Coming out of Brant's office, Zhang Heng and Lin Liang walked silently in the corridor, and almost bumped into someone at the corner near the door.

"I'm sorry. Zhang Heng apologized, and when he saw that the other party turned out to be Chinese, he smiled and nodded.

The man was stunned, smiled back, and hurried away.

"Boss, even if they are willing to sell, we can't afford it for the time being. Walking out of the building where Mi Luohua was, Lin Liang whispered, a reminder and a comfort.

Zhang Heng said lightly: "If you are the boss of Mi Luohua, what will be your psychological price?"

"According to the principle of commercial acquisition, we need to pay the total profit of the product for at least 3 years, according to last year's sales estimate, the total sales of the Odyssey in 3 years is 900,000 units, and the gross profit is calculated according to the boss's estimate of 20 US dollars, which is 18 million US dollars!"

This number was really amazing, and Lin Liang's face changed.

"And this is a new product, it stands to reason that the sales will be higher in the short term, even if we bid $18 million, they should not agree, maybe ask us to pay the total profit for 5 years"

"900,000 units?" Zhang Heng said disapprovingly, "In fact, if you want to know the future sales trend of a product, you can make a rough judgment by doing a sample return visit to existing customers, it seems that Mi Luohua is still in blind optimism for the time being." ”

Lin Liang's eyes widened: "What does the boss mean that the user experience of the Odyssey is not good?"

Zhang Heng nodded and walked into the car door opened by Chen Zhenning.

So why do you still want to buy out Odyssey?

Lin Liangxin was puzzled, and he didn't ask any more questions, just remind the boss from time to time, and his main responsibility is to prevent legal risks for the boss.

The car passed through the one-way toll booth, got on the Bay Bridge, and drove towards downtown San Francisco, Zhang Heng closed his eyes and leaned on the seat, thinking fiercely in his heart.

After the Odyssey was launched, it was enthusiastically followed by American home users who were brave enough to try it for a short time, but due to the monotony of its games and the cumbersome controls, it was quickly rejected by players who were too energetic.

By the end of 1975, when sales were discontinued, its total sales were 350,000 units.

In other words, in the next 3 years, it will only sell 250,000 units, which is far from comparable to the sales in the first 4 months of its launch.

If Mirohua's senior management knew about this future, they would be willing to sell it for $18 million, even $3 million, and save a lot of investment in opening a new production line and hiring people to open up the market.

According to classical business theory, opportunity cost is also an important cost, and they can use the money to invest in other, more promising businesses.

Zhang Heng's headache is that Mirova's executives will not believe this fact at this time, and it is difficult for him to buy all the rights to the Odyssey at a reasonable price.

Buying Odyssey is very important for Zhang Heng to build a future game console kingdom.

The Odyssey's inventor was Ralph Henry Bell, a senior engineer at Sandoz Associates, a U.S. defense contractor, who developed a prototype called the "Brown Box" and a set of light-gun peripherals with the company's support.

Odyssey's product is destined to decline rapidly, and what Zhang Heng cares about is the relevant intellectual property rights owned by Odyssey, including light guns, "ping pong" games and original TV game console design ideas, which are really valuable things.

Sandoz filed a patent application for the "Brown Box" in 1971, and in April this year, the patent for the "Video Game and Training Device" will come into effect.

Until the end of March 1993, all manufacturers of video game consoles had to pay royalties to Sandoz and Mirova.

Atari didn't pay at first, and pirated the "Ping Pong" game on the arcade, but the defendant almost went bankrupt, and had to use bankruptcy as a threat to indirectly beg for mercy, and finally ended the lawsuit with a one-time payment of $700,000 and royalties for each unit.

Nintendo and other RB manufacturers, although obediently paying, have always wanted to overturn this patent, and in 85 they filed a lawsuit, claiming that the first video game machine was not a "brown box".

The lawsuit quickly ended in failure, and they had to continue paying the royalties.

According to statistics, Mirohua, which later bought out the "Brown Box" patent at one time, received a total of $100 million in patent money during the patent period.

Zhang Heng didn't put this future income in his eyes, what he cared about was that once he got all the rights to the Odyssey, then the future TV game console market could be decided by Daheng, at least there was no problem in formulating industry standards.

Of course, Daheng cannot monopolize the market, but it is inevitable to maintain the first-mover advantage in the early stage, and other manufacturers must pay the corresponding price if they want to join this industry.

Royalties are the most basic, and exchanging patents is not impossible.

The feeling of pinching the necks of Atari and Nintendo must be very wonderful, thinking of this, Zhang Heng smiled, and then tightened his brows.

The acquisition of all the rights to Odyssey is actually only his minimum requirement, and if the funds allow, he also wants to buy the entire Mirova company.

In 1974, Philips of the Netherlands acquired Mirova for $12 million, and its original North American subsidiary, Norelco, was merged under the Mirova brand.

Is Philips taking a fancy to Odyssey?

Definitely not for this reason!

Founded in 1917, Mirova started by selling ore radios, and later expanded to radios, speakers, televisions and other audio-visual products.

In the mid-60s, Mirova developed its own proprietary laser disc technology (LD) to focus on the video data storage market.

In the late '60s, when the mainstream video storage market was completely dominated by tape storage systems from manufacturers such as Philips and SONY, Mirohua's efforts failed.

It was also at this stage that Philips devoted its energy to the research and development of laser discs in order to solve the huge defect of poor resolution of tape images.

In the early 70s, Philips made great progress, and immediately set its sights on Mirohua, which already had a series of related patents, and successfully acquired Mirova in 1974.

At that time, Odyssey was already in decline, so Philips simply and generously granted patents to the world, and manufacturers such as Atari and Nintendo obtained patent authorizations for video game consoles during this time period.

However, Philips-Mirowa's efforts to promote laser discs and players were hit hard in the late 70s.

At a time when DVD player manufacturers are fighting for the support of film companies, the home video recorders launched by JVC and SONY have quietly encroached on the home user market in Europe and the United States.

Video tapes are becoming mainstream, and no content producer is willing to pay a lot of money to open a new video production line!

Philips had to go back to the old ways of tape imaging and chose to join JVC's VHS array, which helped JVC beat Sony in the early 80s, and VHS became the mainstream standard for videotape around the world, even if SONY's Betamax standard was better at image quality.

Philips-Mirohua's efforts in the direction of laser storage were not in vain, they quickly found a market that cannot be replaced by videotapes, music!

In 1979, the CD (Compact Disc) and the supporting CD player developed by it officially appeared on the stage of history.

Daheng Technology is about to carry out the research and development of Walkman, and will also join the ranks of developing home video recorders, and will not give up in the future CD, VCD, DVD and other series of products.

Odyssey plus laser technology, Mirova has also become Zhang Hengzhi's inevitable goal.