AMC Entertainment has been sold for $2.6 billion to Dalian Wanda Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese private conglomerate and China’s largest investor in cultural and entertainment activities

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2012-05-24T17:18:20.083443+00:00

Consider this for a moment. Are companies in the US market interested in doing business with the Chinese?

Now consider this. Do the Chinese lose more if GM doesn't sell cars in China or does GM lose more if they don't compete in the Chinese market against Audi, Volkswagon, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Toyota, Honda and all the other car companies out there.

Again it comes to the same thing. The person that holds the chips gets to give you unfair terms of business because you need them a LOT more than they need you.

GM is just one car company out of dozens trading in China. If GM doesn't do business in China they lose money when they are already in a bad state and what do China lose; GM cars? People will just buy Fords or BMW's instead of GM cars.

In business it's not easy to get a fair trade done when you desperately need what the other person is providing. They simply have the upper hand in negotiations.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2012-05-24T12:36:30.045543+00:00

You obviously don't work in the industry at all so I am just going to keep this short.

According to you the position is unfair and companies like GM and Ford are being treated like victims which is true enough.

Now just use your brain for a single moment and ask why things are like this? Do you think you are the only person in the world competent enough to realise the situation is unfair, that nobody in power realises the situation is fucked up as it is?

Now if there is somebody with your level of exceeding intelligence somewhere in the world then why hasn't anybody done anything about this? This is evidently unfair so why doesn't somebody stand up and say no? Is it because people are too busy or too stupid?

A lot of armchair economists make themselves sound like geniuses but there are a lot of people who earn more in a week than you earn in a month and have forgotten more than you will ever know. Instead of arguing in an armchair these people make significant sums of money to do what you couldn't possibly understand.

If it's as simple as an eye for an eye then why hasn't anything been done about it?

Quote me on this: THIS WILL NOT CHANGE. Come back find me when it does. The truth is due to how business works the person with the money holds all the chips. Welcome to reality. This is the way it is and this is the way it's going to stay.

KR4T0S · 1 day

Source: http://wibblywobblytime.tumblr.com/

KR4T0S · 1 day

Source: http://wibblywobblytime.tumblr.com/

PrettyBoyFloyd · 1 day

GM Shanghai was not a very profitable venture for GM because it didn't do very well. It was only a few years ago when GM went to China and set up GM China. What happened was a huge increase in GM's sales.

After that they finally got the high margin Cadillac sales up as well which prompted them to announce they were going to build Cadillacs in China.

On the other hand Ford had trailed GM in the Chinese market. They eventually made their way into the Chinese market and were met with a huge surge in worldwide sales. As a consequence Ford have announced they are going to compete more aggressively against GM for the Chinese market.

Intel are co-developing with the Ministry of Education which is part of the Chinese government. They have big plans together, it's all on the Intel website.

Foxconn are the largest producer of electronics in the world and the biggest shareholders are government officials. A lot of companies that are not state owned have powerful share holders and in this case it's the government officials and rich people who own Foxconn. This is an interesting read about what Foxconn really is.

You think there is plenty of investment funny floating around at the moment? Share your secrets with me because that load of money isn't going through the banks at the moment, it's nearly impossible to do any business at all in this economy. If you have the money you get to do as you please, thats how desperate times are.

In the world economy the most important market is a growing one. When a market is growing your investments grow with it. Ford and GM are taking jobs away from the US and taking their operations to China because their sales are rising literally year on year while falling in the US.

The Chinese market is simply worth a lot and will be worth the most in a few years which is why people are willing to put up with shit to trade there. Nobody would be willing to put up with that shit to trade in the US.

The truth is that people are clamouring to put money into growth which is why China gets away with what it does. The US on the other hand is willing to resort to any tactic to get any money into the economy at all. These are two very different hands.

stillifewithcrickets · 1 day

I think the best rule of thumb to follow is buy a book, take it home and read it. If you like it, it goes on the bookcase so you can share it with the family and reread it. If you dislike it you see if anybody else at home likes it and give it to them. If nobody likes it donate it to the library so somebody else can get use out of it. No such thing as a bad book really, just different strokes for different folks.

stillifewithcrickets · 2 days

I tend to find one of the joys of a big bookcase is slowly adding books to it. It'll be interesting to see how OP's collection will develop, a few interesting books on there.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2 days

You are making it look like companies like GM, Apple and Coca Cola are being forced to do business with the Chinese. In my experience most companies are chomping at the bit to get into that market and they are fully aware of the strings attached.

