Sales alone speak for themselves, as it stands: in the last fiscal year, Renke's revenues reached $5 billion.

What is the concept of this data?

In the past 1985, IBM, the old computer hegemon, had revenues of more than $40 billion; Hewlett-Packard, the big brother of Silicon Valley, has an operating income of about $6 billion; Motorola's income level is also roughly in this range.

Compared to more comparable startups in the industry at the same time, Renke's sales are several times that of Apple and more than 30 times that of Microsoft, and it can be ranked within the top 150 of the Fortune 500.

It is not surprising that Renke, which was founded the latest, has achieved such amazing results, which is determined by the characteristics of its products.

As early as the end of the 1970s, simple enterprise applications such as financial management and inventory management appeared on personal computer platforms that could sell for more than $2,000, far from being comparable to spreadsheet software, word processing software, and BASIC compilers.

Mainframe and minicomputer systems are so expensive that only large enterprises and institutions can afford them, and small and medium-sized enterprises with the same needs can only sigh.

What's more, Renke has an advanced and mature computer hardware platform, database platform, application development platform, network architecture, and more importantly, a new solution concept created by Tang Huan as a backing, which is no worse than those mainframe and minicomputer systems that have been in operation for decades and have been very mature.

In the first quarter of this year, Renke launched the latest version of its flagship product, EnterpriseOne 3.6, announcing that its C/S-client/server architecture has fully matured to fully support LAN and dial-up connection to electronic data interchange over the Internet.

Renke's products have a significant feature, that is, after several years of development, it has formed a set of its own development system - PeopleTools, which has a complete and friendly graphical user interface component in the front end, a reliable and powerful business component in the back end, and even its own scripting language - PeopleCode.

This scripting language is based on ZeroneTurboPascal, one of the software developed by Zheru, and retains the original beautiful syntactic structure of the Pascal programming language, and is 100% compatible with ZeroneSQL, a localized structured query language of Zheru database EBase, and the SQL86 standard that will be officially released by the American National Standards Institute, or ANSI.

This means that Renke's products have considerable leveling, and can support databases other than Zheru EBase at some point, such as IBM's DB2, Oracle's ORACLE, etc.; Even through the script language compiler of PeopleCode, the application software made by the development platform PeopleTools can run on computer hardware platforms other than the standard of Fangyuan computer.

It is worth mentioning that PeopleTools has a gimmick, that is, in a paper discussing the software development process, Tang Huan mentioned RapidApplicationDevelopment - rapid application development is the concept of RAD, although the actual utility is not easy to say, but it can indeed be faster and more flexible than similar products in the support links such as secondary development.

In addition, as a newcomer, in order to catch up with those old pioneers in the industry, Renke not only continued to strengthen its own team of industry experts, but also sought cooperation with professional accounting firms to make IT technology and industry needs perfectly integrated, Arthur Young CPA Firm, one of the eight major accounting firms, was developed into an external strategic partner, which greatly challenged the cooperation between IBM and Arthur Andersen.

After the IPO and becoming a listed public company, Renke's business can more easily penetrate into special target groups such as governments and institutions.

All of this shows that Renke's stock is excellent, and Goldman Sachs does not dare to play tricks in the issuance process. Not to mention that Tang Huan has long become an old fritter, and the cooperative relationship between them for many years, Renke alone can definitely be regarded as an "expert" who does not rub sand in his eyes.

……

On July 1, after enjoying the Mexico World Cup, Tang Huan, who had been swept away in his heart, came to New York and summoned Louis Gerstner, David Duffield, Ken Morris and others to listen to the latest status of the IPO.

Unlike the position of the largest shareholder in Zheru, Fangyuan, and EA, Tang Huan's personal shareholding ratio in Renke is not high, and his shares are dispersed to various institutions, which can be regarded as a kind of clumsiness that does not expose his wealth.

In contrast, Tang Huan is only a member of the board of directors of Renke, with Louis Gerstner as chairman, David Duffield as CEO, and Ken Morris as president.

"After the successful listing, Renke will become our third largest company after Fangyuan and Zheru in one fell swoop." Louis Gerstner, who has always shown himself as a cold-faced Hades, said with excitement.

"Looks like you haven't been paying much attention to EA lately." Tang Huan smiled and didn't say anything more.

……

On Thursday, July 3, 1986, Renke's shares traded on the NASDAQ at an issue price of $24 per share, reaching a high of $46.8 and closing at $43.9.

Such a lively scene also reflects how beautiful the current economic situation in the United States is.

The next day is July 4th, the National Day of the United States, and then the weekend, and this buffer period is enough to ensure that market makers and investors can further absorb the value of Renke.

However, Louis Gerstner's judgment that Renke surpassed EA across the board met with some resistance, because the shadow of the Great Depression in the American game industry in 1983 had completely dissipated, the entire market was reactivated, and practitioners were active. EA, which has finally survived to the end, certainly won't miss this resurgent video game gold rush.

The second-generation Xiaobawang game console no longer has to test the reaction of the market as carefully as before, and leads many games with great fanfare, and kills back from the Japanese market in a mighty way.

This "homecoming", EA has made careful preparations in both hardware and software.

In terms of hardware, the second-generation Xiaobawang game console has been optimized and launched a new second-generation Xiaobawang game console 1986 version.

In fact, this move is also a challenge to meet the competition.

