索尼

非常棒。说到约翰·斯卡利——夹在两位史蒂夫之间的苹果CEO，就是那个被乔布斯用'难道你想一辈子卖糖水吗'说服从百事跳槽的——他评价乔布斯时说：'他对索尼痴迷到近乎病态'，甚至收藏索尼的信纸和营销材料。他还提到Mac工厂如何效仿索尼工厂那种极致整洁的设计风格。

very good. So John Scully, between Steve and Steve, CEO at Apple, who, you know, famously Steve convinced him that to come over from Pepsi so he didn't have to sell sugar water for the rest of his life. His quote about Steve is that he was a freak about Sony, and that it was nearly fetishistic. In fact, he even had a collection of Sony letterhead and marketing materials. And he talks a lot about how the Mac factory was designed to emulate the Sony factory, that sort of super crisp, pristine look.

斯卡利说这种一尘不染的工厂给他留下深刻印象。虽然苹果没有彩色制服，但和早期索尼工厂同样优雅。最有趣的是他接着说：'史蒂夫不想成为微软，不想成为IBM，他想成为索尼。'

The idea that the factories were spotless that John Scully says this made a huge impression on him. And while Apple didn't have colored uniforms, it was every bit as elegant as the early Sony factories that we saw. He goes on to say, which I thought was really interesting, Steve didn't wanna be Microsoft. He didn't wanna be IBM. He wanted to be Sony.

我记得当时斯卡利（Scully）和史蒂夫（Steve）正巧与盛田昭夫（Akio Morita）会面。盛田给了我和史蒂夫一台最早的索尼随身听（Walkman）。我们从未见过这样的产品，因为当时市场上根本不存在类似的东西。那是二十五年前的事了，史蒂夫对它着迷不已，第一件事就是拆开它研究每个零件。

And I think Scully even met right around this time, Scully and Steve, with Akio Morita. And he says, I remember Morita gave Steve and me one of the first Sony Walkmans. None of us had ever seen anything like it before because there had never been a product like that. This is twenty five years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did was take it apart and look at every single part.

他惊叹于其精良的做工与结构。当盛田昭夫后来去世时，这一切形成了完整的闭环——1999年乔布斯在Macworld主题演讲开场时，展示了'非同凡想'广告中使用的盛田昭夫照片，并引用他的原话说道：'在他领导索尼期间，开创了整个消费电子市场。'

How the fit and finish was well done, how it was built. And this whole thing comes totally full circle when Marita eventually passes away. Steve Jobs in '99 is giving the Macworld keynote. And he starts the keynote by putting up a picture of Akio Morita who they used in the think different campaign and says and this is a quote from Steve on stage. While he was leading Sony, they invented the whole consumer electronics marketplace.

晶体管收音机、特丽珑电视、第一台家用录像机、随身听、音频CD。

Transistor radio, Trinitron television, first consumer VCR, Walkman audio CD.

注意到他没提第一台家用录像机的具体品牌对吧。你发我的那个视频很有趣，我们会把它放在节目备注里。

Notice he doesn't say the name of the first consumer VCR there. Right. You sent me that video. It's we'll put it in the show notes. It's it's fun to watch.

我之前不知道'非同凡想'广告里用了盛田昭夫的形象。确实很有意思，毕竟他们...

I didn't realize they used Marita in the think different campaign. Yep. Which is interesting because they

当时算是准竞争对手吧。索尼那时推出VAIO电脑了吗？

were quasi competitors. Had Sony come out with the Vaio yet at that point?

还没有。应该没出。

No. Probably not.

是的。我认为史蒂夫有一种特质，他能对一家公司的历史保持敬意，这种态度让他们当前的竞争变得无关紧要。

Yeah. I think Steve had this thing where he could have reverence for the history of a company in a way that made their current competition not matter.

是啊。

Yeah.

但对于那些他认为缺乏品味和历史的公司，比如对谷歌采取极端手段，或者他与三星的关系，那就没有任何底线可言了。微软也是。

But the companies that he viewed having sort of no taste and no history, like going thermonuclear on Google or like, his relationship with Samsung, then all bets were off. Microsoft too.

没错。没错。第一台Walkman于1979年7月在日本问世，首批3万台产量一个月内售罄，次月销量又翻了一倍。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the first Walkman comes out in Japan in July 1979. It sells through the 30,000 initial production run-in one month, And then the next month, it doubles.

再下个月销量变成三倍，之后月复一月持续以三倍速度增长。

And then the next month, it triples, and it continues tripling for month after month after month after that.

杰克·萨珀在LP节目中提到，他在初创公司前四年会寻找'三倍、三倍、两倍、两倍'的增长模式。

Jake Saper on the LP show said he looked for triple triple double double in the the first four years of a startup.

那是指年份，不是月份。

Those were years, not months.

是啊。没错。这已经是连续几个月翻倍又翻倍再翻倍了。

Yeah. Right. This is double triple triple triple triple triple months in a row.

没错。这个统计数据让我既惊讶于它的庞大又惊讶于它的微小。索尼Walkman在整个产品生命周期中总共卖出了2.5亿台。

Yeah. So this stat was fascinating to me both for how big it is and how small it is. All in, Sony sells a quarter billion Walkmans in the life of the product.

哇。那是从什么时候到什么时候？1979年到二月？对。

Wow. Which is what? 1979 until February? Yeah.

可以这么说。好多年呢。我的意思是，这既令人难以置信。比如，我不知道，但我觉得没有其他单一产品能卖出2.5亿台。

Call it that. So years. I mean, that's both incredible. Like, I don't I don't know, but I I don't think there were any other, like, single products that sold quarter billion units.

我是说，iPhone就有。

I mean, the iPhone has.

不。不。我说的是那个时候。

No. No. At that point in time.

哦，那个时候啊。

Oh, at that point.

是的，在那个时间点。所以，就像，是的，在这方面确实令人印象深刻。但如今，两亿五千万台，这就像是...我不知道，对苹果来说可能相当于一年的销量吧。

Yeah. At that point in time. So, like, yes, it's so impressive on that front. But then, I don't know, today, a quarter billion units, that's like a I don't know. It's like a year for Apple or something.

是啊，太疯狂了。我是说，市场已经高度集中到这种程度——如果你去买最好的手机，那就是苹果的顶配iPhone，这是人类能买到的最好的手机。然而却有数以百万计的人购买这款设备。

Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, there's just been so much consolidation to the point where, like, if you go buy the best phone, which is the top of the line iPhone from Apple, that is the best one that humans can buy. And yet there are millions and millions and millions of people buying that device.

没错。所以Walkman自然发展成了Discman，也变得非常流行。我成长过程中用过很多这些设备，Walkman也是。你有过Walkman吗？

Yep. So the Walkman, of course, eventually leads to the Discman also becomes hugely popular. I had so many of those growing up and Walkmans too. Did you have Walkmans?

我有一个Walkman和一个Discman，都是那种索尼经典的浅灰色，那种塑料材质但设计得像金属的外观。

I had one Walkman and one Discman, and both of them were that sort of, like, light Sony gray color that, like, they it was like that plastic that was designed to look like metal.

那真是经典款。我的是彩色版本的...

That was classic. Yeah. I had the colored versions for

比如那个黄色的Discman，专为跑步设计的，带有额外的防震功能。

Like the yellow Discman that was, like, meant for running that, like, had the extra skip protection on it.

额外的防震功能。对对。可惜在Discman之后，他们又推出了迷你光盘...

Extra skip protection. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, after the disc man, then they do the mini disc and

我像个傻瓜一样买了它。

Which I bought like a fool.

我也是，我也是。我爱索尼。你怎么能不爱索尼呢？

Me too. Me too. I love Sony. How could you not love Sony?

哦，是啊。

Oh, yeah.

然后幸运的是，我没买这个。你买了那个记忆棒数字音频播放器吗，就是MagicGate记忆棒？

And then, fortunately, I didn't buy this. Did you buy the, the memory stick digital audio players, the MagicGate memory stick?

幸运的是没有。我确实有用过索尼那个与SD卡竞争的产品，就是记忆棒。他们的相机还有个与CompactFlash竞争的产品。

Fortunately, not. I did have products that used that Sony thing that was a competitor to SD, the memory memory stick. They also had a thing that was a competitor on their cameras, CompactFlash.

哦，没错。没错。

Oh, that's right. That's right.

所以我记得我用记忆棒Duo的设备是我的PSP，PlayStation Portable。

And so I think the thing that I had that used the memory stick duo was my PSP, my PlayStation Portable.

哦，你以前有PSP吗？

Oh, you had a PSP?

我有过一台PSP。它用了两种索尼已经废弃的媒体格式，除了他们自己没人再用。记忆棒Duo相当于SD卡，游戏卡带是UMD，全称是通用媒体光盘。

I had a PSP. And that used two defunct Sony media types that never got adopted by anyone but them. The Memory Stick Duo for the basically SD card, and the game cartridges were UMDs. It was called a universal media disc.

哦，他们原本还打算在上面卖电影对吧，除了游戏之外？

Oh, and they were gonna sell, movies on it too, right, in addition to games?

是啊。我记得在PSP上看过《史密斯夫妇》。不记得是买的UMD还是怎么弄到的，但

Yeah. I remember watching mister and missus Smith on my PSP. I don't know if I bought the UMD or how it got on there, but

太厉害了。

That's amazing.

其实我做过一个小练习，列出所有我拥有的索尼产品，因为我们家是苹果用户。除了我桌上的Macintosh 8500和父母桌上的G3电脑这两件苹果产品外——我爸可能有第一代iPod，接在索尼音响上用——其他全是索尼的。我有索尼磁带随身听、CD随身听、MD播放器、PS2游戏机、PSP，还有好多副索尼耳机。家里电视是特丽珑显像管的，摄像机从VHS制式到某种DV数字录像带格式的换了好几代。

I actually did a little exercise to write out all the stuff that I had that was Sony because we were an Apple family. So other than the, you know, Macintosh 8,500 that I had at my desk and the g three that my parents had on their desk, we had those two Apple products. And I think my dad had the first iPod, which plugged into our Sony stereo, but everything else was Sony. I had the Sony tape Walkman, the Discman, the mini disc player, a PS two, and the PSP, many many sets of Sony headphones. Our family TV was a Trinitron, multiple family camcorders of going from the VHS version of it down to a they had some other tape did some kind of DV, digital video format tape.

没错，我们家也有过那种。

Yeah. Yep. We had one of those.

那时候，录像机、DVD播放器、几个U盘、我的CRT电脑显示器、客厅的立体声接收器、连接音响的收音机，所有这些都是索尼的。就像，如果你要买一件家用电子产品，而且想要好的，你就会去买索尼。

Then, of course, a VCR, a DVD player, several USB flash drives, my CRT computer monitor, the living room receiver for our stereo, the radio that plugged into the stereo, everything was Sony. It was just like, well, if you were gonna go buy a piece of home electronics and it was gonna be good, you go buy Sony.

你会买索尼的。没错。你甚至都不用看什么功能之类的。你只会想，哦，如果我想要最好的，我就买索尼的版本。

You'll buy the Sony. Yeah. You didn't even really look at, like, the features or anything. You're just like, oh, if I want the best, I get the Sony version.

完全正确。令人惊讶的是，自那以后苹果如何将许多功能整合到他们为数不多的设备中。然后低端市场进入，你知道的，占据了大量市场份额，比如电视等领域。我知道我跳得太快了，我们后面会讲到，但索尼曾经销售的产品范围之广，而且都是市场上最好的，真是令人难以置信。

Totally. And it's just amazing since then how Apple has combined a lot of that functionality into very few of their devices. And then the low end came in and, you know, ate up a lot of market share and other things like TVs. And I know I'm flashing forward and we'll get to that, but it's just incredible the breadth of products that they used to sell that were just the best on the market.

难以置信。所以抛开大事实不谈，八十年代对索尼来说是黄金时期，原因有三：一是CD，二是随身听，三是人寿保险。

Incredible. So the eighties were good for Sony, big facts aside, for three reasons. One, CDs. Two, the Walkman. Three, life insurance.

太疯狂了。我记得当我开始阅读并研究他们的财务时，我在想，这个庞大的索尼金融服务集团是什么？索尼人寿是什么？大卫，索尼人寿是什么？

So crazy. I remember when I started reading and was, like, looking into their financials, I'm like, what is this large Sony Financial Services Group? What is Sony Life? David, what is Sony Life?

索尼人寿是一家寿险公司。他们最初在1979年与美国的保德信人寿保险公司合资成立。据说，这源于盛田昭夫早期的一次美国之行，他去了芝加哥，注意到了保德信大厦，那是芝加哥天际线上非常引人注目的建筑。他问别人，那是什么建筑？他们告诉他，那是保德信人寿保险大厦。

Sony Life is a life insurance company. They originally start in 1979 as a JV with Prudential, the Prudential life insurance company in The US. Mhmm. Supposedly, the reason this comes about is that in one of Marita's trips, pretty early, I think trips through The US, He goes to Chicago and he notices the Prudential Building and the Prudential Building is very very impressive building on the skyline in Chicago and so he asks somebody, oh, what what building is that? And they say, oh, that's the Prudential life insurance building.

据说盛田昭夫当时就想，好吧，人寿保险这个行业我想进入。于是他们成立了这家合资公司。

And Marita supposedly thinks to himself, okay. Life insurance is a business I wanna be in. And so they create this JV.

于是索尼的企业集团化开始了。比如说，他们负责音乐在日本的分销，这些音乐大多会在他们的播放器上播放。现在他们又开始卖人寿保险了。

So the conglomeration of Sony begins. Like, it's one thing to say, oh, they do Japanese distribution of music, which largely gets played on their, you know, players anyway. Now they're selling life insurance.

他们在日本确实如此。后来成为相当大的人寿保险公司。在日本，他们逐渐将业务扩展到菲律宾、台湾和中国，如今在这些地区都很活跃。并且发展成了一项规模可观的业务。在某些年份，特别是近年来，当索尼其他业务受挫时，人寿保险业务贡献了超过50%的经营现金流。

So they do in Japan. It becomes a pretty big life insurer. In Japan, they eventually add The Philippines, Taiwan, and China, and it's active in all of those places today. And it becomes a decent sized business. Like, in some years, in in recent years, as other Sony businesses have stumbled, the life insurance business is contributing like 50% plus of their operating cash flow.

我有一个

I have a

这里有数据。随着发展，我记得在2001年2月，它约占索尼收入的5%。到2014年，其金融部门（包括索尼人寿、索尼银行及其他几项业务）已占到很大比例，他们还有直接面向消费者的银行业务。

stat here. So as it grew, I think in 02/2001, it was like 5% of Sony's revenue. By 2014, its financial arm, which includes Sony Life and Sony Bank and a handful of other things, they have like a direct to consumer bank.

但我认为人寿保险才是大头。

But I believe life is the big business.

没错。2014年，索尼金融集团贡献了索尼总营业利润的63%。

Yeah. In 2014, 63% of Sony's total operating profit was Sony Financial Group.

真惊人。这事我们很少听说。实际上，我也没能深入了解这个业务的具体运作方式。

Amazing. It's this thing that we don't hear about it. And actually, wasn't able to learn too much about how the business works.

不。因为你访问那些网站时，它们全是日语的。索尼银行于2001年在日本作为纯网络消费者银行诞生，可以说是第一家新型银行。

No. Because you go to the websites and they're all in Japanese. Sony Bank came out in 2001 as a web only consumer bank in Japan. So it's kind of the first neo bank.

没错。哎呀，简直有个平行宇宙里索尼同时扮演着苹果、迪士尼和伯克希尔·哈撒韦的角色。这甚至不算平行宇宙。

Yeah. That's right. Oh, man. There's this, like, alternate universe where Sony is Apple and Disney and, like, Berkshire Hathaway all in one. It's not even alternate.

它真实发生过。

It happened.

是的。但当然，从那时到现在情况变得艰难了些。好了听众们，现在该聊聊我们另一家喜爱的公司Statsig了。自从我们上次提及Statsig后，他们有个激动人心的新进展。

Yeah. But, of course, times got a little tougher, between then and now. Alright, listeners. It's time to talk about another one of our favorite companies, Statsig. Since you last heard from us about Statsig, they have a very exciting update.

他们完成了C轮融资，估值达到11亿美元。

They raised their series c, valuing them at $1,100,000,000.

是啊，重大里程碑。祝贺团队。时机也很有趣，因为实验领域现在正真正火热起来。

Yeah. Huge milestone. Congrats to the team. And timing is interesting because the experimentation space is, really heating up.

没错。那么为什么投资者给STAT SEG估值超过十亿美元？因为实验已成为全球顶尖产品团队产品架构中至关重要的一环。确实如此。

Yes. So why do investors value STAT SEG at over a billion dollars? It's because experimentation has become a critical part of the product stack for the world's best product teams. Yep.

