But now, when he found out that the game industry in Hong Kong is a huge industry that can create tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars every year, he no longer dares to take it lightly.

"Mr. Wang, you said it very well, in my opinion, games are the same as books, movies, comics and other artistic carriers, which can bring players a sensory and spiritual experience.

This experience can be the anxiety of being stuck in a certain level and not being able to break through, the joy of successfully clearing a level, the excitement of meeting a close game opponent, or the frustration of losing a game!

If books are one-dimensional and movies are two-dimensional, then games are three-dimensional. The language of words is abstract, and we need to develop our own fantasies. Although the movie has a rich story picture, it is already fixed after it is filmed.

The biggest difference between games and these art forms is that they can carry out in-depth interaction, allowing us to have a deeper sense of substitution, so as to obtain greater pleasure!" Du Wenqiang suddenly stretched the game to the level of high art.

Of course, this nonsense is not really much use, and the reason why the Eastern Bloc values the game industry is because it can bring a steady stream of huge profits. It's like film is also art, but Li Xuan's Asia Pictures has never made commercial films. I will not invest in literary films that have profound humanistic connotations and can enlighten social thoughts.

So Du Wenqiang pretended to be forced in a high style. The core issue is still the promotion of arcade games in the mainland. Previously, because of his negligence in the mainland market, he was severely reprimanded by Li Xuan.

"Mr. Du. See if you can lower the price of the game motherboard a little further, a "King of Fighters 2" arcade board costs 8000 Hong Kong dollars, which is still too high for the domestic consumption level!" Wang Shi is also ready to try his best to fight for the price, Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company is not ready to import the whole machine, but is ready to import the arcade motherboard to assemble the arcade machine by itself.

"Mr. Wang, this price can no longer be reduced, we can't break the global price system formulated by the company because of this part of the domestic market! Most of them are old-generation arcade machines with 6502 processors as the motherboard.

Because the 6502 processor is only an 8-bit chip, its own computing performance is very limited. Therefore, there is a big performance gap between this first-generation arcade machine and the second- and third-generation arcade machines we use now with ERM series processors as the core!

The three arcade machines we recommend to your company this time, "The King of Fighters", "1942" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", are our best-selling products in the Asian market! Although its price is much more expensive than the first generation of arcade machines, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and the playability of these arcade machines is also far better than that of the first generation of arcade machines!

According to our evaluation predictions, if your company imports arcade motherboards for The King of Fighters 2. Then assemble it into a game console in China, and the total cost of the entire arcade machine should be around 5,000 yuan. Then after the distribution of one or two levels of distributors, it should finally reach the hands of the game hall owner at about 7,000 yuan!

In fact, the current situation of the arcade market in China is very similar to the situation in Hong Kong five or six years ago. If we take the situation when the arcade industry in Hong Kong was just emerging, as a reference. The time for the game hall to recover the investment cost is 6 to 8 months, which should be considered a very worthwhile investment!" Du Wenqiang shook his head and analyzed.

Wang Shi didn't expect the other party to give too much concession, because according to some of the information he had collected before. Dongyou Company is known as the most terrifying gold-swallowing monster in Hong Kong. Its main markets are the United States, Western Europe and Japan, and it has not previously entered the domestic market. The biggest reason is likely to be that the other party doesn't look down on this small market at all, so Wang Shi doesn't have much bargaining capital.

"Mr. Du. You just mentioned the first generation of arcade machines, and as far as I know, Dongyou has long since discontinued these old products!

As you just said, the production cost of a second-generation arcade machine is at least 5,000 yuan, but if it is a first-generation arcade machine, we have the ability to control its cost even lower! In the current domestic market, low prices are the king road to rapidly expand the market!" Wang Shi suddenly put forward a new proposal.

He doesn't think there is much comparison between the current situation in China and the Hong Kong market five or six years ago. You must know that even five or six years ago, the salary of ordinary workers in Hong Kong was generally more than 1,000 Hong Kong dollars. Therefore, every time a coin is put in five dimes, it is not a very expensive pastime for Hong Kong citizens.

But even in the deep-sea special zone, which has the highest average salary in the country, there are definitely only a handful of people who can earn more than 1,000 yuan a month. Before coming to Hong Kong, Wang Shi deliberately asked the owners of several game halls in the SAR to understand the situation. The price for them to buy a Mario Bros. arcade machine is about 4,000 yuan, and it will take about a year to pay for itself.