A generation of Xiaobawang game consoles can be said to have tapped the potential of 8-bit home video game consoles to the extreme, and anyone who squeezes in is the end of eating dirt behind EA's ass, and the Nintendo FC game console, which was born at the wrong time and in a miserable situation, is a vivid example of blood.

Therefore, the game console companies that survived the previous game industry depression have shifted their product research and development direction to 16-bit home video game consoles, although the second-generation Xiaobawang game consoles have taken the lead in this field, but the space is still large enough.

In addition, after EA's repeated trials, the recovery trend of the North American market is becoming more and more obvious.

The fastest is NEC, in the field of personal computers, after the PC-9800 series was eliminated by Fangyuan personal computers, it is still not giving up on video game consoles, this year showed the 16-bit PCEngine original machine, and plans to be fully available before the end of the year.

I have to say that this name more or less reflects NEC's deep resentment that it was beaten by Fangyuan personal computers in the personal computer market.

Sega has also revealed its plans for the MegaDrive, a 16-bit home video game console, but it won't be released until the first half of next year.

As for Nintendo, it is a little mysterious, judging from its actions of smashing pots and selling iron and raising funds, it is certainly not idle.

In this kind of situation, EA launched the second-generation Xiaobawang game console 1986 version, which can disrupt the rhythm of competitors' layouts.

In terms of software, in addition to carefully introducing the video game masterpieces that have been missed in the US market in recent years, EA also grandly launched two new blockbusters in the sports game genre - "NBALive1986" and "FIFA1986".

As you can guess from the name alone, these two new games are officially licensed by the NBA and FIFA, otherwise EA would inevitably get into trouble even if it is the big brother in the video game industry.

This is true, and since sports games are a relatively new genre and have their own peculiarities, EA has even set up a subsidiary specifically for this purpose, EASPORTS, to take care of the dedicated operations.

EA had earlier launched the Major League Football series and the Major League Baseball series, especially the latter, which was very successful in Japan, where baseball was very popular.

On this basis, all aspects of the development of the NBALive project are progressing very smoothly, and the game background is also placed in the playoffs, after all, the current mainstream game storage medium is cartridge, and the size of the content is limited.

It is conceivable that although it is not yet possible to really challenge the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics and other NBA powerhouses at this stage, the Golden State Warriors, who have been steadily in the playoffs, are still unconsciously favored. And then it is talked about by players.

In comparison, the launch of FIFA was a bit of a twist.

Because the popularity of football in the United States is much inferior to that of basketball, the real market target of FIFA is outside the United States, and then divided into versions corresponding to Serie A, English A, La Liga, as well as the European Championship and the World Cup, so that the corresponding license negotiations have been negotiating for a long time.

At the same time, FIFA had early competitors, such as MatchDay in the UK.

Although the hardware platforms running are slightly different, this game, which won the British Golden Controller Award as soon as it emerged, is a real peer-to-peer relationship with FIFA.

EA CEO Tripp Hawkins had planned to take advantage of the boom of the World Cup in Mexico to launch "FIFA1986" to seize the market and fight off competitors in one fell swoop, but EASPORTS' R&D team suddenly discovered a serious AI problem and insisted on delaying the release.

Tripp Hawkins was annoyed by his subordinates' bouncing behavior, but Tang Huan appreciated this kind of excellence, so he was relieved: "The business opportunities of the World Cup can't catch up, so let's wait for the Christmas business opportunities at the end of the year, and spokespersons such as Diego Maradona can play a greater role in publicity and promotion at that time." ”

It can be said that "FIFA1986" in EA's homecoming operation, a bit of a voice but not the person, the game CG is released, which can be described as exciting, but it only accepts reservations within the scope of the EA player club.

Overall, although there are still many home TV game console manufacturers who survived the Great Depression of the American game industry and are gearing up to do a big job on the 16-bit console platform, the pattern is very different from the original time and space, and the model of "selling hardware at a loss and making a profit with software" can eliminate many careerists at one time; And then we have to face the obstacle of 2D acceleration technology.

In short, the video game gold rush has seen a positive revival, but the barrier to entry has been greatly raised, and it is almost impossible for food companies to dare to parachute in to grab food.

At this stage of competition, game consoles are only one aspect, and whether they are truly successful or not depends on whether there are iconic signboards like "Tetris", "Pac-Man", "Mario", "Monopoly", "Three Kingdoms" and other iconic signboards like EA to attract people, as well as a larger ecosystem.

For example, Tang Huan's Hollywood has gotten closer and closer to EA, the most recent example is the movie "TopGun" released on May 16 - "Top Gun", a big hit at the North American box office, rampage through the $100 million mark, and then the video game of the same name did not need to be promoted, it was a great success once it was launched, and the sales easily exceeded 1 million copies, and according to the summary and evaluation of data from all aspects, this year's wave of market to reach 2.2 million copies is not a problem.

The hot sale of the video game "Top Gun" undoubtedly gave EA a good start to the North American market. In Redwood City, Silicon Valley, where EA's headquarters and EA campus are located, there has been a noticeable increase in the flow of people, including young entrants who are full of vitality and dreams.

Now that the North American market has been resurrected, how can EA be willing to let Nishina's younger brother ride on his neck as soon as he raises his leg - no matter how tall your enterprise application is!

? (To be continued.) )