这一趋势始于Web 2.0时代的公司，如Facebook、Netflix和Airbnb。这些公司面临一个难题：如何在员工规模扩张至数千人时，仍保持快速迭代的产品与去中心化的工程文化？实验系统正是解决方案的核心。这些系统让公司全员都能获取全局产品指标——从页面浏览量、观看时长到性能数据。

This trend started with web two dot o companies like Facebook and Netflix and Airbnb. Those companies faced a problem. How do you maintain a fast, decentralized product and engineering culture while also scaling up to thousands of employees? Experimentation systems were a huge part of that answer. These systems gave everyone at those companies access to a global set of product metrics, from page views to watch time to performance.

每当团队发布新功能或产品时，他们都能通过这些指标衡量该功能产生的影响。

And then every time a team released a new feature or product, they could measure the impact of that feature on those metrics.

因此Facebook可以设定'增加应用使用时长'这类公司级目标，让各团队自主探索实现路径。当数千名工程师和产品经理同时推进时，就会产生指数级增长。难怪实验系统如今被视为关键基础设施。

So Facebook could set a company wide goal like increasing time in app and let individual teams go and figure out how to achieve it. Multiply this across thousands of engineers and PMs, and boom, you get exponential growth. It's no wonder that experimentation is now seen as essential infrastructure.

没错。如今顶尖产品团队如Notion、OpenAI、Rippling和Figma同样依赖实验系统。但他们不再自建系统，而是直接使用Statsig。Statsig不仅用于实验——过去几年它还整合了快速产品团队所需的全套工具，包括功能开关、产品分析、会话回放等。

Yep. Today's best product teams like Notion, OpenAI, Rippling, and Figma are equally reliant on experimentation. But instead of building it in house, they just use Statsig. And they don't just use Statsig for experimentation. Over the last few years, Statsig has added all the tools that fast product teams need, like feature flags, product analytics, session replays, and more.

若您希望帮助团队的工程师和产品经理加速开发、优化决策，请访问statsig.com/acquired或点击节目说明中的链接。他们提供丰厚的免费套餐、5万美元的初创企业计划，以及适合大企业的实惠合同。只需告知是Ben和David推荐即可。那么大卫，索尼金融服务确实是门长久的好生意，即便经历起伏也保持稳健。

So if you would like to help your team's engineers and PMs figure out how to build faster and make smarter decisions, go to statsig.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes. They have a super generous free tier, a $50,000 startup program, and affordable enterprise contracts for large companies. Just tell them that Ben and David sent you. Alright. So, David, Sony Financial Services, good business for a long time, enduringly good even through some ups and downs.

索尼接下来会面临哪些起伏？

What are some ups and downs that are coming up for Sony?

短期会有个大高峰，但长期可能回落至中性水平。最具讽刺的是——1986年CBS遭遇恶意收购，拉里·蒂施大举买入CBS股份。当时与索尼的合资企业是头现金奶牛，整个唱片业务也很优质。但蒂施想剥离变现这笔资产。

Well, there's a big up, and then there's a down, probably down to neutral in the long term. The big up is that irony of ironies, in 1986, CBS gets a corporate raider who comes in and assumes a large stake in the company. One Larry Tisch buys a large stake in CBS. And there's this cash cow in the JV with Sony and the records business as a whole is a nice business. Tisch wants to offload it and sell it, you know, monetize it.

他正在与一大堆私募股权之类的人讨论出售事宜。而经营CBS唱片、哥伦比亚唱片的人对此并不太高兴。于是他们去找索尼说，嘿，Tish想卖掉这个。我们预计整个业务的报价可能在12.5亿美元左右。

And so he's talking to a whole bunch of other, you know, private equity and the like about selling. And the folks who are running CBS Records, Columbia Records, they're not too happy about this. So they go to Sony and say, like, hey. Tish wants to sell this thing. We think the bids are probably gonna come in somewhere around 1 and a quarter billion for the whole business.

你们有兴趣直接买下整个CBS唱片公司吗？

Would you be interested in actually buying all of CBS records?

直到现在，他们仍通过合资公司拥有日本分销合作伙伴，这些人说：来买下整个该死的唱片公司吧。

And to this date, there's still like a Japanese distribution partner via this JV, and they're saying, come buy the whole freaking record label.

是的。在八十年代这个时间点，有两件事正在发生。第一，索尼正迅速崛起。CD此时已经非常流行，索尼已成为全球性大品牌。所以认为索尼可以买下整个CBS唱片并非没有道理。

Yep. Now at this point, in the eighties, there are two things going on. One, Sony is massively ascendant. The CD is already really big at this point like Sony is a worldwide large global brand. So it's not unreasonable to think Sony could buy all of CBS records.

八十年代发生的另一件事是，日元对美元大幅、大幅升值。这使得日本公司在海外进行收购比以往容易得多。

The other thing happening in the eighties is that Japan's currency has massively, massively appreciated versus the dollar. And it is much easier for Japanese companies to go make acquisitions abroad than it would have been otherwise.

这当然加剧了许多美国人对日本接管所有美国企业的恐惧。我的意思是，甚至贯穿九十年代，美国人中存在一种令人难以置信的排外、反日本商业的心态，觉得他们会来买走我们所有核心资产。说实话，回看那些看似发生在现代时期的采访，对日本人的妖魔化让人感到非常...我不知道，就是觉得非常不人道。你不是还发给我一个

Which is, of course, feeding many Americans' fears of Japan taking over all of American business. I mean, there's this incredible xenophobic, even through the nineties, very anti Japanese business mentality among Americans that, you know, they're gonna come buy all of our staples. And it's honestly a little chilling to go back and watch some of these interviews that look like they're in reasonably modern times, and the vilification of the Japanese is a very, I don't know, it just feels it's very inhumane. Didn't you actually you sent me one

那是唐纳德·特朗普的采访片段

that was like a Donald Trump interview from this

这次我做到了。

time I did.

他在抨击日本。是啊。

Where he's bashing Japan. Yeah.

太好了。

Great.

没错。这就是我们生活的世界。

Yep. The world we live in.

许多事物在改变，但又有许多始终如一。

So much changes and yet so much stays the same.

蒂什和其他人之间来回拉扯，闹剧不断。蒂什推迟了一阵子交易，又回来了。基本上玛丽塔的态度是，我们愿意接受任何价格。我们绝对想拥有这项资产，我们知道它非常优质。

So there's a bunch of back and forth and drama with Tish and others. Tish postpones the sale for a while, comes back. Basically, Marita is like, we're good for any price. We would we absolutely wanna own this asset. We know it's a great asset.

这对我们在日本的业务非常有利。我们想全资控股这家合资企业，这样就能掌控总部的现金流。我们也认为整体唱片业前景不错。最终他们以20亿美元的价格收购了它。这在当时非常疯狂，到处都是头条新闻。

It's great for us here in Japan. We wanna be a 100% owners of this JV so we can control the cash flow at corporate. We also think the overall record business is pretty good. They end up buying it for $2,000,000,000. And at the time, this is crazy, like headlines all over the place.

索尼收购CBS唱片公司，这本身就是个大新闻，原因正如你所说。人们还觉得这个价格太疯狂了——20亿美元买一家唱片公司。虽然我没能找到完整数据，但根据我看到的资料，他们支付的收购价大约只有盈利的五倍。这充分说明了八十年代的商业环境，当时人们认为五倍盈利的收购价简直不可思议。

Sony buys CBS records, that's news in and of itself for all the reasons you said. People also think the price is nuts. $2,000,000,000 for a record company. Now, I believe I wasn't actually able to find the full numbers, but based on what I read, I think it was only about five x earnings that they paid for this. So that says a lot about the business environment of the eighties when people thought that five x earnings was a crazy price to pay.

而就在前几天，我们还在发短信讨论一家盈利四倍的公司，当时我们多兴奋能进行这样一笔价值投资啊。

Meanwhile, you and I were just texting the other day about a company that was four x earnings and, how excited we were to be doing a value investment in it.

没错，科技价值投资。结果证明这对索尼来说是笔相当划算的买卖。近年来，以CBS唱片业务为核心的索尼音乐，每年运营现金流超过20亿美元，而他们持有这项业务已经三十年了。这真是笔非常非常划算的收购。

Right. Tech value investing. This ends up being a pretty good buy for Sony. So as of recent years, Sony Music, the core of which is the CBS Records business, does over $2,000,000,000 in operating cash flow every single year, and they've owned it for thirty years. So that was pretty pretty good pickup.

我是说，索尼现在有众多业务线。由于他们涉足的领域实在太广，这个数据听起来可能没有实际那么惊人。但来自CBS唱片的索尼音乐部门，我记得占到了公司总收入的12%。

I mean, and Sony has a bunch of business lines now. So, you know, this stat almost isn't gonna sound as impressive as it should just because of the sheer breadth of stuff that they own. But the music segment, Sony Music, which comes from CBS Records, did, I think, 12% of revenue of the whole company.

是啊，这笔交易太棒了。受此鼓舞，他们又动了做另一笔媒体内容交易的念头。

Yeah. This is a great deal. On the back of this, they are enticed to do another media content deal.

从财务角度看这确实是笔好买卖。如果你是伯克希尔哈撒韦，纯粹来收购持有，那很棒。这最终会成为一笔很棒的财务投资。但从战略角度看，存在巨大问号。他们能否在管理不断扩张的电子业务和人寿保险公司的同时，有效运营这家全资拥有的唱片公司？更何况他们还在打你暗示的收购电影制片厂的主意？

And let me say, this is a great deal from a financial perspective. If you're Berkshire Hathaway and you're just gonna come in and own something, great. Like, this ends up being a great financial purchase. From a strategic perspective, big open question mark. Like, are they able to effectively manage a growing electronics business and a life insurance company and now a music label that's wholly owned while they, again, cast their eye where you're alluding to in buying a movie studio?

这开始引发关于专注度的重大疑问，更不用说是否存在协同效应了。因为我认为Marita和Oga深信，要继续成为成功的成长型电子公司，他们必须拥有那些设备上播放的内容，或者至少能利用全资内容设计更多定制体验的杠杆能力。但说实话，我不确定这个设想是否真的实现了。

Like, it starts to open this big question of not only focus, but are there synergies here? Because I think Marita and Oga are pretty convinced that to continue being a successful growing electronics company, they need to own the content that ends up on those devices or at least have some leverage and ability to design more custom experiences using wholly owned content. And, like, I don't know that that ever actually became true.

是的。我认为确实没有。从我的角度来看，有趣的是回顾CBS唱片交易。正如你指出的，那笔交易不仅财务上非常划算，而且以他们支付的价格获得这项资产简直太值了。

Yeah. I think it certainly did not. So here's what's interesting in my perspective on these. Going back to the CBS records deal. A, as you point out, that was just a great financial deal and a great asset to own at the price that they paid for it.

没错。我认为可以说，任何所谓的协同效应——你知道的，很大程度上因为索尼等公司当时的行为，'协同效应'这个词已经臭名昭著了。如果真存在协同效应，在音乐行业或许还说得通，毕竟索尼拥有CD格式专利。但在电影行业几乎肯定不适用。这里说的是索尼1989年以32亿美元收购哥伦比亚影业，不过这只是股权收购价。

Yep. I think you could argue to the extent any of this synergies, you know, thing and obviously that's a, I think in large part, synergies became a bad word because of what companies like Sony did during this time. I think if any of that were valid, it would be valid in the music business just given Sony's history, given their ownership of the CD format. It's almost definitely not true in the movie business. Now, of course, we're talking about Sony buying Columbia Pictures in 1989 for $3,200,000,000, but that was the equity purchase price.

最终算上债务承担等费用，他们花费约60亿美元收购哥伦比亚影业。当时所有人都清楚这远超公司实际价值。据说真正驱动力是Betamax的失败——马里塔认为这是公司重大挫折，让他们意识到自己在这个行业毫无话语权。他们觉得只要拥有制片厂，至少能在与卢·瓦瑟曼等人谈判格式、许可费及战略事项时获得席位。我认为这才是真正的动机。

Ultimately, when they assume debt and a few other things, they spend about $6,000,000,000 to buy Columbia Pictures. Everybody at the time, I think, knew that that truly was way more than the company was worth. Supposedly, the real driving factor behind it was Betamax that Marita felt like that was such a defeat for the company and, like, a point where they realized they had no leverage in this industry and they felt that if they owned a studio, they could at least be at the table against the Lew Wassermann's and the like when they were negotiating formats and licensing fees and all the strategic stuff. So I think that was, like, the real driving factor.

理论上听起来不错，但实际结果是硬件团队和电影团队内斗不断。正如我们在往期节目多次讨论的，这本质是垂直战略与水平战略的矛盾——设备部门希望产品能播放尽可能多的内容（包括盗版内容）。毕竟要推销电子产品，你就得像瑞士那样保持绝对中立：买这个设备，想怎么玩就怎么玩。

It sounds good on paper, but I think what ended up happening is that there was a lot of infighting between the hardware teams and the movie teams. And so you had, like, misaligned incentives where and we've talked about this a lot on previous episodes, but it's the vertical versus horizontal strategy issue where the devices people wanted to make it so that they could play the widest amount of content possible. By the way, including pirated content. If you're trying to move electronic devices, you wanna be super duper Switzerland. Like, buy this thing and have as much fun and get as much value as you want out of it.

而音乐部门和电影工作室则想利用这些设备渠道来促进音乐电影销售。除非能找到激励相容的方案，否则这就是个死结。

Meanwhile, the music label folks in the film studio want to leverage the channel that they have with these devices to find a way to increase sales of music and movies. And unless you can figure out some way to align incentives, you have a huge problem there.

完全同意。我认为索尼因此面临的更大问题是——你提到硬件时我不得不反复确认史料——他们所谓的'硬件'当然是指消费电子设备，但同时又大谈'软件'。

Yep. Totally. Totally agree. I think one other thing that is probably a bigger issue for Sony that crops up out of this is, you know, you mentioned hardware there. I had to do a bunch of double takes reading Sony history stuff.

读史料时觉得很奇怪，他们描述的'软件'完全不是我们理解的那个概念。在当时的索尼内部，内容产品被称为软件。至少在我查阅的资料里如此，或许日语表述会有所不同。

They refer to hardware, of course, as the consumer devices that they were making, but then they talk a lot about software. And it was weird to me reading this as I'm reading about their software. And I'm like, that doesn't sound like software as I think about it. Internally and so at Sony at this time, they think of content as software. At least in what I was reading, and maybe this was different in in Japanese.

但他们确实考虑过，你知道的，音乐业务、电影业务，最终还有游戏业务，这些都将作为软件运行在他们的硬件上。

But they literally thought about, you know, the music business, the movie business, and eventually the gaming business as software that would go on their hardware.

从某些方面来说，我认为游戏业务无疑是最具可信度的。

Which in some ways, I mean, gaming is definitely the most credible.

最接近的。是的。在我看来，索尼的凯撒为索尼未来几十年的衰落埋下了伏笔，因为他们完全不懂软件。他们不懂计算。在他们看来，消费电子设备就是计算，而计算机是另一回事，消费电子设备会占据人们的生活，但他们没意识到计算机才是会占据

The closest. Yeah. To my mind, this is where Sony the Caesar sown for Sony's demise in the coming decades after this was they just totally didn't get software. They didn't get computing. Like, in their view, consumer devices was computing and, like, computers were the separate thing and consumer devices would take over people's lives, and they didn't see that computers were gonna take

人们生活的主导。如果你正在观看视频版本，我们会放上股票走势图。但如果不是，试着查看索尼的股价历史并放大时间轴。这家公司在九十年代经历了惊人的上涨，在互联网泡沫破裂时遭受重创，或者说大约在同一时期。之后基本上就是一个转型故事。

over people's lives. If you're watching the video version of this, we'll put up a stock chart. But if you're not, try and look at Sony's stock price over time and zoom all the way out. The company had an incredible run up through the nineties, got hit hard in the dot com bubble crash or at least around that same time. And then it's basically been a turnaround story since then.

有趣的是，尽管从企业价值角度看，公司确实实现了转型，但你提到的那些种子——擅长硬件却始终不理解软件——依然存在。比如我们正在使用的这些索尼相机，我深信索尼Alpha 7c在同级别相机中能拍出最漂亮的照片。虽然需要做些色彩调整之类的，但从传感器原始图像的角度来看，简直惊艳。

And it's fascinating that even though from an enterprise value perspective, the company really has turned it around, these seeds that you're talking about, David, of being very good at hardware and still not really getting software still show up. Like, these cameras that we're recording on, I'm pretty convinced that the Sony Alpha seven c will produce the most beautiful pictures of any camera in its class. You have to do a little bit of color stuff and whatnot, but, like, from a raw image off the sensor perspective, amazing.

这些相机太不可思议了。

These cameras are incredible.

但用它们拍摄并不愉快。你知道，不像用富士相机那样顺手。这些索尼相机的菜单系统——当你需要操作设备上的软件时——简直让人抓狂。真是折磨，太令人沮丧了。

But they are not fun to shoot with. You know, it's not like shooting with a Fuji. And the menu system on these Sony's, like, when you need to interact with the software on the devices, it is like, oh my god. It is truly torture. So frustrating.

