Chapter 373: The Instinct of Capital is Expansion
"Mr. Shirakawa, what is the other business you are talking about?"
Yuji Kudo felt a little puzzled. As far as he knew, Shirakawa Electric should not have a computer business.
“As Kudo-san sees it, Shirakawa Holdings is involved in more than just electronics manufacturing like Shirakawa Electric.
At the same time, we also have a software design company like HAL that is more focused on the computer field, and games are one of our businesses.
In addition, software and computer peripheral application tools are also within the scope of HAL's business."
Shirakawa Kaede gestured to Kudo Yuji and looked at the spacious office area behind him.
In addition to games, there are also departments such as software, computer-aided equipment, compatible machine environment language development, etc., and they have divided their respective office areas into different categories.
Shirakawa even asked Iwata to bring several products developed by HAL and place them in front of Kudo Yuji.
Chinese character reading and writing cards, trackballs, sound cards, and several application software for NEC and Fujitsu were also displayed on the computer in front of them.
From soft to hard, we have it all.
Looking at the various computer-related auxiliary tools in front of him, Yuji Kudo was also surprised. He really didn't know that HAL had such a business.
"Mr. Shirakawa, what do you mean...?" Kudo Yuji seemed to understand what Shirakawa Kaede was talking about cooperation.
"As far as I know, Hudson Software's business situation doesn't seem to be very good, but you seem to want to continue the software business?"
Yuji Kudo nodded calmly. Hudson Software had only been established for a few years, and he had never intended to give up his ambitions.
“In this way, HAL can inject capital into Hudson, specifically to support your company’s software business.
In addition, Hudson and HAL can also communicate more in their respective software fields. Communication will promote each other's growth.
Even in terms of business, we can provide Hudson with a broader platform, such as Fujitsu computers."
Hearing the last sentence, Kudo Yuji's eyes lit up. This is possible.
Why Hudson's business has not been improving? Lack of fame is one of the reasons, but lack of development platform is the most important factor.
Sharp's platform is too small, and it has tried to promote its software to Fujitsu and NEC.
But no one paid any attention to him. There are so many companies engaged in computer business in Tokyo, why should others choose you?
What it all comes down to is that they have no connections. In sharp contrast, HAL has never lacked business because the latter has connections behind it.
Fujitsu computers have a huge user base. If Hudson can rely on this big tree, it will never have to worry about bankruptcy again.
"Mr. Shirakawa, I wonder how HAL plans to inject capital?" Kudo Yuji was tempted.
Rather than letting Hudson Software hang here half-dead, it would be better for it to join the camp of one of the giants.
"25 million yen, 45% of the shares." Shirakawa Feng made the offer readily.
Judging from Hudson's current business situation, 25 million yen is a premium acquisition, and at the same time he did not provoke Kudo Yuji's sensitive nerves.
Shirakawa Feng knew that for companies that had just been established, the founders were generally reluctant to hand over the leadership to others.
Some people with strong personalities would rather the company operate at a loss than give up the business they have worked so hard to build.
The fact was just as Shirakawa Kaede had expected. Kudo Yuji agreed to the offer after considering it for a few seconds.
Hudson can't even come up with 5 million yen now, so why would he be dissatisfied with 25 million?
However, just when Kudo Yuji thought that things were almost settled, Shirakawa Kaede unexpectedly put forward another condition.
"Just now Kudo-san said that Hudson also has related research in the field of semiconductor development?"
"Huh?" Kudo Yuji nodded in confusion. "We are only committed to improving the performance of game graphics and developing chips in related fields. This is more like an auxiliary tool."
"10 million yen, SIC will buy this team as a package."
"Eh!" Kudo Yuji was stunned.
This... is this the power of the super-rich? Tens of millions of yen seemed as common as 1,000 yen to him.
Hudson does have such a team, and most of them are made up of recent college graduates.
As for the graphics enhancement chip, they did develop it, and it was also aimed at games for Sharp computers, and they came up with this thing.
Although this team is relatively young, their technical strength is quite good, otherwise they would not have received the order from Sharp.
In fact, Hudson's technical team later contributed a lot of talents to SoftBank's computer software department.
It was so large that it formed its own group, and later on it became an independent software company.
This is the powerful influence that Hudson will have in the software field in the future, of course that is more than 20 years later.
At this moment, neither Kudo Yuji himself nor Shirakawa Kaede knew what would happen in the future.
But the words "gaming graphics chip" alone were enough for Baichuan Feng to take action without hesitation.
Even though today's gaming graphics chips are very simple, and even though Hudson's team only did some auxiliary development work based on the architecture of other chip companies.
But this still made Baichuan Feng determined to take them down, because Japan was in great need of relevant talents in chip design.
So far, SIC has basically cultivated its own talent pool.
As for the talents recruited from outside, to be honest, none of them are employable so far.
In Baichuan Feng's eyes, this chip development team, even if they are not that experienced, is far more valuable than the entire Hudson Corporation.
Gaming graphics chips, the prototype of future GPUs, SIC is where they should be.
After hearing the name of SIC, a look of realization appeared in Kudo Yuji's eyes.
He knew what Baichuan Feng meant. He wanted SIC to accept his team.
Honestly, if those guys heard that they were going to join SIC, they would probably jump for joy.