In other parts of the country, the monthly salary of ordinary people is less than 200 yuan, and everyone's spending power is naturally lower. This also leads to the fact that the game hall has to sell the price of the game currency lower, so the time to recover the cost will naturally be longer. For an arcade machine with a purchase price of 7,000 yuan, it is likely that it will take two years for the game hall to recover its cost.

In fact, arcade machines are still a relatively novel thing for Chinese, and even old games are still new to the Chinese market. Therefore, in this case, the price of the arcade machine has become the most important factor affecting the choice of the game hall owner.

The most attractive thing about the first generation of arcade machine is that it can be completely localized with the existing technical conditions in China. The first modern wafer fab built by the Oriental Research Institute for domestic matchmaking has been completed and put into operation in the deep-sea special zone two or three years ago.

Deep-sea Microelectronics Company was put into production. This gives China the ability to produce its own 8-bit chips, including the 6502 processor used in the first generation of gaming motherboards. and small-capacity memory. And in China in this era, can anything be localized? It can have a huge impact on the price.

China's foreign exchange shortage has resulted in high exchange costs for most imported products. Moreover, for technologies and products that are not available in China, foreign sellers usually adopt high-price monopoly sales. Once these products and technologies can be produced in China, not only the huge exchange cost can be saved, but also because of the lower domestic labor cost and raw material cost, the production cost can be greatly reduced, and the export to overseas markets at low prices.

"You want the technology licensing of the arcade motherboard?" Du Wenqiang did not answer immediately, but thought for a moment.

Dongyou has always been very strict in its control over arcade motherboards, and there has never been a precedent for external licensing. It's just these old arcade machines that have been discontinued. There is no need to keep the motherboard technology a secret, not to mention that the market has long been flooded with pirated products.

After weighing the pros and cons, Du Wenqiang immediately nodded and said, "Of course, if you are interested in building an arcade factory in China, we can also help provide a full set of assembly line equipment, including the motherboard production line!"

"Our Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company is engaged in trade, and the industry is not what we are good at, so we have no plans to build our own factory for the time being! However, we are ready to cooperate with other electronic companies in the Special Economic Zone and ask them to carry out OEM production for us!" Wang Shi explained.

The state has become more and more strict in its control over foreign exchange. This makes it more and more difficult to exchange foreign exchange for import trade. Therefore, Wang Shi has long asked Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company to seek transformation and give up pure import trade. Wang Shi's first sight was actually on the camera business, and he was ready to cooperate with the 13th Radio Factory in Beijing. Hyundai Scientific Instruments Co., Ltd. is responsible for the import of SKD (parts), and then the 13th Radio Factory is responsible for assembling the imported parts.

It's just that Hyundai Scientific Instruments is negotiating SKD import with Sony. The Japanese side is asking too high. So Wang Shi set his sights on the emerging arcade market, in fact, Hyundai Scientific Instruments had already begun to cooperate with an electronics factory in the Special Economic Zone.

The pirated arcade motherboards imported from Hong Kong by Hyundai Scientific Instruments were handed over to a cooperative electronics factory for imitation production. Including "Mario Bros.", "Tank Battle", "Pac-Man", "Hong Kong Cubes" and many other products of the company.

At the same time, according to the original plan of Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company, a certain scale has been formed in the domestic arcade market. At the same time, after the company has built a complete national distribution channel, it will further expand the scale of production. At that time, a complete arcade factory including motherboards was built. It's also a matter of course.

However, Wang Shi met Li Xuan unexpectedly at the establishment of China Merchants Bank not long ago, and he realized the problem of patents and intellectual property rights for the first time. Unlike most of China's early-stage entrepreneurs, Wang Shi is a man with big ambitions.

This can also be seen from the accounts of Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company, because he was originally going to let the company carry out shareholding reform, so he specially invited Shekou Accounting Firm to conduct a financial audit of the company. And the financial situation of Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company is very clean, and there is nothing unsightly.

This is particularly rare in the 80s, when China's economy lacked constraints and grew wildly. It is precisely this characteristic of him that has led Vanke to develop into one of the largest and best financial real estate companies in China.

You must know that the real estate industry can be said to be the hardest hit area of domestic power-money collusion in later generations, and Vanke is definitely one of the cleaner enterprises. In such a field with a relatively low coefficient of fair competition, it can still become bigger and stronger, which also reflects the ability of Wang Shi as a leader.