我认为他们确实在制造这些神奇设备方面做得非常出色。他们就像是苹果的反面——他们不知道如何开发能突显硬件优势的优秀软件和服务，只是单纯擅长制造出色的硬件。

I think you really nailed it where it's like, they can make these fantastic devices. They're like the opposite of Apple. They don't know how to build fantastic software and services that differentiate their hardware. They just make great hardware.

是的。我觉得这个关键点，你知道，在八十年代末九十年代初，正是他们制定战略的时期。那几年也是最初三位元老的最后岁月——盛田昭夫1993年中风后基本丧失工作能力，井深大1997年去世，大贺典雄九十年代末也开始逐步退休。

Yeah. And I think this point, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties is where they set their strategy. And and these were the last years of the, you know, the original triumvirate of, so Marita has a stroke in 1993 that leaves him pretty incapacitated. Ibuka dies in 1997. Oga starts phasing towards retirement in the late nineties.

但正是在这个时期，他们将战略定位为硬件（即消费电子产品）和内容（他们视作软件及两者的结合）。你看，这策略其实没错。看看如今的科技公司，内容与科技结合都是重头戏，但索尼恰恰缺少真正的软件元素。

But, yeah, during this time, they set their strategy as hardware, meaning consumer devices, and content, which they think of as software and the marrying of those two things. And, you know, look like that's not wrong. Look at the tech companies today, like content and tech is a big thing that they all do, but Sony's just missing that true software element.

没错。我觉得这个观点很对。有意思的是他们近年做了个明智决策——我知道这话题跳得有点远——他们在流媒体大战中采取了军火商策略。谢天谢地我们没看到'索尼Plus'出现。

Yeah. I think that's right. It is interesting. One thing that they have smartly done is in recent years, and I know I'm flashing way forward, they have played the arms dealer strategy in the streaming wars. Like, fortunately, we have not seen Sony Plus.

我们看到索尼基本上与网飞签订了优先合作协议，索尼影业的任何作品网飞都有优先选择权。但他们同时也和迪士尼签订了迪士尼+和Hulu的授权协议。这等于在说：我们不在乎谁赢这场战争，我们知道内容永远有价值，我们的战略就是不跟风搞垂直整合。

We are seeing Sony decide I think that they've basically done a first look deal with Netflix. So anything that comes out from Sony Pictures, Netflix, you know, has the first opportunity for. But they also have signed a licensing deal with Disney for Disney plus and Hulu too. So they're basically saying, like, look, we kinda don't care who wins here. We know the content's gonna be valuable, and we're deciding our strategy is not to vertically integrate like the rest of you.

你看看华纳媒体旗下DC IP在HBO Max上拍电影的那团乱麻——现在华纳媒体到底归谁所有来着？

You know, you look over at the morass of mess that is HBO Max producing movies with DC IP that is produced by WarnerMedia that is owned by who's WarnerMedia owned by at this point?

AT&T

AT and

T？听起来没错。

T? That sounds right.

我实在分不清它们。

I can't keep them all straight.

是啊。比如索尼就没参与这场游戏，我觉得这很有意思。

Yeah. Like, Sony's not playing that game, which I think is interesting.

没错。而且他们也如我所料，在图像传感器领域扮演着军火商的角色很到位。

Yep. And they also are where I thought you were going with this, they're playing the arms dealer role well with image sensors.

哦，是的。不过

Oh, yeah. But

在进入现代话题前，我们还有个关于历史和事实的重要故事要讲。我对此特别兴奋，这当然就是PlayStation的故事。

we have one more big story that we gotta tell on history and facts before we move towards the present day here. And this I'm so excited for this. This, of course, is the PlayStation story.

我差点忘了还有另一个重要故事。

I kinda forgot that there's another big story somehow.

天啊，你还没讲完吗？我以为所有人都知道PlayStation的故事呢。

That's like, Jesus, you're not done yet? I assumed that, like, everybody knew the PlayStation story.

不，你发给我的每一条信息都让我震惊不已。

No. You were blowing my mind with every text that you sent me.

哦，天哪。

Oh, boy.

我有过PS2和PSP，却不知道这些背景。好吧，PlayStation是怎么诞生的？

And I had a PS two and a PSP, and I did not know these things. Alright. How did the PlayStation come to be?

1989年，在索尼第一个黄金十年的末期，公司有位资深工程师叫久夛良木健。他在早期数码相机（索尼首款数码相机Mavica）和液晶显示技术（被视为下一代电视和消费设备的核心）等领域成就斐然。时任社长大贺典雄很器重他，认为他是公司的明日之星。当时久夛良木的女儿得到了红白机（即NES的日本名称），她非常喜欢。

So in 1989, at the end of the first golden decade for Sony, There is a senior engineer working at the company named Ken Kutaragi, and he's done great work on stuff like, the early digital cameras, the Mavica, which was Sony's first digital camera, and on, LCD displays, which are gonna be seen as sort of part of the next generation of televisions and consumer devices. Oga, Nori Oga loves him. You know, thinks he's a rising star in the company. And Ken's daughter around this time, they get her a Famicom, which of course is the Japanese name for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES. And she loves it.

他观察女儿玩游戏时发现，当时所有人都把电子游戏和任天堂设备当作玩具。但久夛良木隐约意识到：'我觉得这可能会成为大事业。电子游戏不该只是小孩子的玩具。看到女儿如此沉迷，我认为索尼应该进军这个行业。'不过当时他只是公司的一名普通工程师。

And he just observes her playing with this and everybody at the time thinks video games and Nintendo systems are toys. And Ken kinda sees this, like, I think this could be really big. I think video games could be more than just toys for little kids. Like, I watch how my daughter is so consumed with this thing and I think it could be big and I think Sony should get involved in this industry. Now, he's just an engineer at the company.

他并非管理层成员。不知通过什么方式（这部分缺乏久夛良木本人的一手资料），他私下联系上了任天堂，并得知对方正在开发NES（任天堂娱乐系统）的继任机型——超级任天堂娱乐系统（SNES经典款）。

He's not part of the management team Somehow, and I don't know how, there's not a lot of firsthand history from Ken about this. Somehow he connects with Nintendo personally. And he hears that from Nintendo that they are working on the successor system to the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the SNES classic, of course.

在角落周围，做一些紫色的按钮。

Around the corners, make some purple buttons.

哦，太棒了。Ken对此非常兴奋。他说，我能帮忙吗？我能参与吗？索尼能帮忙吗？

Oh, so great. Ken's really excited about this. And he says, well, can I help? Can I work on it? Can Sony help?

任天堂说，可以。实际上，我们正在为设备寻找一款非常棒的音频芯片，一个音频处理器。

And Nintendo says, yeah. Actually, we're looking for a really great sound chip for the device, an audio processor.

因为之前电子游戏里的所有声音都只是，你知道的，

Because all sounds in video games before were just, you know,

哔哔声和嘟嘟声。对，对。超级任天堂有超级棒的音频，真的很棒。Ken和索尼设计了那个让这成为可能的芯片。

beeps and boops. Yeah. Yeah. The Super Nintendo had super great audio, like, really good stuff. And Ken and Sony designed that chip that made it possible.

他没有告诉索尼的任何人他在做这个。当到了真正要签协议，超级任天堂即将发布的时候，索尼管理层非常生气。哇哦。Ken完全绕过了流程，基本上是为任天堂这个玩具公司做了这个音频芯片的组件工程工作。久夛良木差点被解雇，但大贺典雄介入并表示，不行。

Now, he doesn't tell anybody at Sony that he's working on it. And when it comes time to, like, actually, you know, do the agreement and the Super Nintendo is gonna ship, management at Sony is pissed. Woah. Ken totally went around protocol here and essentially did this component engineering work for Nintendo, this toy company making this sound chip. Kutaragi nearly gets fired, but Oga steps in and is like, no.

不，不。我喜欢这家伙。他很棒。谁知道呢？

No. No. Like, I like this guy. He's great. And who knows?

或许电子游戏这东西会变得有趣。让我们看看它的发展。他让CEO介入，允许项目继续推进。他们交付了芯片。超级任天堂取得了巨大成功。

Maybe this video games thing could become interesting. Let's see where it goes. He allows CEO steps in, allows the project to continue. They ship the chip. The Super Nintendo becomes a huge success.

全球销量略低于5000万台，这个数字非常庞大，即便在今天看来也是极其成功的游戏主机。对索尼来说是一段很棒的新合作关系。事情进展顺利。现在超级任天堂——大多数听众都知道，甚至年轻人都可能了解——是基于卡带的系统。就是那种需要插入主机的实体游戏卡带。

It sells just under 50,000,000 units worldwide, which is enormous, like enormous for I mean, for today, that is a very successful video game console. Great new relationship for Sony. Things go along. Now the Super Nintendo, as most folks listening will know, probably even younger folks, was a cartridge based system. Literal game cartridges that you stuck into the system.

卡带有些优势，比如读取速度快、即时加载。不像后来PlayStation那样有加载时间。但卡带的缺点是无法存储太多数据。因此游戏开发商，尤其是那些基于PC平台的开发者，他们游说任天堂希望能用CD格式为任天堂开发游戏。任天堂表示，哦，好吧。

Cartridges had some advantages, like there were, you know, fast read times, instant load times. You didn't have any of this stuff you would later have with the PlayStation with loading times. But the downside to cartridges is you can't fit much data on them. And so game developers, especially developers who work with PCs and, you know, PC based systems, They're lobbying Nintendo that they want to be able to develop on the CD format for Nintendo as well. Nintendo's like, oh, okay.

我们和索尼有这层关系。不如一起开发个系统吧。这太棒了。他们联系了Ken。Ken说，太好了。

Well, we've got this relationship with Sony. Let's work on a system together. This is amazing. They call up Ken. Ken's like, great.

我们可以为超级任天堂开发一个索尼CD驱动器外设，让开发者能用这个外设为超任制作CD游戏。另外，我们还可以做个索尼品牌的整合主机，把外设和超任合二为一。就是索尼生产的单一硬件，既是超任主机又自带光驱。

We can build an add on for the Super Nintendo of a Sony CD drive that developers can then make CD based games for the Super Nintendo with our add on. And also, why don't we also make a Sony branded console that combines the two things, like the add on and the Super Nintendo. So it's just one piece of hardware made by Sony that is a Super Nintendo, but also has the disc drive on it.

我们会把这个放到视频里——给Spotify和YouTube的观众们。David发给我这个东西时，我还在想：这张照片是什么？这是个看起来像任天堂或超任的设备，但上面写着索尼PlayStation。

We will put this up on the video for those of you on Spotify and YouTube. David sent me this thing, and I was like, what is this photo? It is a device that looks like a Nintendo or Super Nintendo, kind of, but it says Sony PlayStation on it.

能玩超任游戏的索尼Play Station。天啊。所以这些都完成了。他们真的做出了这个产品。

The Sony Play Station that plays Super Nintendo games. Oh my gosh. So this is all done. They made this freaking product.

他们发货了吗？

Did they ship it?

我不认为他们真的发货了。我想他们只完成了最终原型机。这两家公司对此非常兴奋，你知道，这是重大合作。1991年在CES展会上，这还是E3展会之前的事。

I don't believe they actually shipped it. I think they only had, like, final prototypes made. So the two companies, they're so excited about this. This is, you know, big partnership. In 1991 at CES, this is before e three.

当时CES仍是游戏产业的主要展会。索尼宣布了合作，并推出了索尼任天堂PlayStation。他们展示了这款产品。第二天在任天堂的主题演讲中，任天堂谈到他们与CD格式的原始开发者之一合作，这家拥有辉煌历史和传承的伟大科技公司将首次为任天堂带来CD游戏体验，这个秘密合作他们一直未对外公布，直到今天——飞利浦。

So CES was still the major video game industry conference. Sony announces the partnership and they announce the Sony Nintendo PlayStation. They show it off. The next day at the Nintendo keynote, Nintendo talks about how they've partnered with one of the original developers of the CD format, this great technology company with amazing history and legacy to bring CD gaming to Nintendo for the first time, this secret partnership that they've been working on that they have not announced to anybody until today, Philips.

不会吧。真的吗？什么？他们就这样一直瞒着索尼？

No way. Yes. What? And they just kept Sony in the dark the whole time?

我认为这在游戏商业史和日本商业文化中都是件大事。这简直是终极背叛。就像任天堂直接在索尼背后捅了一刀。哇哦。然后转头选择了最初的合作伙伴飞利浦。完全保密。

This is a huge thing in, I think, both gaming business history and, like, Japanese business culture. Like, this is the ultimate betrayal. This is, like, literally Nintendo, like, shoving, like, a machete in the back of Sony Woah. And going with their original partner, Phillips. Totally secretive.

所以飞利浦为超级任天堂制作了CD外设？

So there was a CD add on for the Super Nintendo that Phillips made?

没有。这个计划最终未能实现。飞利浦并未为超级任天堂生产任何外设。哇哦。实际发生的是飞利浦推出了自己的游戏主机CD-I。

No. This never actually comes to fruition as intended. There is no add on for the Super Nintendo that Phillips makes. Woah. What does happen is Phillips makes, like, their own game console called the CD I that comes out.

你还记得这个吗？这就像是个超级冷门的东西

Do you remember this? This is like a super obscure

所以任天堂在索尼宣布后的第二天就这么做了，结果却根本没和飞利浦合作推出产品？

So Nintendo did this to Sony the day after their announcement only to not actually ship the thing with Philips?

他们实际上并没有推出产品。任天堂确实为CD-i制作了一些游戏，所以他们之间有种合作关系，但最终不了了之。任天堂虽然伟大，但众所周知会做出一些令人质疑的商业决策，比如坚持为N64使用卡带等等。为任天堂辩护一下，他们这么做是因为索尼打算保留基于超级任天堂光盘游戏的授权权利，而这正是主机游戏行业最赚钱的部分。

They don't actually ship the thing. Nintendo does make some games for the CD I, so they have, like, this partnership, but it never goes anywhere. Nintendo, as great as they are, notoriously make questionable business decisions, like sticking with cartridge for the n 64 and all sorts of stuff. Now in Nintendo's defense, the reason that they do this is that Sony was gonna retain licensing rights to the Super Nintendo disc based games. And that's where all the money is in the console games industry.

所以，众所周知，正如我们接下来要讨论的，主机厂商几乎总是亏本卖硬件，然后通过游戏授权来赚取所有利润。比如任天堂销售《马里奥》和《塞尔达传说》等自家开发和拥有的游戏时就能赚钱。

So, like, notoriously, and as we'll get into, console manufacturers almost always sell the hardware at a loss, and then they make all the money from the games. Licenses to the games. And you can make money from games either, like, for Nintendo when they sell Mario and Legend of Zelda and, like, games that they own and develop.

他们能拿到100%的收益。

They keep a 100% of the money.

他们能获得100%的收益。但如果你是主机和格式的所有者，当第三方如EA、动视或Bungie等公司在你平台上销售游戏时，你还能通过授权费赚钱。索尼本可以从任天堂的光盘业务中获得这部分或大部分收益，所以任天堂才这么做。

They get a 100% of the money. But then if you're the system owner and the format owner, you get money as a license when third parties like EA or Activision or, you know, Bungie or whomever sell games on your system. Sony was gonna get that money or most of that money for the Nintendo disc stuff. So that's why Nintendo did this.

我明白了。所以他们原本是能通过授权游戏开发工具包来赚钱的许可方。

I see. So they were the license holder that that or the the person who could issue licenses and make money on people using the game dev kit.

我确信这是索尼与任天堂之间的某种分裂，但索尼从中获得的经济利益让任天堂感到不满。

And I'm sure it was some split between Sony and Nintendo, but Sony was getting enough of that economics that Nintendo was unhappy.

或许任天堂审视后认为情况不妙。但如果我们真的执行这个计划，无论如何这对我们都是一笔糟糕的交易，实在没有继续的理由。

So maybe Nintendo looked at this and said, this is gonna be bad. But if we actually proceed with this plan, it's such a bad deal for us anyway that there's really no reason to continue it.

但他们处理的方式真是天啊。所以任天堂当时可能觉得，好吧，索尼自己不会涉足游戏行业。他们做不到，毕竟连第一方工作室都没有。

But the way they did it oh my gosh. And so Nintendo, I think, thought that, like, alright. Well, Sony, you know, Sony's not gonna get into the games industry themselves. They can't do that. Like, they have no first party studios.

任天堂可以研发新主机，我们会把《马里奥兄弟》和《塞尔达》放上去，这些内容都是我们自主开发的。而索尼既没有这些资源，也没有开发者关系网。因此按照任天堂的预想，索尼此时只有三个选择：要么彻底放弃。

Nintendo can go make a new console. We'll put Mario Brothers on it and Zelda and like, we make that stuff ourselves. Like, Sony doesn't have any of that and they don't have any relationships with developers, etcetera. So Sony has three options at this point as Nintendo expects. They can completely give up.