For a company like GM that was close to bankruptcy their deal with China saved the company. They sell more cars in China than anywhere else in the world now apparently.

When GM went to the Chinese the Chinese no doubt threw around a lot of stipulations that were bs but GM were willing to sign that contract because they weren't going to get investment from elsewhere.

Companies like Intel and Apple are in China too and thats because signing a contract with the Chinese government means they will co-develop plants for you. In some cases they pay upfront for the plant itself just to get companies out there.

At the moment since there is so little investment money floating around a deal like that is too good to pass up.

The problem is companies that are struggling like AMC won't get any investment from home because nobody has that much money to pony up so it's either don't get any investment at all and do business in the red or be bought out by somebody that is willing to pay much more than anybody else is going to.

A lot of these companies have never made more money or had more customers. That is a market a whole host of countries want in on and it's because thats where the growth is.

If you are on an equal footing in business then you get to negotiate terms. If you aren't on an equal footing then the person on top gives you the terms and you either say yes or no. Intel, Apple and many others said yes because they had to.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2 days

It's worth noting that everybody that most people who worked at Merill Lynch ended up with high paying jobs elsewhere after the company folded. Banks don't lose their own money they lose other peoples money and investment bankers and financiers have a job they can do nearly anywhere in the world.

At this moment in time bankers in a lot of countries are earning more than ever. Since the recession started my wage has doubled doing the same job because I get a much better bonus now.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2 days

Being public means that anybody can buy shares in the company. In other words if I open a company in China the size of Tesla or McDonalds you can buy a share in it. On the other hand if I open an oil company or a major manufacturer then the government owns that and probably won't sell it.

You bring up GM Shanghai but you have to understand when GM went to China they knew they were going to have to deal with the government due to the size of the operation and they were happy to do so because they knew they'd get a lot of money. They signed that contract willingly and made an absolutely fortune since.

It's not tangential, the problem is we can't really afford any of the big state owned companies. The state owned companies in China are huge conglomerates that are put under a banner like "oil" and "entertainment", they have many different branches and are absolutely enormous entities that employ hundreds of thousands even millions and have tentacles around the world.

The point I am trying to make is that even if we could buy them we wouldn't be able to, it's a very strange way of doing business for the West because we don't invest in businesses the way they do but basically the Chinese will buy somebody like AMC and let AMC do what AMC do but AMC will become a part of a bigger organisation and won't stand as a lone entity.

When this deal is sealed basically what will happen is that AMC will become a small part of Dalian Wanda. Now if AMC was a Chinese company it would be a small one and you could buy shares for it or buy it. However when it is rolled into Dalian Wanda AMC as an entity will cease to exist so you would need to buy Dalian Wanda. Now that is not going to happen simply because we can't afford to buy it.

The big Chinese companies have too much capital it's why they throw around stupid amounts of money like 2.6 billion for AMC, nobody was ever going to pay that for AMC and it's a deal the shareholders couldn't resist.

Now add to that the fact that AMC has low capital while most Chinese businesses have very high capital and the price per share for buying a lot of Chinese businesses hurts... a lot.

I worked in investment banking at Merill and Lynch and then for Bank of America sealing deals and the biggest problem wasn't that we were restricted in doing business, the biggest problem was we didn't have the money to buy even medium sized buildings so we used to invest in other ways instead. The Chinese have stacked the market simply by having more liquid assets.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 2 days

I think the problem is in you misinformed mind you assume that nations spring out of the ground and then disappear again.

Economies always start in the same way; with basic labour and minimum wage. Whether it is British labourers working in dusty old steam factories or American slaves working in cotton fields the beginning is never glamorous.