Hyundai Scientific Instruments had asked other electronics factories to produce a pirated arcade machine for it at a cost of about 3,000 yuan. But if even the arcade motherboard can be domestically produced, Wang Shi is confident that the manufacturing cost of the whole machine can be reduced by another 500 yuan.

Now, Wang Shi decided to simply change the original development plan and use the cost savings from the localization of arcade motherboards as the intellectual property fee paid to Dongfang Game Company, so as to obtain the right to produce Dongyou Company's arcade products.

"The license fee for each arcade machine is $100, which is the best price we can give! We can provide you with the greatest technical support throughout the arcade production process!"

Wang Shi nodded, and finally agreed. As a result, the main content of the cooperation between Shenhai Modern Scientific Instrument Company and Oriental Game Company has become the exclusive production right of Dongyou Company to authorize a number of first-generation old-fashioned arcade machines, including "Hong Kong Cube", "Mario Bros.", "Tank Wars", etc., to Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company. Dongyou can get a technology license fee of 450 yuan per arcade machine.

Of course, Hyundai Scientific Instruments has also obtained the exclusive domestic agency rights of the latest arcade machines such as "The King of Fighters", "1942" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". But compared to the production rights of the first generation of arcade machines, this has become an addition.

Because Wang Shi believes that after the domestic production line of the game motherboard is completed and put into operation, the domestic arcade sales will rise rapidly because of the low price, and it is not difficult to sell more than 200,000 units annually. If this figure is calculated, Dongyou Company alone can reap a profit of 80 million yuan per year.

The only thing that made Du Wenqiang feel a little regretful was that Wang Shi would rather pay more yuan than use US dollars to pay for the production authorization. Therefore, the production license fee for each arcade machine was finally set at 450 yuan. You must know that the official exchange rate of the US dollar against the yuan given by the People's Bank of China is only 3.7, and at this official exchange rate, 450 yuan is equivalent to 120 US dollars.

Hyundai Scientific Instruments now obtains the price of foreign exchange from other enterprises, which is usually around 4.1 to 4.3. On the surface, Wang Shi seems to have lost a bit, because even if he buys foreign exchange directly from the adjustment market, 100 US dollars does not cost 450 yuan. But in fact, foreign exchange is not easy to obtain anytime and anywhere. If 200,000 arcade machines are sold every year, Hyundai Scientific Instruments will pay $20 million a year to Dongyou.

Such a huge amount of foreign exchange is definitely a big burden for Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company. What worries Wang Shi even more is that the renminbi may depreciate at any time in the future. Once the RMB depreciates, if Hyundai Scientific Instruments pays the license fee with a fixed dollar price, it will inevitably cause huge losses. So he would rather pay a little more now and lock in the risk of the company's operation, this is Wang Shi's cleverness!

Of course, the reason why Du Wenqiang agreed to the other party to pay in RMB was because Oriental Game Company finally established a branch in China at the beginning of the year. Therefore, the fees paid by Hyundai Scientific Instrument Company can be directly transferred to the account of the newly established Oriental Game (Deep Sea) Company.

As a foreign-funded enterprise, its exchange conditions are much simpler than those of domestic enterprises. As long as it is a reasonable and legitimate income, Oriental Games can exchange currency at an official exchange rate of 1:3.7. In other words, the actual production license fee received by Oriental Games is $120 per unit.

Of course, even if Dongyou Company can't convert all this money into foreign exchange and transfer it out, it can still be directly used to pay for the operating expenses of the mainland branch. This is much more cost-effective than converting US dollars into renminbi from Hong Kong at an exchange rate of 1 to 3.7.

In fact, Dongyou Company should be regarded as one of the subsidiaries of the Oriental Group that entered the mainland market relatively late. The current stage of the domestic game market can not bring much profit to Dongyou, but it can provide many advantages for Dongyou that Hong Kong does not have.

For example, there are eight major art academies in China, and a large number of talents with professional art skills are cultivated every year. Hong Kong, however, has a big shortcoming in this regard. Game artist is a very important position in the entire game development team.

Because of the lack of game artists in Hong Kong, key positions such as original artists in Oriental Games need to recruit a large number of Japanese comic talents. However, this situation is changing, and in recent years, more and more artists from professional art academies in China have begun to join the art team of Oriental Games! )