第二，他们可以找当时的任天堂竞争对手世嘉合作。索尼确实尝试过，但世嘉又犯了个愚蠢错误，表示兴趣不大——当时他们规模小得多。嗯。

Two, they could go to Sega and try and partner with Sega, the Nintendo competitor at the time. They actually try to do that. Sega in another boneheaded move is like, yeah, no, we're not that interested. They were just like a much smaller company at that point. Mhmm.

第三个选择是尝试自主开发。毕竟已经完成了主机的全部工程设计，管理层心想：不如我们自己来干。你能看出我讲这段历史时有多兴奋。

And then the third option is to try, you know, they've done all this engineering work on making a console. Was like, well, we could just try and do this ourselves. So the Sony board and the management team, you can tell I'm just like loving this.

完全同意。你都笑得合不拢嘴了。感觉我们终于能好好聊聊久违的游戏历史了。

Totally. You're grinning ear to ear. It's like we finally get to dive into some video game history for the first time in a while.

我知道。已经有一阵子了。董事会和管理层投票决定放弃这个游戏项目。所以，基本上就是这样。真的吗？就像Walkman的遭遇一样。

I know. It's been a little while. The board and the management team, they vote to just abandon the gaming project. So, yeah, like, basically Really? It's just like the Walkman.

好像所有人都反对这么做。但久夛良木他，

Like, everybody is against doing this. But Kuduragi is,

像是在游说。

like Lobbying.

是的。在索尼内部推动这件事。而大贺先生则表示，好吧，我明白你想做这个。这可能是个大项目。

Yeah. Questing within Sony to make this happen. And Oga is, alright. I I see that, like, you wanna do this. This could be big.

在母公司索尼内部行不通。他把久夛良木和整个项目转移到了索尼音乐旗下的CBS唱片公司。

It's not gonna work within Sony, the parent company. He transfers Kutaragi and the whole project to Sony Music to CBS Records.

那之前是在电子部门下面吗？

And so was it within electronics before?

没错。原本是在核心的电子业务部门。然后他把整个部门基本上都迁移了。

Yeah. It was within, like, the core Wow. Electronics business. And he moves the whole, you know, division essentially.

音乐。

Music.

转向音乐领域，某种程度上是为了保护它。这样，在公司内部，他们实际上可以从政治角度做到这一点。

Over into music just to, like, kinda protect it. So that, like, politically, they could actually do this within the company.

让我为那些好奇的听众解释一下，这最终是否值得？今年，视频游戏产业规模高达1800亿美元，而好莱坞仅为500亿美元。所以，是的，它早已远超玩具范畴。看看索尼对2021年的预测，他们认为游戏部门将贡献2.9万亿日元收入，占其总收入9.9万亿的近30%。

And let me just, like, for listeners who are like, does this end up being worth their while? Not only is the video game industry this year a $180,000,000,000 industry compared to Hollywood, which is $50,000,000,000? So, yes, it ended up being much, much more than a toy. If you actually look at Sony's predictions or projections for this year for 2021, they think that they will do, let's see, 2,900,000,000,000.0 yen in their gaming segment out of 9.9 total. So they think that, like, close to 30% of their revenue for all of Sony is going to come from gaming.

我认为，这无疑是当今索尼最具价值的业务板块。

I mean, it's I think unquestionably the most valuable part of Sony these days.

从利润角度来看，我敢说上个季度游戏业务占比接近50%。

And from a profits perspective, I'm pretty sure it's close to 50% at least last quarter.

这就是游戏主机行业的本质——正如我所说，利润主要来自游戏销售。商业模式在于尽可能扩大硬件装机量，从而销售更多游戏。任天堂和世嘉（后者程度较轻）在允许索尼进入市场时犯了致命战术错误。索尼拥有远超两者的财力，能够承受主机销售的巨大亏损，以换取长期软件销售优势。

Well, and this is the thing about the games business and the console business. As I was saying, you make all the money from selling games. And so the way the business works is you wanna get the largest installed base possible on the consoles, on the hardware so that you can sell as many games as possible. And this is where Nintendo and Sega to a lesser degree just made such a huge tactical error in letting Sony into the market. Sony had so much more financial resources than either of them, so they could afford to take much larger losses on console sales to play for the longer term game of getting as much software sales as possible.

这本质上是一场终极风险投资赌局。我们押注于具有极高运营杠杆的行业——承担固定成本后，就能享受极低边际成本和超高毛利率的未来，同时将原有竞争者挤出市场。

I mean, it's it's the ultimate venture capital bet. Right? It's how much can we throw into a business that we think will have really high operating leverage where we can cover all the fixed costs and then sort of pull up the rope behind us and then have amazing low marginal cost, high gross margin futures ahead of us where we sort of elbowed out all the incumbents.

正如我所说，超级任天堂取得了惊人的成功，这款极其畅销的游戏机在全球售出了5000万台。而初代PlayStation销量超过1亿台，他们还成功争取到了所有主要的第三方开发商加盟。

So the Super Nintendo, like I said, was this amazing success, hugely successful console, sells 50,000,000 units in its life worldwide. The original PlayStation sells over a 100,000,000 units, and they win over all the major third party developers to come over.

他们是怎么做到的？

How do they do that?

有几个方法。这花了他们一段时间。早期的宣传点有几个：第一，我们将采用CD作为媒介，这样你们就能真正制作想要的游戏，不再受限于卡带格式。第二，我们在之前的几期节目中也讨论过这一点。

There are a couple ways. It takes them a while. The early pitch is a few things. One, we're gonna use CDs as the medium so you can, like, actually make the games that you want to instead of being limited to the cartridge format. Two, and we've talked about this on a few other episodes in the past.

要知道，任天堂与硅谷图形公司有合作关系。开发任天堂游戏需要工业级工作站。哦，你不能只用普通电脑，必须投入大量硬件设备来开发任天堂游戏。

You know, Nintendo, they had this relationship with Silicon Graphics. Like, you needed industrial workstations to develop games for Nintendo. Oh. You couldn't just use PCs. You had to have, like, really invest in a big, like, chunk of hardware to build Nintendo games.

而PlayStation完全基于PC平台。你可以在PC上开发PlayStation游戏。这极大地打开了市场。而且他们还表示：'我们需要你们这些开发者'。就像Tripp在我们那期节目中多次谈到的那样——

For the PlayStation, it was all based on PC. So you could develop PlayStation games on PC. That, like, massively opened the market. And then also, they were just like, look, we need you developers. Like Nintendo, Tripp talked about this, I think, a bunch on on our episode with him.

任天堂对第三方开发者态度非常恶劣。

Nintendo was, like, terrible to third party devs.

我们有马里奥，有塞尔达。没错，我们是任天堂平台上最大最好的工作室，所以我们某种程度上...

We have Mario. We have Zelda. Like Yep. We're the biggest and best studio on the Nintendo platform, so we kinda

不需要你。而索尼找到所有这些第三方开发者，他们表现得像是'我们需要你'。我们会竭尽全力让你满意。当PlayStation的用户基数变得如此庞大后，这根本不用多想。就像，哦，我当然会选择在PlayStation上独占，或者至少多平台发布，否则我就会错过市场的巨大份额。

don't need you. Whereas Sony came to all these third party developers and and they were like, we need you. We're gonna do everything we can to make you happy. And then once the PlayStation started getting such a large install base, then it was just a no brainer. It's like, oh, of course, I'm gonna either go exclusive on PlayStation or at least multi platform on them because otherwise, I'm leaving out a massive part of the market.

所以，没错，PlayStation取得了巨大成功。我可以细数上面的所有游戏，但我不打算这么做。大家都知道这些游戏，它们很棒。

So, yeah, PlayStation, huge success. I could go through all the games on it, but I won't. Like, we all everybody knows them. They're great.

古惑狼。

Crash Bandicoot.

最终幻想7、生化危机、合金装备、GT赛车等等，不胜枚举。太棒了。是的。到主机生命周期结束时，它拥有8000款独特游戏，而后来推出的N64只有400款。这就是规模差距。

Final Fantasy seven, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, blah blah blah, on and on and on. Amazing. Yep. By the end of the system life, it gets 8,000 unique games compared to the n 64, which came out later only gets 400 unique games on the platform. So that's like sense of scale here.

总的来说，初代PlayStation售出了超过10亿份游戏。哇。这真是巨大的成功。然后PlayStation 2成为有史以来最畅销的游戏机，全球销量超过1.5亿台。

All told, over 1,000,000,000 games are sold for the original PlayStation. Wow. So this is a massive hit. And then the PlayStation two becomes the most successful console of all time, over a 150,000,000 units sold worldwide.

我是说，这是我唯一买过的游戏机。

I mean, it's the only game console I've ever bought.

哇。是啊。我有点惊讶你居然有一台。

Wow. Yeah. I was I'm surprised that you had one.

它正中我这个靶心。在我受戒礼之前，父母不允许我拥有游戏机，所以我的奖励就是得到了一台PS2。

It hit the concentric circle that was me. Well, I wasn't allowed to have a game system before my bar mitzvah, and so that was my reward was that I got to I got to get a PS two.

PS2确实是索尼战略的巅峰时期。那时候DVD播放器被捆绑销售，这个策略确实奏效了。

Well, and the PS two, that was, like, that was the peak of Sony's strategy. Like, that was that moment where it was actually working, like, DVD player being bundled in as part of it.

唉，那确实是个卖点。当时DVD播放器挺贵的。我们只在客厅的主电视配了一台。但在地下室的小电视旁，我向父母争辩说：'既然这台PS2自带DVD功能，我们就不需要再买播放器了'

Ugh. I mean, that was a selling point. DVD players were kind of expensive. So we had one for, like, the main TV. But for the little TV in the basement where I was gonna plug in my PlayStation, my argument to my parents was, well, I don't we don't need a DVD player now because this one comes with

聪明。

it. Smart.

要是我们选了其他竞品呢？我想想...是任天堂64吗？不对。

Whereas if we got what was the next competitor? I guess the n 60 no.

应该是世嘉Dreamcast吧。

Sega Dreamcast, I think was the

我们绝对不可能买Dreamcast。可能是初代Xbox，但我不确定那时候是否已经上市了。

And we were never gonna get a Dreamcast. I guess it would have been the original Xbox, but I'm not sure that would have been out yet.

是啊，那款产品也还要再等一年才上市。

Yeah. That didn't come out for another year too.

那大概会是什么时候呢？

When would this have been like

那是2000年2月，PS2就是那年推出的。好吧。

It was February. Year 2000 was when PS two came out. Okay.

所以我想Xbox可能是另一个选择。但PS2确实...我觉得我身边有足够多的朋友都有PlayStation，我已经习惯了那个手柄，后来他们都换了PS2，对我来说买PS2就成了理所当然的事。

So I I guess Xbox would have been the other one that I could have gotten. But yeah, the the PS two was like I think a sufficient number of my friends had Playstations where I was, like, used to the the controller, and then they all got PlayStation twos, and then it became a no brainer for me to get a two.

没错。PS2还有个优势是能向下兼容PS1游戏，这在整个行业都是全新概念。PS2发售当天，你就能玩8000款PS1游戏，他们还做了些画质提升。可惜到了PS3时代，索尼有点得意忘形了。

Yep. And the other thing that the PS two had was backwards compatibility with the PS one. And that was a totally new concept in the industry. So, like, day one, the PS two, you had 8,000 games from the PS one that you could play, and they did, like, a little bit of upscaling on them. Unfortunately, the PS three, Sony got a little carried away.

虽然起步缓慢，但最终它确实成为了相当成功的游戏机。

It took a while to get going, but ultimately, it did become a pretty successful system.

确实。但他们真的搞砸了。PS2之后，索尼几乎就是游戏产业的代名词，任天堂基本沦为小众。微软带着Xbox入场，但初代Xbox完全被PS2碾压。PS3本该顺势统治市场，但这就是索尼对计算机理解不足的体现了。

It did. But they really, really screwed it up. So, like, after the PS two I mean, Sony was the video game industry, like Nintendo was relegated to a niche player basically. Microsoft had come in with the Xbox, but the first Xbox, Sony, the PS two just trounced it. The PS three should have just run away with the market, but this is where Sony's not understanding computers really comes in.

PS3的设计理念是围绕Cell处理器打造的，它拥有蓝光播放功能和这款核心处理器。

The PS three, they'd made this whole thing that had the cell processor was, like, the key to it. It had Blu ray and the cell processor.

而蓝光技术使得其价格变得相当昂贵。

And the Blu ray made the price tag kind of expensive.

两者都是如此。蓝光成本高昂，索尼想效仿PS2的策略，将其作为特洛伊木马把蓝光引入客厅，赢得与HD DVD的格式之战。至于Cell处理器，是与东芝和IBM联合开发的，采用独特架构但实际表现糟糕。索尼原计划在所有产品线推广Cell处理器，实现所谓的'融合'概念，准备将其植入电视甚至冰箱——结果游戏开发者们对此深恶痛绝。

Both of them did. Blu ray was expensive, and they wanted to do same thing they did with the PS two, use it as the Trojan horse to get Blu ray into living rooms, win the format war with HD DVD. And then this cell processor, they developed with, I think, Toshiba and IBM. And it was like its own unique architecture and a total beast in a bad way. And the idea was Sony was gonna use the cell processor across all of their products and it was gonna become this, like, convergence thing and they were gonna put it in TVs and refrigerators and game developers hated this thing.

这实际上为Xbox360争取开发者创造了机会。虽然后期索尼修复了许多问题使其更易开发，但在PS3与Xbox360的世代战争中仅险胜——本应取得压倒性胜利的。

And so it actually, like, opened the door for Xbox and March to bring a lot of developers in. And then over time, Sony did fix a lot of the issues with it and made it more developer friendly. But they barely won the generation war between the PS three and the Xbox three sixty, but, like, they should have just totally walked away with it.

微软在这方面始终存在战略失误：每当他们想用某种功能作为'客厅入口'时——就像《全境封锁》里你盯着ALCS系统却忘了游戏本身——直到最近策略才实质性转变。他们长期定位不是核心玩家，而是13岁本·吉尔伯特这类用户：'反正需要DVD播放器，这个能顺便玩游戏也不错'。

And Microsoft has always struggled here because they sort of wanna use every time somebody wants to use something as a Trojan horse, it's like it's kinda like when you're in The Division series and you're looking at the ALCS and you forget that you still have a game to play. Yes. Microsoft has always seen this as the path to the living room. And so until very recently, when I think their strategy has shifted pretty meaningfully, the thinking was always, we're not gonna go for the hardcore gamers. We're gonna go for the Ben Gilbert when he's 13 years old idea of, well, we need a DVD player anyway, and this thing can play games so great.

他们总想借此在客厅植入电脑，却低估了核心主机玩家的狂热市场，结果索尼独占鳌头。微软设备销量不足且缺乏像Xbox One那样的动人故事——关于客厅计算设备如何真正提升生活品质。

And then they can use that to have a computer in the living room. And so it seems like they always sort of underestimate the fervent hardcore console gamer market, and then Sony runs away with that market. And Microsoft ends up not selling enough devices and not having a compelling enough story, like the Xbox one, for example, of, like, how this thing is really gonna make your life that much better by being the computing thing in the living room.

确实，这完全是对微软多年的精准描述。讽刺的是——索尼其实也犯过同样错误。对吧？

Yep. I think that is totally a fair characterization of Microsoft for many years. The irony is it's also Sony. Right? Yeah.

至少在PS3时代，他们彻底搞砸了。索尼在PS3上市的前三年亏损了50亿美元。哇，太糟糕了。要知道这可是紧接着史上最畅销游戏机的辉煌时期。

At least with the PS three, like, they completely messed it up. Sony loses $5,000,000,000 on the PS three in the first three years. Wow. It's bad. And again, this is, like, coming off of the best selling console of all time.

他们原本已经胜券在握。

Like, they had it won.

他们因此损失惨重。同时——虽然我们知道接下来要讨论蓝光——但值得提的是，他们也因蓝光寿命远低于预期而巨亏。他们像以往格式大战那样投入大量研发资金，组建全行业联盟来处理授权事宜，指望通过解码格式授权获利，并大力推动行业转向新格式。结果流媒体崛起了，我认为他们从未真正收回蓝光投资的成本。

They lose a bunch of money on this. They also, at the same time and I know we're gonna talk about Blu ray, but it's worth pulling it into this story, lost a ton of money because Blu ray's lifespan was just not as long as they thought it was gonna be. So they invested all this money into r and d the same way that in previous format wars they had and spinning up this, you know, big industry wide group that's gonna figure out all the licensing and, you know, we're gonna sell licenses to the the ability to decode the format and, you know, big investment in shifting the industry toward this new format. And then streaming took off. And so I don't think they ever really recouped their investment in Blu ray.

我也这么认为。这成了他们沉重的负担。

I don't think so either. I think it became a a big albatross for them.

所以两千年代初他们真是处处碰壁。

So the early two thousands are they're just getting beat up left and right.

没错。2006年2月，他们首次失去电视市场份额第一的宝座。

Yeah. In 02/2006, they lose the number one market share lead in televisions for the first time.