China are going through their own industrial phase and eventually they will leave it behind for the most part. You can already see this happening, in China the middle class is now comprised of about 200 million people(middle class on average in the world is equivalent to earning $30,000 a year, the more affluent countries have more middle class earners).

I worked for Merill and Lynch before they collapsed and now I work for Bank of America, we buy and sell assets to prop their value on the market and we see where the money comes and goes from. We've never seen this kind of money before and it's growing all the time. Things like that don't just disappear into the ground, thats pretty fucking stupid to suggest really.

Just like the US with a bigger population was more powerful than the European nations when it was developed, China and India in the same position will be more powerful than the US. Their investment track record is already incredible, they have huge influence in the car industry. In about five years they will finally have a foothold in that market thanks to GM and Volkswagon.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 3 days

1: GM Shanghai is a big company, it's only the smaller and medium sized companies that get away with being public.

2: Because they can afford to. Who else would pay 2.6 billion for AMC?

PrettyBoyFloyd · 3 days

You can invest in Chinese companies as long as they are not state owned. Back in the 90's the Chinese privatised and made public the smaller and medium sized companies so only the very biggest companies are state owned.

However the companies that are state owned are often so large and have such a high capital there aren't many companies on the planet that could afford to buy them.

At the end of the day cash rules and thats why Dalian Wanda, a group growing exponentially year on year can buy a group like AMC struggling to make ends meet. Companies like Dalian Wanda could buy a whole Hollywood studio with just capital, you wouldn't believe how little 2.6 billion dollars is to this corporation. In Hollywood a billion dollar blockbusters can make your year, for Dalian Wanda thats a drop in the bucket.

PrettyBoyFloyd · 3 days

If the US has a GDP per capita of $25, 000 then Japan with half the population would need a GDP per capita of $50, 000 which was never going to happen. Japan was on course to being the worlds second biggest economy after Germany but it never had the population to be the worlds biggest economy. Similarly Korea is enormously influential as well but still too small a populace to have the highest GDP of any nation.

China on the other hand has about 9 times the population of Japan which is why China has overtaken Japan. As the GDP per capita rises over the decades China will be a much much larger power than Japan ever was.

Japan due to being a smaller country could only do so much but they still made their mark on the car and technology industry. China is another beast all together.

dinofood · 3 days

Firstly you will want to install the Fallout Restoration mod which adds some new content and brings a host of improvements.

As for the game itself; well there is no waypoint marker and you won't find it easy rushing from point A to B because you will have to work out what the next step is for yourself so a dose of patience with a yearning to explore will set you right.

zakislam · 5 days

Good point, I think there are risks all around especially at the moment so who knows, maybe if the 720 came out in 2013 it might see a fraction of the sales or have a horrible launch like the Vita.

I just think it's better to wait a while and release with something that is a real step up, a revolution rather than release sooner and go with something a lot more modest. I think with the gaming audience being spread across about 50 million different devices nowadays the consoles need to reassert themselves as powerful companions.

zakislam · 6 days

There are often better times to upgrade than others though.

If you remember the xbox 360 and ps3 one move they took that benefit them a lot was a GPU with an advanced shader engine, the Wii went with a simpler GPU that didn't last as long.

Sometimes you take certain steps and those steps can prolong the life of the device at hand. Waiting for a GPU with more mature GPGPU functions is something worth waiting for.

zakislam · 6 days

I personally do not want to see new consoles before 2015 at the very earliest. Not only do I find it hard to swallow a new purchase but I would rather they wait 2 or 3 more years and allow the technology to improve even more.

We talk a lot about better AI or better physics but if you look at what Nvidia and AMD are doing with graphics cards the GPU's in a year or two won't be just for graphics, they will be able to do physics and AI too. With smarter GPU's games will get a lot better than just "prettier graphics".

Hardware is just a tool for creating compelling software and more hardware doesn't equal more compelling software however better hardware brings better and more diverse tools to the table.