When they were in Hudson, they had privately studied SIC chips countless times.
After all, this is Japan's only independent CPU chip. Everyone is proud of it and also yearns for it.
In the eyes of these technology geeks, SIC is like a holy place in their hearts.
With a slight sigh, Kudo Yuji nodded, "Hudson agrees to the deal."
After all, Hudson's current business focus is on software and gaming, and semiconductor design is indeed not mainstream.
In this case, it might not be a bad idea to just help the other party and pay some money to release the person.
"It's a pleasure working with you!" Baichuan Feng smiled, stood up and shook hands with the other party.
The subsequent detailed contract will be drafted by a professional legal team.
Since then, Shirakawa Electric's FES has won the first contract as a third-party game manufacturer.
In the future, games developed by Hudson will only be available on the FES platform, which is the prototype of the game exclusivity system.
…
In addition to Hudson, in order to concentrate on dealing with the home game console issues, Shirakawa Feng also met with some people from Enix.
Its founder is Yasuhiro Fukushima, who is about the same age as Hudson's Yuji Kudo, and coincidentally, he also has a round face.
It’s just that Yasuhiro Fukushima’s round face is much smaller than Yuji Kudo’s, the latter looks like a pancake just out of the oven.
Furthermore, compared to Hudson's Yuji Kudo, Enix's Yasuhiro Fukushima knows nothing about games.
That’s right, the founder of this game company can neither develop games nor understand games.
So how did Enix's games come about?
As mentioned before, Yasuhiro Fukushima paid for the "Gaming Interest Contest" and the winners received cash rewards.
The total prize pool is 3 million yen, with the first place receiving 1 million yen and the rest receiving between 600,000 and 200,000 yen.
This prize is definitely not a lot, but even so, the first time it was held last year, we received more than 300 entries.
As a result, Enix's game library was instantly filled up, and only 13 of the more than 300 works were usable, but this still made Enix a small fortune.
Because of these 13 computer game works, two were released on NEC and Fujitsu computer platforms last year, and more than 200,000 copies have been sold so far.
Thanks to this move, although Enix was just established last year, with more than 200,000 game sales as a foundation, Yasuhiro Fukushima was not short of money at this time.
Because even after deducting various commissions, the profit he can get is at least 300 to 400 million yen.
Therefore, for this cooperation with Shirakawa Electric, he only came with the idea of creating another channel for his own games.
Yasuhiro Fukushima does not have the same sense of crisis as Yuji Kudo, so he is much tougher in negotiations.
Eventually, both sides compromised and reached an agreement on a 30% commission.
At the same time, because Enix has its own publicity channels, Shirakawa Electric will no longer be responsible for the subsequent promotion of its game cartridges.
This invisibly saved a lot of advertising expenses, and Enix did not object to the exclusive agreement for the game.
Since the only game console about to be launched on the market at that time was from Shirakawa Electric, Enix could not find anyone else to take over even if it wanted to sell it.
Regarding the games that Enix will be releasing on FES, Yasuhiro Fukushima brought two at once.
One is called "Door Door" and the other is called "Portopia Serial Murder Case", and they are also computer ported games.
Yasuhiro Fukushima not only brought the game, but also brought the producers of the two games, Koichi Nakamura and Yuji Horii.
Because Yasuhiro Fukushima didn't understand games, he needed two designers to personally explain the various ways to play the game to Kaede Shirakawa.
Koichi Nakamura, who is only 17 years old, has just graduated from high school and will go to the University of Electro-Communications in the spring.
The game he developed, "Door Door", involves controlling the protagonist on the stage to guide the monsters and lock them in the door. The player will pass the level once all the monsters are locked.
To be honest, compared to his games, Shirakawa Kaede is more interested in him as a person.
The 17-year-old programming genius and fat classmate Satoru Iwata were outshined by him.
Shirakawa Kaede has made up his mind that HAL has decided to recruit Koichi Nakamura.
But there is no rush now, there will be plenty of opportunities to contact him later.
As for the second game, The Portopia Serial Murder Case, it is very special.
From the name, you can tell that this is a reasoning adventure game, a first-person, non-linear game, an open world, multiple branching plots, and role-playing.
The above features are the first to appear in computer games. Although they are still a bit immature, they can definitely be regarded as opening up a new gaming genre.
Shirakawa Kaede tried it out and found the story to be complex, with twists and turns, very engaging.
What a genius! It's rare to develop a role-playing game with so many features in the early days of video games.
Baichuan Feng dares to bet that those who like this game will regard it as a masterpiece, while those who don’t like it will sneer at it.
As for these two games, Baichuan Feng accepted them without hesitation.
Their sales may not necessarily explode, but profits are almost certain.
The most important thing is that Shirakawa Kaede has been thinking about Nakamura Koichi and Horii Yuji.
Anyway, there was no employment contract between Enix and them, only a game distribution contract.
That way things will be much easier.
After seeing off the people from Enix, Shirakawa Kaede immediately found Iwata Satoru.
“Starting this year, HAL is also holding the ‘Golden Cross’ gaming competition, and we have increased the prize money to 10 million yen.
There is no limit on the game theme or platform. After the producer and HAL sign an agreement, they will share the profits in the form of copyright royalties. "
"Huh?!" Iwata was stunned by Shirakawa Kaede's big move and a series of measures.