当时索尼电视贵得离谱。那时三星开始生产优质电视进场竞争。如今情况完全不同，像TCL这种品牌三四百美元就能买到画质惊艳的产品。

They got so expensive. I mean, that's when, like, Samsung started making pretty good TVs and came in. Like, today, it's totally different. You have, like, the TCLs that look unbelievable for, like, 300, $400, whatever it is,

而且它们巨大无比。基本上等于花钱请你把它们搬走。

and they're gigantic. They basically pay you to take them.

是啊，太疯狂了。但以前的情况是，你要么买索尼Bravia，要么就买低端电视。后来三星逐渐蚕食市场，之后索尼电视就像块石头一样无人问津了。

Yeah. It's crazy. But it used to be, like, you know, you'd go get the Sony Bravia or you'd go get a lesser TV. And then Samsung whittled that away, and then that just felt like a rock after that.

没错。那个索尼Bravia，我是说，那些电视当时要卖到5000美元一台。

Yep. And that Sony Bravia was I mean, those things were, like, $5,000

简直离谱。

That was crazy.

在2002年2月的时候。所以在两千年代中期连续八年里，索尼曾经的王牌业务电视部门一直在亏损，像大出血一样亏了八年。

In 02/2002. So for eight straight years in the mid two thousands, the television division, which was once, you know, one of the main crown jewels of Sony, ends up losing money, like bleeding cash for eight years.

他们不是拆分业务了吗？当时情况太糟糕了，他们觉得必须把这部分从账面上剥离出去。

Didn't they spin it out? It It was, like, so bad that they were like, we just gotta get this off our books.

对。他们最终在2011年重组业务，基本退出了这个市场。虽然现在还能买到索尼电视，但都是合资企业生产的了。

Yeah. They end up restructuring it and basically get out of the business in 2011. Like, I think you can still buy Sony TVs, but there's a bunch of JVs.

但它好像是被私募股权还是什么的给收购了。

But it's, like, owned by private equity or something.

这已不再是业务的核心部分了。蓝光之战完全是场惨胜。虽然他们最终击败了东芝的HD DVD格式，但根本不值得。

It's not a core part of the business anymore. The Blu ray fight was totally a pyrrhic victory. Like, they did ultimately win against HD DVD, which was a Toshiba format, but not worth it.

没错。顺便说下专利费的具体数字，蓝光光盘协会每卖出一台蓝光播放器能赚7美元左右。然后他们通过销售播放软件大概还能赚2美元。每张光盘的专利费大约是7美分。这些收入会根据最初研发贡献者的不同被分成很多份。

Yeah. By the way, just to put some numbers around how royalties work, this, like, Blu ray Disc Association earns about $7 for every Blu ray player sold. And then I think there's maybe $2 that they make from selling the software that goes on it to be able to read the the Blu rays. And then it's something like 7¢ per disc. And so that gets cut up a bunch of ways depending on who, you know, contributed r and d efforts originally, you know.

所以这个联盟每台播放器总共能拿到9美元，外加每张光盘7美分。要收回成本需要非常非常长的时间。我想说的是，即便蓝光发展顺利，对索尼来说这也不是为了开辟新财源，而是为了避免向其他格式开发者支付巨额专利费。现在他们能从每台设备中分得可观的分成。另一个原因是，索尼存在的意义就是创造炫酷的新技术，让公众有新产品可买、可追捧。

So this consortium gets paid the, you know, $9 total per player plus 7¢ a a disc. It takes a long, long time to be able to really recoup the costs. And I guess the point of this is, even if Blu ray went well, the point of this isn't to have a big new revenue stream for Sony. The point is so they don't have to pay someone else a big revenue stream who develops a format, and now they have meaningful cogs as a part of selling each one. The other sort of reason they do it is Sony's whole reason for being is create brand new cool engineering things that make it so the public will have something new to buy and love.

通过创建新标准，它能提供更高分辨率的全新消费体验。这算是创造新一代设备的机会，但我不认为他们把媒体授权或格式授权视为重要收入来源。

And by creating a new standard, it enables a brand new consumer experience in a higher resolution. So it's sort of this, like, opportunity to create a brand new generation of device, but I don't think that they ever look at the media licensing thing as or the format licensing as a meaningful revenue stream.

无论他们是否这么想，蓝光在这两方面都失败了。蓝光联盟绝无可能收回研发和营销成本。而且蓝光播放器也没能成为主流消费电子产品。

Whether they did or didn't, they fail on both fronts with Blu ray. Like, there's no way that the Blu ray consortium got their money back in terms of r and d and marketing efforts. Nope. And Blu ray players do not become a major consumer electronics staple.

在完全结束PlayStation话题前值得提一下——由于我不玩游戏也没太关注，之前没意识到索尼相对微软的统治地位。我原以为两家推出的设备销量差不多。但看看史上最畅销游戏机排行榜，前三名全是PlayStation：PS2是有史以来最畅销的，接着是PS4和初代PS1。前六名中他们占了四位，因为第六名是PS3，而第四、五名是任天堂Wii和Switch。

It is worth calling out before we move on fully from PlayStation here, not being in gaming or paying a lot of attention. I don't think I understood Sony's dominance here relative to to Microsoft. I always thought like the two of them come out with, you know, devices and they both sell well. But if you look at the top game consoles ever sold, PlayStation has three of the top three with the PS two is the best selling of all time, and the PS four, then the original PlayStation. They also have four of the top six because in the number six slot is the PS three, and the four and five slots are the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo Switch.

从销量来看，微软在游戏机市场的表现根本无法与索尼的成功相提并论。

So Microsoft by, you know, consoles sold measurement doesn't hold a candle to Sony's success in the console market.

但那是过去的情况。接下来会发生什么会很有趣。

But that's so far. Right. It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward.

是啊，我不知道是否

Yep. I don't know if

是疫情还是这代主机——Xbox Series X/S和PS5的出现，让这些公司终于意识到：游戏已经是收入最高的娱乐媒介了，它们不该再作为实现其他战略目标的工具，而应该专注游戏业务本身。

it took the pandemic or just this current generation of consoles with the series x and s, Xboxes, and the PS five. But I feel like these companies have finally woken up that, like, guys, video games is the largest medium by revenue out there, and they shouldn't be strategy devices to achieve other aims. Like, you should just focus on the business itself.

如果把整个音乐产业和好莱坞的收入加起来再乘以二到二点五倍，才相当于游戏市场的规模。这个市场庞大得惊人。要知道十年前这还不明显。

Yeah. If you sum up all of music and all of Hollywood and then multiply it by two, two and a half, then you get the video games market. It's ginormous. Yeah. That wouldn't have been obvious even ten years ago.

现在这是一场冲刺赛。问题是谁的战略更优？虽然我们没明说，但索尼的战略是延续成功路线：打造最佳主机，拼命理顺供应链确保供货。虽然价格不菲，但产品绝对惊艳。

It's now a Sprint. And the question is who has the better strategy? And because we haven't explicitly said it, Sony's strategy is more of the same. Make the best console, try like hell to get the supply chain in order to be able to actually fulfill them. It's gonna be a reasonably expensive console, but that thing's gonna be awesome.

微软的策略则是：我们可以把这变成服务收入。这很像蒂姆·库克的思维方式。看看他们对Xbox Game Pass的运作——非常高明，让全款购买主机显得不太划算。

Microsoft's is Well, I bet we can make this a services revenue line. It's a very Tim Cook way of looking at it. If you look at what Microsoft's done with Game Pass, which is brilliant, they're making it sort of financially irresponsible to buy one of their devices outright.

这就像Prime会员一样。没错。作为玩家不订阅Game Pass在财务上是不明智的。

It's like a Prime membership. Yes. It's financially irresponsible as a gamer not to subscribe to Game Pass.

对。就像，我是该花几百美元买台设备然后还得买游戏呢？还是选择每月支付...具体多少钱来着？

Right. And it's like, would I go buy one of these multi $100 devices and then have to buy games for it? Or would I rather pay I don't know. How what is it per month?

Game Pass本身每月15美元。如果搭配主机购买，还需额外支付一定费用。

Game Pass itself is $15 a month. And then if you get a console with it, you add on certain amount.

无论如何，从消费者角度看，订阅简直是理所当然的选择。微软Game Pass用户现已突破1800万，正如你所说，有10美元的廉价版和15美元的高级版。每年这项服务能产生20到30亿美元收入，这策略与索尼截然不同。

Whatever it is, the way it sort of hits you as a consumer is like, oh, complete no brainer to subscribe. And so when you look at it, Microsoft is now up to 18,000,000 subscribers to Game Pass, which to your point, I think there's like a cheap version at 10 and then a more expensive version at 15. So every year as an annuity is generating 2 to $3,000,000,000 on Game Pass. And it's just such a completely different strategy than what Sony's doing.

这让我想起你在泰勒·斯威夫特那期节目里提到的Spotify。有些玩家每年会买10到20款游戏，花60美元买光盘或下载。嗯...我不是那种玩家。

It reminds me of what you pointed out on the Taylor Swift episode about Spotify. There are gamers out there who will buy ten, twenty games a year. They'll go pay $60 for either a disc or download to buy the game. Mhmm. I am not one of those gamers.

我觉得有很多像我这样的玩家，在普通年份可能只买几款游戏。但每月花15美元订阅Game Pass对我来说根本不用犹豫。这样我反而会在游戏上花更多钱，微软获得的收入也比我只买游戏时更多。而且我更开心，因为能玩到的游戏比原来多得多。

And I think there are a lot of gamers out there like me that in an ordinary year, I would maybe buy a couple games. But it's a no brainer for me to subscribe to Game Pass for $15 a month. In which case, I end up spending a lot more money on games, and Microsoft makes more revenue than if I were off of me than if I were just buying games. And I feel happier because I get access to so much more than I would otherwise.

没错。这个观点太到位了。

Right. That's such a good point.

要知道，索尼挺有意思的。到目前为止，索尼还没有推出游戏订阅服务。

You know, Sony is interesting. So as of yet, Sony has not released a subscription service for games.

哦，确实。但不是说今年第二季度末会有什么东西要发布吗？你看到相关消息了吗？

Oh, yeah. But isn't there something, like, something that's supposed to come out in, like, late q two this year? Have you read about this?

我还没看到具体消息，但大多数人猜测他们正在开发。有趣的是索尼确实在游戏独占性上下了重注。嗯。他们既有内部工作室，又与第三方签订了独占协议，比如你想玩《战神》或最新的《黑暗之魂》这类游戏，就只能在PlayStation上玩。哦，有意思。

I've not read anything specifically, but most people assume that they're working on one. But the interesting thing is that Sony has really doubled down on exclusivity on games. Mhmm. So they have both in house studios and then exclusive agreements with third parties of, like, if you wanna play, I don't know, God of War or, the latest Dark Souls game or something like that, like, you're gonna have to do that on PlayStation. Oh, interesting.

这和微软不一样。你知道人们担心动视暴雪收购案会让微软把游戏变成Xbox独占，我觉得他们不会这么做。

Which is different than Microsoft. You know, people are worried about what the Activision deal about whether Microsoft would make Activision's games exclusive on Xbox, I don't think they will.

不可能。微软在这件事上的动机设计得太精明了——他们当然希望你订阅，并希望以最低流失率获得最多订阅用户，因为这是有史以来最好的商业模式。而且，假设动视暴雪交易通过，你在其他平台玩那些游戏时，他们照样能拿到分成吗？完全没问题。

No way. The incentives are so genius for what Microsoft has set up with that because, yes, they want you to subscribe, and they wanna have the most number of subscribers at the lowest churn rate because it's the best business model ever. And also, will they take your revenue if like, let's say this activation blizzard thing goes through. Do they want your revenue if you go play that game elsewhere? Totally.

他们的动机完全倾向于说'我们怎么都欢迎'。而索尼处境就艰难些。没错。因为他们必须直接卖游戏给你。对了，传闻中的Game Pass替代品叫'斯巴达克斯计划'，这有点混乱，因为他们已经有PlayStation Network，还有PlayStay。

Like, their incentives are totally aligned to say, hey, we love it either way. Whereas Sony is in a little bit of a tougher place Yep. Because they have to sell you the game. Yep. It's project Spartacus, by the way, is the rumored Game Pass alternative, which is kind of a mess because they already have the PlayStation Network, and then they have PlayStay.

这些不同的名称搞得人晕头转向...

Like, there's all these different names for the ways that you can It's

典型的索尼作风。PlayStation的故事和创业历程堪称传奇，但同时也处处体现着索尼那些不幸的怪癖。没错。

just classic Sony. Like, the PlayStation is such an amazing story and entrepreneurial journey, and yet, it's got all of the Sony unfortunate quirks all over it too. Yes.

那么，我们今天还有什么关于索尼的话题没讨论到？我认为图像传感器市场值得一谈。

Well, what else haven't we discussed about Sony today? I think it's important to talk about the image sensor market.

是的。有几点。我们简单提过Vaio电脑部门。那从来就没成功过。他们最终在2014年将其出售。

Yes. Well, a couple things. We've briefly mentioned the Vaio PC division. That never works. They end up selling it in 2014.

而移动和智能手机业务对索尼来说完全是一场灾难。

And then mobile and smartphones are just an unmitigated disaster for Sony.

整个Xperia系列就是个巨大的失败。实际上，如果你回头看2018年的年报，他们决定将电子产品和解决方案部门细分子板块呈现。这样你就能看出全是移动业务的锅。他们本可以展示整个电子业务基本零利润——顺便说一句，这原本是索尼的核心业务。

The whole Xperia thing was just a colossal failure. In fact, if you look back at the annual report, in 2018, they decided for their electronic products and solutions segment to break down to sub segments in this annual report. So you can see that it's all mobile's fault. They could have shown, hey. We basically made zero profit in all of electronic products and solutions, which by the way is like the core Sony thing.

最初索尼是家电子产品公司。最近这项业务对他们来说只是收支平衡。虽然营收可观，但运营利润基本为零。特别是2018年，他们展示的数据表明：本来整体可以盈利，但移动通信部门亏得一塌糊涂。

Like, originally, Sony was an electronics products company. That's recently been, like, a breakeven business for them. They they generate a lot of revenue from it. They generate basically zero operating income a little bit recently. But in 2018, in particular, they were showing, like, yeah, there it would be profitable, but we lost a ton of money on our mobile communications segment.

我越想越觉得：为什么索尼在PC领域惨败？为什么在移动领域一塌糊涂？为什么最终连电视业务也失守？我认为索尼根本不懂如何制造计算机。而当所有设备都变成计算机时，他们就输了。

As I think more about, like, why did Sony fail so bad at PCs? Why did Sony fail so bad at mobile? Why did they eventually lose TVs? I think Sony doesn't know how to make computers. And as things become computers, they lose.

我百分之百同意这一点。

I 100% agree with that.

手机变成了电脑。电脑发展成了我们今天所熟知的现代个人电脑。如果微软的愿景成真，你就得担心它们了。微软二十年来关于客厅电脑的构想，实际上变成了一个你花大量时间使用的、有意义的实用客厅电脑。智能电视某种程度上告诉我们这个构想正在实现。

Phones became computers. Computers matured to be the modern PC that we know today. You gotta worry about them against Microsoft if Yeah. Microsoft's twenty year vision of the computer in your living room actually becomes a meaningful useful computer in your living room that you spend a lot of time with. Smart TVs would kind of tell us that that is coming true.

哦，确实。但就像我们刚才讨论Game Pass时说的，我认为微软最终放弃了Xbox作为客厅电脑的愿景，并意识到——不，不，不，这才是好生意。

Oh, yeah. But I think like we were just talking about with, Game Pass, I think Microsoft has finally abandoned that computer in your living room vision for Xbox and realized, like, no. No. No. This is good business.

我们就是要把它做成好生意。

We're just gonna make this a good business.

没错，确实如此，非常正确。

Yeah. That's true. That's very true.

但我认为你说得很对，索尼没有预见到、也没有准备好面对这样一个世界：电脑变成了你的手机，电脑变成了你消费内容的方式——你的电视，你的手机变成了你的电视。而他们以为世界会朝着客厅设备变成电脑的方向发展，这就是PS2乃至PS3和Cell处理器等产品的核心理念。但这从未成为现实。

But I think you're spot on that Sony didn't see and wasn't equipped for a world where a computer became your phone and a computer became your content consumption your TV, you know, your your phone became your TV. Yeah. And I think instead, they thought the world was gonna be that your living room device became your computer and that's what the PS two and then really the PS three was all about and the cell processor, etcetera. And that just never happened. Yeah.

如果你看看市场上对索尼的多空观点（我们稍后也会分析），其中一点就是——记得他们在去年CES上推出了索尼电动车吧？我觉得这让很多人感到恐慌，他们觉得‘不，不’。

One of the things that if you look at bear and bull cases on on Sony out there, and we're gonna do our own in a minute here. One thing that, you know, they came out at CES last year, think, with a Sony electric car. And I think that's something that people are very scared about. They're like, no. No.

不，你们做不到特斯拉那样的水平。

No. You are not gonna do that as well as Tesla.