If you read and look at what AMD, Nvidia and Intel are doing in the computer space it's obvious the transition the industry is going through is going through and I want the consoles to be heavily influenced by that transition.

cyberbemon · 7 days

I hope in the next few years we get a more diverse set of engines being used in gaming. The Cryengine 3 engine, Unity engine and Frostbite engine are all favoured by me over the Unreal engine.

The Unreal engine has such a superficial look and though it has its uses I am sick of seeing that shit everywhere. I get happy every time I see Cryengine 3 or Frostbite 2 mentioned anywhere for a new IP.

Good geometry and good lighting is more important than huge textures. Huge textures don't mask terrible geometry and bad lighting, black and white shooters regardless of texture size look like shit after a while.

I would prefer a Cryengine 3 game set in a huge jungle with a variety of colours and fauna or a No One Lives Forever 3 set in a number of locations based on Frostbite engine.

Deimorz · 10 days

I'm actually pretty happy about this for a couple of reasons.

1: I'd rather a game be delayed and finished than released as a half baked turd.

2: The holiday season is always fun because a lot of good games come out. Sure you miss some but with that Steam sale you get the ones you misses for a reasonable price anyway.

However the downside is while you get great games during the holiday season the rest of the year feels like a drought sometimes.

Now with more games shifting towards Q1 we will have plenty to play after the christmas parties as well. Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Carmageddon Reincarnation, Leisure Suit Larry, Space Venture, Company of Heroes 2 and SimCity are all due out Q1 2013.

Looks like we will be finishing 2012 with a bang and then revving the engine very quickly into 2013. I'd prefer 6 months of great gaming over 3 months of it.

jaaajaa102 · 10 days

Most games are generally very polished at the beginning to impress reviewers.

For example in Skyrim when you are pretty low level and badly equipped sometimes you take quests like killing a bunch of rats. The guards in a city might also mock you and if you try and join say the magic guys they will probably make you take a test. At the beginning it all makes sense.

However when you are profoundly powerful much later in the game the fact that people still send you on fetch missions or ask you to kill rats, that you get mocked by guards for being weak despite being one of the most powerful entities on the planet and you are a powerful sorcerer who is being mocked at the academy and told you have to pass a simple test to prove yourself..

It's game design 101.. polish the early part and that is that. If you look at Starcraft 2 it's a game many people purchased with an eye towards playing many months, sometimes year after purchasing it. A lot of people still play it and have put several hundred hours into it.

Similarly Diablo 3 is supposed to be a game that you will play for months and years after it's release, it's not something that will break down and turn into shit after a month because the end game wasn't as polished as the beginning or because eventually the combat system turns out to be a shitfest that never improves or changes.

There are a lot of games that are designed in such a way that putting a hundred hours into them is just the beginning and you could put many hundreds more into it and the way those games are built is rare.

Str1genz · 10 days

All the Fallout games are worth a play through IMO, even Fallout Tactics(yeah I said it!).

When you compare two great things one thing might come out ahead inevitably but that doesn't mean the other great thing isn't great anymore.

Fallout 1 and 2 were my favourite and IMHO you can't miss out on them. Fallout: Tactics was more like Fallout: Jagged Alliance but still great in its own right. Fallout 3 was Fallout: The Elder Scrolls and Fallout: New Vegas was basically Fallout: semi sequel/semi spin off to Fallout 1 and 2.

I'm not surprised by NV winning out. Characters and dialogue are of absolutely paramount importance in games and NV has that in spades.

jaaajaa102 · 11 days

I think what he is saying is that he played for a while before he started realising the amount of shortcomings and the way serious flaws had been painted over. Sometimes when you play a game over time you come to realise how fundamentally broken it really is.

It's an interesting point because Diablo 3 has an online aspect and if it has retarded AI, a bad combat system or a horrible questing system the online aspect will fall apart quite quickly.

Games that lean on an online aspect need a certain amount of polish to stand up to repeat plays sometimes years after launch and he's asking whether Diablo 3 will be a pastiche of ideas flimsly thrown together to meet a release date. For a game like Diablo 3 something like a bad combat system would be absolutely fatal, they need to polish it to a gleam.

KR4T0S

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