他们宣布那件事对公司来说是个坏兆头。就像我看《神奇女侠1984》时，不只是觉得'哦，这电影真烂'，而是'这种作品能问世让我严重怀疑华纳创意高层的所有决策'。索尼现在给我的感觉也一样——简直令人咋舌。

It's a bad sign for the company that they announced that. It's kinda like how when I saw Wonder Woman 84, I wasn't just like, oh, this is a terrible movie. I was like, the fact that this thing got out the door makes me seriously doubt every decision that the creative leadership at Warner's does. So it's kind of the same thing with Sony, where I'm like, yikes.

没错，你们现在真不该造车。

Yeah. You should not be making a car right now.

如果这只是个概念性产品，就像'嘿我们在CES上搞个好玩的东西'那另当别论。但如果真在这上面投入精力，对公司来说就是非常危险的信号了。

If this is like a concept thing, the way that like, hey, let's have a fun thing to do at CES. That's one thing. But, like, if you're really putting energy behind this, it's a very scary sign for the company.

不过自那以后确实没有迹象表明他们真的在全力推进。我们还是聊聊图像传感吧，我觉得这才是他们的亮点。

Which there hasn't been any indication since that they really are putting energy behind it. But let's talk about image sensing because that I think is a really good story.

确实是个精彩案例。他们延续了军火商策略（指核心元件供应），当意识到手机制造不是强项时，早在十五二十年前就开始专注传感器创新，特别是相机传感器。这对他们的PowerShot产品线大有裨益，也提升了所有专业级相机的竞争力，他们几乎开创了微单相机这个品类。

That's an amazing story. So continuing their arms dealer strategy, I think as they realized how bad they were gonna be at making cell phones, there was a thing that was happening that started fifteen, twenty years before, which was innovating on sensors, in particular camera sensors. And this was really beneficial for their PowerShot line. This was really beneficial for all of their pro end cameras. They kind of invented the mirrorless segment.

索尼Alpha系列——我讨厌'专业消费级'这个词但用在这里太贴切了——这个概念就是：人们想要体积适中、可换镜头、便于携带的非单反相机。这些积累让他们取得了大量突破性专利，研发出最小巧高效的图像传感器。现在他们似乎是iPhone那个实现所有炫酷计算摄影功能的小型传感器的独家供应商，在整个图像传感器市场占有率高达50%。

I mean, the Sony Alpha, I hate this word, but it's so applicable here. The prosumer concept of like, hey, people want a reasonably compact thing with interchangeable lenses that they can take out that isn't a big gigantic SLR. And all of that work led them to have, like, tons of breakthroughs, tons of patents on how to get the smallest, most effective image sensor. And they, I think, are now the sole supplier to the iPhone for the little sensor that enables all the cool computational photography stuff that's going on. They have something like 50% market share in the image sensor market broadly.

他们也能在众多其他手机中安装传感器，不仅仅是iPhone。回想起来，我记得发布会是iPhone四代那会儿。但你知道手机摄像头从‘拍照手机’到‘哇，这真的变成相当不错的相机了’的转变过程吧？比如索尼的贡献。

They are able to put sensors in lots and lots of other phones too. It's not just the iPhone. And when you think back to I think the announcement was the iPhone four. But you know when cell phone cameras turned from camera phones to like, woah, these are actually becoming pretty good cameras. Like, was Sony.

如今在此基础上还叠加了大量工程与软件创新，特别是像苹果这样自研芯片并拥有严密图像处理流程的公司。最初的突破我认为是在2009年2月，索尼率先推出商业可行的背照式CMOS传感器，这为弱光摄影等技术铺平了道路。关于下一代iPhone14和15的传闻更是惊人，比如像素数量和单位像素成像质量将实现巨大的阶梯式飞跃。

And there's a ton of engineering and software that's been done on top of that now, especially, as, you know, people like Apple designed their own silicon and have a a really tight image processing pipeline. The initial breakthroughs came from I think 02/2009, Sony was the first to create this commercially viable back illuminated CMOS sensor. And that enabled things like low light photography. And there's a lot of rumors around the next generation that'll be in the iPhone fourteen and fifteen that are, like, totally unbelievable. Like, gigantic step function changes in the number of megapixels and the image you're able to get per size of pixel.

所以未来几年，基于索尼在传感器领域的创新，据说会有非常非常惊艳的产品问世。

And so there's, like, supposedly really, really great stuff to come over the next couple of years purely on Sony's innovations in the sensors.

这真是个绝佳的成功案例啊，就像是回归索尼的本源——创造出市场真正需要的产品，自然能在商业上成功，然后从中汲取经验持续成长。

That's such a good success story, right, of, like, making kind of back to the original Sony, like, here's something that people want that is, like, this is gonna work in the market, and then you learn and grow from that.

没错。完全正确。他们对待索尼影业也采取类似策略，就像瑞士军火商那样——‘我们或许不擅长营销或打造自己的手机操作系统，但论制造全球顶尖的传感器，我们认第二没人敢认第一’。这种思路也体现在他们不与Netflix正面竞争，而是...

Yes. Absolutely. And it's also it's kind of the same approach that they're taking with Sony Pictures of being this, like, Switzerland arms dealer type thing, where, like, we're not gonna be effective at marketing or creating and marketing our own phones and operating system and all that. But, like, damned if we're not gonna make the absolute best sensors in the world for this thing. And similar to the way that they're thinking about, you know, we're not gonna compete with Netflix, but we'll

向他们提供内容。索尼就像是由众多小故事拼凑而成的集合体，不像我们报道的许多其他公司那样有清晰的线性发展脉络。

sell them content. Sony's just kinda like it's this collection of all these vignettes, you know, that stitched together into Sony. It's not quite a linear narrative in the same way as a lot of other companies we cover.

这其实是我商业案例库里的重要主题——多元化经营。我们报道的企业大多靠一款爆品打开局面，完美契合市场需求，拥有巨大市场空间和铁血执行力。而索尼更像是...这里同时进行着许多事情，他们通常管理得不错（有时也不尽然），但确实业务线非常庞杂。

That's actually a huge playbook theme of mine is it's actually a diversified business. Every business we cover is kind of one hit product that then they were able to really lean into, had perfect product market fit, and a gigantic market, and ruthless execution. And this one's kinda like, there's a lot of stuff going on here, and, they're pretty good at managing it usually, sometimes not, sometimes not, but there's definitely a lot of stuff.

确实有很多内容。好吧。那么所有这些内容，我们现在处于什么位置？

Definitely a lot of stuff. Okay. So all the stuff, where does this leave us?

是的。什么

Yes. What's

是索尼今天的现状？

the picture of Sony today?

嗯，这很有趣。从收入角度来看，他们是一家游戏和电子公司。大约30%的收入来自游戏，23%来自电子产品。电子产品指的是消费电子设备吗？是的。

Well, it's interesting. When you look at it from a revenue perspective, they're a gaming and electronics company. There's, like, 30% of revenue that's coming from games and 23% that's coming from electronics. Electronics are consumer electronic devices? Yeah.

这包括相机，以及索尼制造的经典产品，比如Walkman，但具体还包括哪些不太清楚。但看他们的营业利润，游戏也占约30%，利润稍高一些。电子产品最近盈利能力大幅提升。

That includes cameras and, you know, the classic stuff Sony makes. I don't know, Walkman, and it's not totally clear what what else is necessarily a part of that. But when you look over at their operating income, games also 30 percent ish. They make a little bit more. Electronics has gotten a lot more profitable recently.

他们实际上认为这将成为业务的重要组成部分。今年约18%的利润来自电子产品，而过去这部分利润为零。

They actually think that that is gonna be a material part of the business. It's like 18% of profits this year are coming from electronics. That in the past was zero.

甚至是负数。对吧？

Or negative. Right?

或者说负面。是的，持续了很多很多年。那基本上什么都没有。所以电子业务内部经历了一次相当成功的转型。

Or negative. Yeah. For many, many years. That was basically nothing. So there's been a pretty successful turnaround inside of electronics.

真正有趣的新兴故事是影像和传感器业务，现在占收入的11%和利润的14%。再次强调，这些数字都不算大，因为业务超级多元化。但这是个相当大的市场。要知道，他们占据了半壁江山。所以我认为这才是重点。

The emergent story, which is really interesting, is this imaging and sensors, which is now 11% of revenue and 14% of profits. Again, none of these numbers are that big because it's super diversified. But that's a pretty big market. You know, they have half of it. So I think that's sort of the big story.

如果你问我2011到2014年的情况，答案会是所有业务都在衰退，而金融服务异常赚钱，占了他们近半利润。但现在情况完全不同了。

If you would ask me 2011 to 2014, then the answer would have been everything's failing and the financial services is enormously profitable and is like half of their profits. And that's just like not really the case anymore.

也许这实际上是最佳的商业保险方式，除了担保。你绝对应该先这么做。但接下来你应该在公司内部成立自己的保险公司，这样即使其他业务都失败也能维持运营。

Maybe that's actually the best way to have business insurance besides vouch. You should definitely do that to start. But the next thing you should do is start your own insurance company within the company to keep you afloat even when everything else fails.

没错，这真是个完美的对冲。我来解释索尼的多元化程度：在所有业务板块中——游戏、音乐、影视、电子、影像传感器和金融服务——没有任何一个业务线的收入或利润占比是个位数百分比。

Yep. It's quite the hedge. So here's a way to explain how diversified Sony is. Out of all of their segments, games, music, pictures, electronics, images, or imaging, and sensors, and financial services, there are zero single digit percent business lines in revenue or profit.

真是五花八门的业务组合啊。

What a collection of stuff.

是啊。对我来说就像...我心想应该计算这些数据，不能只看日元金额。当我计算百分比时，我意识到：这确实非常非常多元化。

Yeah. That to me is like I was like, I should compute these things so I'm not just looking at them in yen. And as I computed the percentages, I was like, It is very, very diversified.

嗯。

Yeah.

就像，过去有很多精彩的博客文章可以写，比如揭示其本质其实是保险业务，或者曾经的核心业务——消费电子——已经完全消亡。但现在情况不同了。值得注意的是，在游戏领域，大部分收入实际上来自数字软件和附加内容，这与PlayStation网络相关。硬件销售仅占约10%。同样，微软也调整了业务模式，专注于向Xbox爱好者持续销售数字内容。

Like, there there used to be all these great blog posts that you could do about how it's really an insurance business under the hood or, you know, how the core business that used to be consumer electronics totally died. And that's just not the case anymore. An interesting thing to point out is within gaming, most of the sales are actually coming from digital software and add ons, which is related to the PlayStation Network. Only like 10 ish percent is selling hardware. And in the same way that Microsoft has reoriented their business model around, we gotta keep selling people who like Xbox's digital stuff.

索尼也意识到了这一点，只是尚未调整其业务模式。好吧，这里有个有趣的题外话想和大家分享：今年索尼的营收将达到约860亿美元。

Sony's realized that too. They just haven't changed their business model yet. Okay. So here's an interesting little aside that I wanna take you down. So this year, Sony will do about $86,000,000,000 in revenue.

好。

K.

记住这个数字了吗？860亿。我在这里记下来。过去22年间，索尼拥有一项资产，创造了约75亿美元的收入，而这在本期节目中我们还未曾提及。

Remember that number? 86,000,000,000. Writing it down here. Over the last let's see. Twenty two years, Sony has had an asset that has generated about 7 and a half billion in revenue that we have not talked about on this episode yet.

你知道那是什么

Do you know what that

吗？哦，我不知道。

is? Oh, I don't.

那75亿美元指的是蜘蛛侠系列电影的全球票房总收入。没错。这还不包括家庭影音收入，也不包括其他周边授权收入。关于为什么我们要讨论索尼和蜘蛛侠这个话题，有个相当疯狂的故事——毕竟我们节目已经做了大量关于漫威、漫威电影宇宙和迪士尼的精彩讨论。说真的，我们至少有近十期节目都是围绕那个宇宙展开的。

That 7 and a half billion would be the box office gross receipts for the Spider Man franchise. Yes. Not even including home video, not even including, you know, other other licensing things around that. There is an insane story about why we're talking about Spider Man and Sony, when we've done so much wonderful discussion on this show on Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Disney. And I mean, there's been close to 10 episodes dedicated to that world.

所以在做索尼专题时我就想，必须找个方式把这两者联系起来。

And so while we were doing the Sony story, I thought, we gotta link it in somehow.

好的。那么具体是怎么回事？为什么蜘蛛侠版权在索尼手里？

Yes. Alright. What's going on? Why does Sony have Spider Man?

首先，节目备注里链接了一期精彩的《金钱星球》专题报道，如果你想深入了解可以去看看。众所周知，索尼在企业史上做过不少好交易，也做过不少烂交易。而漫威在最近这次崛起之前——就像我们在漫威专题里聊过的——基本都在做赔本买卖。

Okay. So, first of all, there's a great Planet Money on this linked in the show notes. You should go check that out if you want the real deep dive. Sony, as you know, has done a mix of good deals and and bad deals corporately in their history. Marvel, before their most recent stint, mostly did bad deals, as we talked about on the Marvel episode.

而这次可能是他们做过最糟糕的交易。时间回到二月份左右，索尼找到漫威说：我们想花1000万美元买下蜘蛛侠的电影改编权。当时漫威影业还没成立，MCU更不存在，他们也没和美林证券达成那笔让漫威背负债务启动电影业务的交易。

And this may have been the worst one that they ever did. So starting around February, Sony approaches Marvel and says, we'd like to pay you $10,000,000 for the film rights to Spider Man. Now Marvel had never done the MCU wasn't a thing. Marvel Studios wasn't a thing. They didn't do the deal with Merrill Lynch to go take on a bunch of debt to start Marvel's studio, you know, nothing of that.

他们看着这份合约心想：白捡的钱啊。1000万美元，太棒了。

So they look at this and they're like, free money. Okay. Free money. We'll get 10,000,000. That's great.

我记得协议还包括能获得电影票房5%的分成。所以漫威觉得：既有授权费又有持续收益。好像索尼还承诺会平分电影相关蜘蛛侠玩具的销售收入。他们盘算着：这些应该都是额外收益。

I think they also were gonna get 5% of the movie revenue. So Marvel's like, we get a licensing fee. We get some ongoing revenue. And I think Sony said, and we'll split the money that comes from Spider Man toys that are sold specifically to the movie. And they look at that and they're like, that's probably all incremental.

太棒了，就这么干。从某些角度看，那真是个愚蠢的决定。但从另一些角度看，要知道，如果没有托比·马奎尔版蜘蛛侠的巨大成功，漫威可能根本不会想到成立漫威影业。不过大卫，漫威从中获得的是1000万美元外加5%的收益分成。

So great. Let's do it. In some ways, that was a really boneheaded decision. In other ways, you know, maybe they wouldn't have known to start Marvel Studios absent the gigantic success of the Tobey Maguire Spider Man. But, David, $10,000,000 and 5% of the revenue is what Marvel gets out of this.

最离谱的是这个——他们签的这份协议，光开除涉事人员都不足以抵偿其犯罪性质。索尼永久拥有制作蜘蛛侠电影的权利。永久？没错。

So here's the insane thing. This is the deal that they signed that somebody like, getting fired isn't enough for the criminality of this deal. Sony has the right to produce Spider Man movies forever. Forever? Yes.

无限期延续，只要每五年零九个月推出一部。

In perpetuity, as long as they release one every five years and nine months.

也就是说我们永远至少每五年零九个月就能看到一部蜘蛛侠电影。

So we can guarantee that there is gonna be one Spider Man movie at least every five years and nine months forever.

是的，永远。所以托比·马奎尔三部曲之后才会突然冒出那些奇怪的安德鲁·加菲尔德版电影，把同样的故事又讲了一遍。而你当时——

Yes. Forever. And so this is why we got those weird Andrew Garfield movies right after the three Tobey Maguire ones where they told the same story again. And you were

我压根没关注那些片子，完全想不通为什么要翻拍。

like I'd like, I never even bothered with those. I was like, why is this happening?

没错。他们必须制作并上映这些电影才能保住版权。天啊。有人可能会问，那现在是什么运作模式？

Right. They had to produce and release them in order to retain the rights. Oh my god. Might say, like, okay. Well, how does it work now?

因为我们有了一个新蜘蛛侠，你知道的，他在蜘蛛侠电影和漫威电影中是同一个人。不知怎么的，他又回到了漫威电影宇宙。那么发生了什么？显然，漫威非常希望蜘蛛侠能加入复仇者联盟。他们还决定，能否让即将上映的蜘蛛侠电影既好看又能与漫威宇宙联动？

Because we've got a new Spider Man who, you know, is the same in the Spider Man movies and in the Marvel movies. Like, somehow he's back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So what happened there? Well, obviously, Marvel really wants to have Spider Man included in the Avengers. And they also decide that, well, can we make it so that the Spider Man movies that are coming out are good and, like, kinda tie in?

比如，可能是同一个演员出演。这确实应该保持连贯性。漫威的那些人，你知道的，他们是艺术家。这不是为了维持合约而随便拍部电影。他们可不像索尼影业那样。

Like, that's maybe the same actor. It really should be kinda cohesive. And the people over at Marvel, you know, they're artists. This isn't some we're producing a movie just to keep a deal alive. They're not like Sony Pictures.

他们达成了另一种不太划算的交易。真正有趣的是要关注其中的杠杆点。他们说，我们会拍电影。主要是独立制作的蜘蛛侠电影。技术上索尼拥有创意控制权，但实际上整个制作都是我们在做。

They cut a second kind of bad deal. This is really interesting to to pay attention to where the leverage is. They are saying, we will make the movies. Like, we will make the independent Spider Man movies mostly. Like, it's gonna be technically Sony's creative control, but we're basically doing the whole production.

我们维持原有协议，只拿5%的分成，但电影基本上由我们制作。作为回报，你们必须允许我们把蜘蛛侠放进漫威宇宙。哇哦。他们就在《美国队长3：内战》前敲定了这个协议，那部电影里蜘蛛侠首次亮相。所以最近的《蜘蛛侠：英雄无归》就是这种奇怪的共同所有权模式：索尼赚钱，漫威拍电影。

Let's keep the same deal where we only make 5%, but we're gonna basically make the movies. And in return, you have to let us put that Spider Man into the MCU. Wow. And so they cut that deal right before Captain America Civil War, which is where they introduced Spider Man. So all these recent Spider Man's, No Way Home, and it's actually this weird joint ownership where Sony's making the money, but Marvel's making the movie.

他们这么做只是为了能在漫威宇宙中使用蜘蛛侠。除此之外，你可能会问，这到底怎么运作？因为有些蜘蛛侠电影是索尼的，有些是漫威的。如果蜘蛛侠是主角，就是索尼电影，按95:5分成，而且不会上Disney+。

And they're just doing it in order to, like, get to use Spider Man in the MCU. And on top of all of this, you might say, like, wait, how does this work? Because some of them Spider Man movies are Spider Man movies. Other ones are Marvel movies. If Spider Man is the main character, it's a Sony movie with the ninety five five split, and it doesn't go on Disney plus.

索尼可以随意授权电影播放。如果蜘蛛侠不是主角，那就是漫威电影，所有权完全归漫威所有，和往常一样。

Sony gets to license out the movie wherever they please. If Spider Man is not the main character, it is a Marvel movie, then it's just all the same normal stuff that Marvel always owns.

哇。真高兴你研究了这些，太有意思了。

Wow. I'm so glad you researched that. That is so fun.

这太疯狂了。看看《蜘蛛侠：英雄无归》的表现，这部刚上映的电影全球票房已达17亿美元，记住，索尼拿走了其中的95%。成本确实很高，现在这些电影的制作费用动辄数亿美元。但索尼影业今年总收入仅为102亿美元。

It's wild. And if you look at the performance of Spider Man No Way Home, the one that just came out that already gross worldwide 1,700,000,000.0 in revenue, remember, Sony is keeping 95% of that. The costs are high. You know, these movies cost hundreds of millions to make now. But Sony Pictures itself only made 10,200,000,000.0 this year.

所以1.12（我不清楚具体数字），那可是一笔巨大的营销预算。但不管他们从这部17亿美元票房的电影中分到多少，对那100亿美元的总收入线来说，底线影响都相当显著。

So 1.12 I don't know what the and that is a big marketing budget. But, like, whatever their cut of the $1,700,000,000 grossing movie is, the bottom line of that is pretty impactful to this $10,000,000,000 total revenue line.

所以漫威现在有动机把电影成本尽可能抬高，对吧？

So Marvel now has an incentive to make the cost of the movies as high as possible. Right?

这是个好问题。我不确定——我猜这里面还有更多...

It's a good question. I don't I assume there's a lot more

肯定有。

There must be.

协议里肯定有很多附加条款。但我想，这可能是历史上第一次——他们在《金钱星球》那期节目里也指出——像这样重要的IP（顺便说，这背后还涉及索尼黑客事件和互相争斗的高管们，剧情相当狗血）。简而言之，我认为这是两大竞争工作室——这可是五大中的两家——首次共享核心IP并成功打造出产品。

Caveats in that deal. But it is, I think, like, the first time in history that a big piece of IP like this and this they point this out on the Planet Money episode. There's a lot more drama to it, by the way, involving the Sony hack and executives who are, you know, at war with each other. But the long and the short of it is, I think it's the first time that two studios that are rivals like this have I mean, because this is two of the big five, shared really important IP and actually created successful product out of it.

这太酷了。而且这些电影取得了惊人的成功，对吧？

That is so cool. And the the movies have been incredibly successful. Right?

确实如此，而且非常出色。关键在于，索尼几乎尝试用他们拥有的所有IP打造类似漫威电影宇宙（MCU）的体系，但那些IP包括蜘蛛侠、捉鬼敢死队以及一堆毫不相干的内容。这些都在索尼被黑泄露的邮件里有所体现。

Totally. And really good. That's the thing. Sony almost tried to do, like, an MCU type thing with all the IP that they owned, but it was, like, Spider Man and Ghostbusters and a bunch of, like, very odd things that didn't belong together. Again, this is all in the Sony hack emails.

但后来他们开始以一种奇怪的方式将蜘蛛侠引入PlayStation的营销中。还记得吗？PlayStation 3的字体设计竟然和托比·马奎尔版蜘蛛侠电影片头字体一模一样。

But then they started bringing Spider Man into PlayStation marketing in kind of a weird way. Like, do you remember the PlayStation three font was the same, like, on that was printed on the outside as the Spider Man Tobey Maguire series?

现在终于明白为什么蜘蛛侠游戏是PlayStation独占了。我一直纳闷：怎么回事？这游戏怎么不上Xbox？

Now it makes sense why the Spider Man games are PlayStation exclusives. I always wondered that. I was like, what? Why is this not on Xbox?

简直离谱。还有更荒谬的事——据说索尼本可以花1000万美元拿下所有漫威角色的版权，但有人觉得除了蜘蛛侠其他角色都不行。当时确实如此，比如根本没人关心钢铁侠。

Pretty crazy. There's even something more nutty, like, for another 10,000,000. I think Sony could have licensed all the Marvel characters, but somebody was like, they're all kinda bad except Spider Man. No one cares about any of the others, which was like kind of true at the time. Like, no one really cared about Iron Man.

他们基本上是用二线角色硬生生创造了MCU。所以索尼当时决定：算了，我们只要蜘蛛侠就行。

They sort of like invented the MCU out of, you know, second tier characters. And so Sony was like, no. Let's just go get Spider Man. Let's do

这简直是一群蠢货的联盟。还有比这更愚蠢的决策吗？

that. This is like a confederacy of dunces here. Like, who is more stupid than the

完全同意。但这恰恰说明这类事情无法预测，谁都无法预知未来。

other? Totally. But it just goes to show you can't forecast these things. You don't know.

你不知道。

You don't know.

好的，我们来谈谈熊市和牛市，再讨论一下实力对比。

Alright. Let's do bear and bull, and we'll do some powers.

给我说说你对索尼的看涨理由。

Give me give me your bull case on Sony.

好的，看涨理由。主机战争持续胶着，没有重大战略或商业模式转变。索尼的执行力依然非常出色。

Alright. Bull case. The console wars continue as they've been. No massive strategic or business model shift. Sony continues to execute really well.

他们确实理顺了供应链，现在只要我想就能买到PS5。目前需求远超供应。这是我对游戏业务的看涨观点。根据我看到的传闻，未来一两年内，他们在移动影像领域将继续保持远超同行的惊人增长。而且这个领域只会越来越重要。

They actually get the supply chain in order so that I can get a PS five if I want one. There's way more demand than supply right now. That's my bull case on gaming. Based on what I'm seeing, that's like, you know, rumors about, one and two years out, I think they're gonna continue to have unbelievable gains above anyone else in the mobile imaging space. And I think that's gonna only get more and more important.

没错。音乐厂牌有个有趣的特点——他们有批发转移定价权。如果你喜欢Spotify，从投资角度应该更喜欢唱片公司。索尼音乐的年营收和营业利润增速都在50%左右。

Yep. There's something interesting about music labels, which is that they have wholesale transfer pricing. Like, if you like Spotify, you should really like record labels in terms of their attraction as an investment. So I don't know. Sony Music, I think both revenue and operating profit is growing at like 50% a year.

如果更多人开始流媒体订阅，这些人为Spotify和Apple Music支付的费用最终都会流向索尼音乐和UMG。这是个相当稳定、有护城河的生意。做完泰勒·斯威夫特那期节目后，我反而觉得唱片公司比想象中更赚钱——原本我以为艺术家会绕过唱片公司直接发行，但除非你是泰勒·斯威夫特这个级别，否则唱片公司看来还会继续赚大钱。

And, you know, if a lot more people start streaming, then all of the benefit of all those people starting to stream and pay Spotify and Apple Music accrues to Sony Music and UMG. You know, it's a pretty predictable, defensible business. I think even after doing the Taylor Swift episode, it kinda made me think the labels are an even better business than I thought. Like, was going into it thinking Taylor Swift is showing us that artists are gonna go direct. And I kinda came out of it saying, unless you're Taylor Swift, it seems like record labels are gonna continue making a lot of money.

是的。我认为他们拥有并不断壮大的业务，且运营得相当不错，这令人印象深刻。他们的多元化正是其优势所在。如果要玩企业集团游戏，就要玩得漂亮，而他们确实做得很好。这真是一个转型成功的故事。

Yep. And so I think the fact that they own that and that's growing and seems to be run pretty well is impressive. And I think their diversity is a play to their strength thing here. If you're gonna play the conglomerate game, go play it well, and they're playing it well. It really is a turnaround story.

我还没查过，但股价似乎接近二十多年前的历史高点。所以，他们在九十年代末和两千年代初造成的损害，几乎已经完全扭转了。

And I haven't looked I think the stock price is near where it was with their all time high twenty plus years ago. So the the turnaround of, undoing all the damage in in the late nineties and early two thousands is almost complete.

讽刺的是，互联网泡沫破裂时索尼也濒临崩溃，但他们却与互联网公司截然相反。

The irony of it all is that the .com bust was when Sony went bust, but they were like the opposite of a .com.

没错。有意思的是这发生在互联网时代，却是一套完全不同的管理失误。

Right. Yeah. It's interesting that it was in the .com era, but was a completely different set of mismanagement activities.

好的。这就是看涨的观点。那看跌的观点呢？

Yep. Okay. So that's the bull case. What's the bear case?

我看跌的理由是微软的Game Pass策略是正确的，游戏行业将转向类似网飞的订阅模式。重点不再是拥有性能最强的游戏机或维持原有商业模式。也许Xbox终于找准了市场定位，既能向硬核玩家出售高端主机，又能向普通用户提供性价比机型，并通过订阅服务每年赚取二三十亿美元。目前索尼30%的收入和利润都来自游戏业务，这部分正面临风险。

My bear is that Microsoft's right in their strategy with Game Pass, and gaming will move to the Netflix of video games style thing. And that it's not about having the most beastly console and keeping the business model the same. And maybe the Xbox, they have finally segmented the market right, where they can sell an expensive beastly console to the people that want that and sell a pretty good console to everyone else and make a ton of money on, you know, 2 to 3,000,000,000 a year right now on the subscription revenue. Yeah. I think that's the bear case is that 30% of both revenue and profit right now come from gaming for Sony, and that's at risk.

图像传感器业务是否存在风险？特别是苹果未来可能自主研发这方面技术？

Is there any risk to the image sensing business that Apple in particular in house is this at some point?

也许吧。但我认为那些高度专业化的CMOS传感技术与苹果内部研发的硅芯片技术截然不同。苹果在价格上对索尼等所有零部件供应商都压得很狠。所以除非苹果觉得这是个值得下注二十年的领域，否则他们很乐意维持现状，继续现有的采购策略。

Maybe. But I think the, like, super specialized CMOS sensing stuff is pretty different than all the in house silicon stuff Apple is doing. I think Apple beats Sony up on price pretty hard as they do with all their component suppliers. And so I think unless Apple feels like there's a twenty year bet to make, they're happy to keep, you know, continue letting it play out as is. Sourcing.

没错。或许他们确实这么想。也许他们在图像处理管线上的所有努力会让他们觉得：不，我们必须连传感器也自己掌控。但迄今为止我还没看到任何这方面的迹象。有意思。

Yeah. And maybe they do. Maybe the all the work they're doing in the image processing pipeline, they're like, nope, we need to own the sensor too. But I haven't seen anything to that effect so far. Cool.

另一个看跌的观点是，索尼已经完全退出了过去那种业务模式——那时你可以买一堆索尼设备摆满家里。现在他们更像是：我们卖游戏机，然后卖专业设备，或者做代工。代工业务要么在内容端，要么在零部件端，比如向苹果等公司出售图像传感器。但看着最初的索尼逐渐消失还是挺让人唏嘘的，可能现在只有他们的相机产品线还最接近公司最初的样貌。

The other bear case is like, Sony is fully out of the business that they used to be in, where you go buy a bunch of Sony gadgets and put them around your house. Now they're they're like, we sell you a gaming system, and then we sell specialized stuff, or we're an OEM. And the OEM is either on the content side or on the, you know, components side selling the image sensors to Apple and others. But it is a little sad to watch the original Sony kinda be done other than maybe their camera line is probably the closest thing to what they were originally.

现在确实很难对索尼的未来感到特别兴奋。PlayStation无疑是惊人的成功，我不认为微软现在或将来能完全夺走他们的市场份额。图像传感业务也非常出色，但他们现在只是个零部件供应商。不知道井深大和盛田昭夫会怎么看待公司现在的状态？

It's just kinda hard to get, like, super excited about anything in the future for Sony right now. Obviously, the PlayStation has been this incredible success, and I don't think Microsoft is gonna like completely take the market from them now or possibly ever. But, know, the imaging sensing business also incredibly impressive, but they're a component now. Like, what would Ibukka and Marita be thinking about the current state of the company?

我打赌井深大会对PSVR也很兴奋。当前这代产品中，Oculus Quest 2虽然比PSVR新得多，但销量远超后者。所以如果要期待什么，恕我直言，可能得押注他们在元宇宙领域做出优秀的VR系统。我猜这意味着你必须相信VR的长期未来在于游戏而非生活方式——如果苹果推出产品，那肯定是面向全场景的，至少是覆盖整个家庭的。

I bet Ibukka would be excited about the PSVR too. Yeah. I think right now, this current generation, the Oculus Quest two is, like, it's much newer than the PSVR, but I think it's, like, massively outselling it. And so if you were gonna get excited about something, I think it would be, dare I say, a metaverse bet on them producing a good VR system. And I suspect what that means is that you would have to believe the long term future of VR is actually in gaming, not in lifestyle, which if Apple comes out with something, it's gonna be for all over the place, at least all over your house.

这个观点很到位。

That's a good point.

考虑到当下人们对Meta和Oculus的看法...没错，索尼确实有个真正的机会摆在面前。

And with, you know, sentiment about, Meta and Oculus. Yeah. There's a there's a real opportunity for Sony there.

确实。话说回来，我认为Meta正在投入巨额资金、人才和一切资源，用于未来五代Meta Quest及其后续产品的研发。目前看来，除了苹果之外，恐怕没有哪家公司的资产负债表能深厚到足以挑战他们的投入规模。

Yeah. That said, I think Meta is investing just gobs and gobs of money and talent and everything into the next five versions of the, you know, Meta Quest and everything that's gonna come after that. And I don't know. At this point, I'm not sure there's a balance sheet deep enough to challenge all the investment they're putting in other than Apple's.

这场较量会很有意思。虽然我无法预知结果，但可以肯定未来几年我们会在节目中频繁讨论这个话题。比如Facebook Portal，各方面评价都显示它是款优秀设备，作为网络摄像头使用体验极佳。但我实在难以接受家里全天候放着一个带摄像头的Facebook设备。

It'll be interesting to watch that play out. Like, I I don't know. I'm sure we'll talk about that on the show a lot in years to come. But, like, the Facebook portal, right, is by all accounts a great device, and using it as a webcam is awesome. But I just, like, I just have a hard time about having a Facebook device with a camera in my house all the time.

是的。我认为对大多数人来说这不会成为问题。Meta会很好地将其拳头消费级产品（比如第五代Quest）与昔日Facebook带来的负面联想划清界限。好的，明白了。

Yeah. I don't think that's gonna be an issue for a lot of people. I think they're gonna do a good enough job distancing the Meta Quest five or whatever is gonna be the real consumer hit from any ickiness that people feel about what was once called Facebook. Yep. Okay.

我们来谈谈权力问题。这很难分析，因为它是个企业集团。问题是：我们该讨论旗下每个业务的独立权力（或权力缺失），还是先问这个集团本身是否具备统御性权力——能否有效利用多业务所有权来助力各业务对抗竞争者？

Let's talk about power. This one's hard to do because it's a conglomerate. So the question is, do we talk about each business having their own power or lack thereof? Or maybe let's first ask, does the conglomerate itself have an overarching power where it actually effectively leverages the ownership of multiple business to help those businesses versus competitors?

我认为目前答案是否定的。不过过去确实存在过一种品牌影响力——没错，这种影响力曾覆盖集团大部分业务（虽非全部），这是肯定的。

I would say today the answer is no. I do think in the past there was a brand power Oh, yes. That went across much of the conglomerate. Maybe not all of it. For sure.

太精彩了。我正以为你会提到这点，所以特意找了这段引文。1983年《纽约时报》有篇文章写道：'技术领导者索尼能在市场中为其产品获取溢价并避免降价，从而保持利润率'。讽刺的是，这篇文章发表时恰逢Betamax格式未能普及，索尼首次开始降价，显示出其品牌号召力的衰退。而撰写该文的分析师实际上断言：'索尼气数已尽'。

This is great. I actually thought you were gonna take it there, and so I've pulled this quote. In the New York Times in 1983, there was an article that said the technological leader, Sony, was able to command a premium for its wares in the marketplace and refrain from price cutting, allowing it to keep its profit margins up. Now the irony was that this piece was written right around the time that Betamax was not catching on, and so they were starting to cut prices showing for the first time that they didn't have the brand cache. But it's actually the the analyst who's writing that article says, it's over for Sony.

'这家公司的黄金时代已经过去'。虽然1983年后其股价大幅上涨，但文章的核心观点是正确的。因为吸引史蒂夫·乔布斯的特质——这家公司始终生产最高质量产品，拥有卓越品牌，因此能获得溢价——正在逐渐消失。大卫，关于剩余七种权力，与其逐个分析各业务，当前是否有某个权力特别适用于某个业务，让你觉得'天啊这太典型了'？

The company's best days are behind it. And the stock would go up a lot after 1983, but the spirit of what they were saying was right. Because I think, like, the very thing that was alluring to Steve Jobs that this company makes stuff of the highest quality, always has the superior brand, and therefore can command higher prices, was kind of going away. Yep. David, for the rest of the seven powers, rather than going through each of their individual businesses, is there one or two powers that apply to one or two businesses that jump out to you in particular today, where you're like, oh my gosh.

这个领域确实拥有这种力量。嗯，今天由你来说。我认为PlayStation的故事是一个关于开发者与消费者网络经济的惊人案例。

This segment totally has this power. Well, it's you say today. I do think the PlayStation story is an incredible story of network economies in the developers and consumers of

这是一个双边网络经济的典范：PlayStation的用户基数越大，对开发者的吸引力就越强。而平台上开发者的优质游戏越多，对消费者的吸引力也随之提升。通过数据研究和分析，我作为当时的消费者就有切身感受——PlayStation上有8000款游戏，而N64只有400款。虽然我两个主机都拥有且喜爱，但内容质量的数量差距实在悬殊。对开发者而言，索尼最初争取他们支持确实经历了一场艰苦卓绝的战斗。

a of a two sided network economy where the more install base PlayStation got, the more attractive the platform came to developers. And the more developers on the platform making better games, the more attractive it was to consumers. And just, like, going through those numbers and doing the research, Like, I anecdotally felt this as a consumer at the time, but, like, 8,000 games on the PlayStation versus 400 on the n 64. And I had both systems and I loved them both, but that's just, like, such a difference in the amount of quality content available to consumers. And likewise for developers, you know, Sony had such a uphill battle to start in winning developers over to the platform.

但甚至在初代PlayStation生命周期结束前，这个平台的引力就已强大到让史克威尔、卡普空、科乐美等厂商不得不选择加入。

But then by even before the end of the life cycle of the first PlayStation, it was just like the gravity was so much with that platform that Squaresoft and Capcom and Konami and Act was like, they had to come to the PlayStation.

这个观点很到位。有趣的是，当我思考'为何这些企业能获得远超竞争对手的利润'时，对照今天的清单：音乐行业？我不这么认为，那是个寡头垄断市场。

I think that's a good point. It's funny. As I look down because the question is, why are each of these businesses able to have outsized profits versus competitors? And if I look at going down the list today, music versus competitors, I don't think so. I think there's an oligopoly in that business, and that's why they're able to be really profitable.

电影方面，作为五大制片厂之一，虽然需要核实数据，但我不认为他们比其他制片厂更赚钱——不像迪士尼拥有自家IP形成的绝对优势。

Movies. They're one of the big five studios, but I don't I should look at the numbers at the other studios to confirm this, but I don't think they're, like, more profitable than the other ones. So they have a real edge the way that Disney does with all their in house IP.

除了蜘蛛侠的合作协议，那属于协同资源。

Except for the Spider Man deal. That's a coordinate resource.

我认为他们在电子产品与解决方案领域主要是市场化竞争。虽然我对相机品类更了解（可能因此存在认知偏差），包括耳机等众多产品线，索尼确实常拥有更优质的产品，却未能有效传达这种价值以实现显著溢价。试想若索尼相机价格是同等佳能产品的两倍，我肯定会选择佳能。

I think they're largely competing in the marketplace with pictures. With electronics products and solutions, I kinda feel the same way. I you know, I'm over indexing on cameras because it's what I know, and there's a lot of other stuff in here, headphones and lots of stuff I'm missing. But I feel like they have a superior product a lot of the time, but they're really not able to communicate that in a way that'll enables them to price meaningfully higher. Like, think if the Sony camera was twice as expensive as a comparably good, you know, Canon, I definitely would get the Canon.

我认为他们之所以能在那里获得超额利润，并没有什么特别的原因，而且历史上他们也未曾做到过。金融服务本就是不错的行业，所以他们能从中获利并不奇怪。然后就是游戏业务，你知道的，这部分占公司收入和利润的近三分之一。但我不清楚他们现在在那里的实力如何。我担心他们可能真的没什么优势。

I I don't think there's anything any any reason why they're able to be extra profitable there, and they historically haven't been. Financial services are just generally good businesses, so no surprise that that's a profitable one for them. And then it just comes down to gaming, which is, you know, close to a third of the company in revenue and profit. And I don't know what their power is today there. I think I worry that there really isn't one.

玩家数量并不多。作为游戏开发商与他们合作需要巨额投资。对消费者来说也很昂贵，从一个生态系统切换到另一个需要承担显著的转换成本，包括购买新设备和学习新控制器等等。

There's not a lot of players. It's a big investment to do business with them as a game developer. It's expensive as a consumer. It has meaningful switching costs as a consumer to switch from one ecosystem to the other and buy a new box and learn all the new controllers and

不过有趣的是，随着Game Pass的出现，如果行业更多地转向订阅模式，我认为很多这种优势会消失。转换成本会大幅降低，网络效应的威力也会减弱。

It's interesting though, like, with Game Pass and if the if the industry moves much more to subscription dynamics, I do think a lot of this power goes away. Switching costs become a lot lower. Network economies become a lot less powerful.

嗯，除了目前运营良好外，我们对这家公司的前景并不十分乐观。可以说他们运营效率很高，擅长识别市场并进入。但我不认为他们具备让我们兴奋的特殊优势，不像分析某些公司时会觉得'这是个能持续五十年的防御性组织'。

Well, that doesn't leave us with a super rosy outlook for the company other than it seems well run right now. I would say it has operational efficiency. They're effective at identifying markets and going into them. But I don't think they have a particular power that we're excited about in the way where we analyze some other companies and think, oh, this is a fifty year defensible organization.

没错。唯一引人注目的，从历史和故事来看，就是品牌曾经拥有的惊人影响力。

No. The only one that jumps out, you know, from the story and the history is the previous incredible power of the brand.

是的。在我们开始评分之前，我想与其讨论今天的价值创造和价值捕获，不如先问你一个问题。这是我在阅读《日本制造》时反复思考的问题，当然这也是书名的由来——让我们选取三个时间点：索尼创立之日、九十年代初的鼎盛时期以及今天，'日本制造'意味着什么？

Yep. Well, before we move toward grading here, and I think instead of value creation, value capture today, I want to pose one question to you. And this is something that I found myself thinking about a lot in reading Made in Japan, and of course, it's why it's titled Made in Japan, which is let's pick three points in time. The day that Sony started, the heyday of the early nineties, and today, what does made in Japan mean? Oh.

因为众所周知，盛田昭夫对索尼的目标就是将产品上的'日本制造'从'哦，这是低质量'转变为'哦，这是高品质'。我先说说我的看法——你可以补充——我认为这在九十年代绝对成功了。是的，我记得九十年代购买大量日本电子产品时，感觉就像现在买日本车一样。

Because famously, Akihaburita's goal with Sony was to transform made in Japan on a product from, oh, this is of low quality to, oh, this is of high quality. I'll tell you my and you can pile onto this. My view of it is, it absolutely worked in the nineties. Yep. And I think when I was buying a lot of Japanese electronics in the nineties, to me, it's like buying a Japanese car today.

比如，我拥有一辆本田车，因为我确信它的品质非常高且耐用。我对索尼也曾有同样的感觉。所以某种程度上，玛丽塔和她的朋友们已经实现了目标。如今，我并不认为日本制造的质量有所下降，但全球供应链和品牌完全动态的特性改变了一切。我现在更多地从美国公司购买产品，这些公司与海外设计伙伴合作——正如我们从Italic的杰里米和LP节目中学到的——制造商深度参与设计过程，这让我感觉虽然产品在别处制造，但我仍是在支持美国企业。

Like, I own a Honda because I'm certain that's very high quality and durable. And I felt that way about Sony a lot. So sort of mission accomplished for Marita and and friends. Today, I don't think that it's any lower quality, but the totally dynamic nature of global supply chains and brands has changed things. Where I buy so much from American companies that work with design partners overseas, as we've learned from Jeremy at Italic and the, LP Show, where the manufacturers are deeply involved in the design, that it feels like I buy more from American companies that are manufactured elsewhere.

而我觉得自己不再像从前那样频繁购买日本公司的产品。我并非认为如今对日本制造的品牌认知度低于索尼鼎盛时期，只是它未能延续当年的上升势头。

And I don't feel like I buy as many things from Japanese companies. And I don't think that I would say my brand perception of something that is made in Japan is any lower than I would have thought in Sony's heyday, but it hasn't continued its ascendancy.

这很有趣。当你提问时，我正纠结于此：如今的感受如何？我完全同意，在索尼初创时期，对大多数西方人而言‘日本制造’可能意味着低质量，但到索尼全盛期时，它已象征着高品质。今天的特别之处在于——我也完全赞同你所说的——更有趣的是，同样的发展模式如今已在许多地方成功复制，比如韩国。你知道的，就在日本完成从低质到高质的蜕变后，韩国也紧随其后上演了同样的剧情。

It's interesting. That's what I was struggling with when you asked the question is, how do I feel today? I a 100% agree when Sony was started, made in Japan for most people in the West probably meant low quality, signified low quality, and then by Sony's heyday, it signified high quality. The interesting thing about today, also on the same page with everything you said, it's also interesting that that same playbook has been run-in so many places now so successfully, like same thing in Korea. You know, after it came, you know, right on the heels of the journey of made in Japan from low quality to high quality, same thing in Korea.

而中国则以更宏大的规模重现了这一历程。作为消费者，在目睹多次类似发展后，我现在的心态更趋于平和：某物当前是低质还是高质，对我而言几乎不具参考价值——这几乎无法预示其未来品质。我默认任何处于产品生产学习曲线上升阶段的国家，最终都将达到高质量水平。

And then the same thing in China in, like, an even bigger way. And so just as a consumer having had that played out a bunch of times now, I'm just much less like, oh, okay. Like, if something is low quality or high quality now, like, that means nothing to me. It means very little to me about whether it might be that way in the future. And I just assume that any location that's coming up the learning curve of product production is going to get to a high quality place.

是的，我认为这是对的。我也一直默认所有东西都是在美国以外制造的。所以无论我从哪个品牌购买，我都预期它实际上是在劳动力成本较低的地方生产的。因此，我猜我确实没有像人们那样深入思考过产品的制造地问题，尤其是在公司总部与设计、制造和营销产品同处一个地方的时代。

Yeah. I think that's right. I also just expect that everything is made outside The United States. And so if I'm buying from any brand anywhere, I expect that it's actually made in a lower labor cost location. And so I I guess I didn't really think about anything where it's made nearly to the extent that people were when companies were headquartered and in the same place that they were designing and manufacturing and marketing products.

是的，那个时代已经有点过去了。

Yeah. Like, that era is kinda past

对我们来说确实有点过时了。是的，完全正确。

us. It's kinda past. Yeah. Exactly.

许多人在推销美国制造的商品时，并不希望产地成为焦点，因为他们想把这作为一大卖点。确实有不少人非常在意这点。但如今消费者已不再像过去那样关注商品底部标签上的产地信息，特别是当我们近期与许多原产国处于战争状态时。

A lot of people don't want it to be, when they're marketing made in America goods because they want that to be a big selling point, and I think there's a lot of people who do really care about that. But this notion of, like, where the sticker on the bottom says it was made is consumers just don't pay attention the way that they did, especially when we were recently at war with a lot of those countries.

你说得对。过去商品产地意义重大，但现在重要性已大不如前。

Exactly what you said. It used to mean a lot where something was made, and I think it just means a lot less now.

这个观点很好。确实如此。这个问题有两个维度：一方面产地的含义从代表低质量变成了高质量，另一方面其重要性本身也逐渐消失。现在正是感谢我们节目的好朋友ServiceNow的好时机。我们曾向听众讲述过ServiceNow惊人的创业故事，以及他们如何成为过去十年表现最出色的企业之一。

That's a good point. Actually, yeah. So this answer is a two axis thing where it's like, well, it went from meaning something was low quality to high quality, and then the magnitude of how much it mattered just went away. Now is a great time to thank good friend of the show, ServiceNow. We have talked to listeners about ServiceNow's amazing origin story and how they've been one of the best performing companies the last decade.

但我们收到一些听众询问ServiceNow实际业务的提问。所以今天，我们就来解答这个问题。

But we've gotten some questions from listeners about what ServiceNow actually does. So today, we are gonna answer that question.

首先，最近媒体常用一个说法称ServiceNow是企业级的'AI操作系统'。具体来说，ServiceNow二十二年前成立时专注于自动化，他们将实体文书转化为软件工作流，最初服务于企业内部的IT部门。仅此而已。随着时间的推移，他们在这个平台上逐步构建更强大复杂的任务处理能力。

Well, to start, a phrase that has been used often here recently in the press is that ServiceNow is the, quote, unquote, AI operating system for the enterprise. But to make that more concrete, ServiceNow started twenty two years ago focused simply on automation. They turned physical paperwork into software workflows, initially for the IT department within enterprises. That was it. And over time, they built on this platform going to more powerful and complex tasks.

他们的服务范围从IT部门扩展到人力资源、财务、客户服务、现场运营等部门。在过去二十年里，ServiceNow已铺设好连接企业各个角落所需的繁琐基础工作，为实现自动化创造条件。

They were expanding from serving just IT to other departments like HR, finance, customer service, field operations, and more. And in the process over the last two decades, ServiceNow has laid all the tedious groundwork necessary to connect every corner of the enterprise and enable automation to happen.

所以当AI技术到来时——从定义上说AI本质上就是高度复杂的任务自动化——而谁已经构建好平台并打通了与企业的连接网络来实现这种自动化？正是ServiceNow。因此要回答'ServiceNow如今做什么'这个问题，他们自称'连接并赋能每个部门'绝非虚言。

So when AI arrived well, AI kinda just by definition is massively sophisticated task automation. And who had already built the platform and the connective tissue with enterprises to enable that automation? ServiceNow. So to answer the question, what does ServiceNow do today? We mean it when they say they connect and power every department.

IT和人力资源部门用它来管理全公司的人员、设备和软件许可证。客服部门使用ServiceNow来检测支付失败问题，并内部转接给正确的团队或流程来解决。供应链部门则用它进行产能规划，整合其他部门的数据和计划，确保所有人步调一致。再也不用在不同应用间来回切换重复输入相同数据了。最近，ServiceNow还推出了AI代理功能，让任何岗位的员工都能快速创建AI代理来处理繁琐事务，从而解放人力去关注更宏观的工作。

IT and HR use it to manage people, devices, software licenses across the company. Customer service uses ServiceNow for things like detecting payment failures and routing to the right team or process internally to solve it. Or the supply chain org uses it for capacity planning, integrating with data and plans from other departments to ensure that everybody's on the same page. No more swivel chairing between apps to enter the same data multiple times in different places. And just recently, ServiceNow launched AI agents so that anyone working in any job can spin up an AI agent to handle the tedious stuff, freeing up humans for bigger picture work.

ServiceNow去年入选了《财富》全球最受赞赏公司榜单和《快公司》最佳创新者工作场所榜单，正是因为有这样的愿景。如果你想在业务的每个角落都利用ServiceNow的规模和速度优势，请访问servicenow.com/acquired，只需告诉他们本和大卫推荐了你。

ServiceNow was named to Fortune's world's most admired companies list last year and Fast Company's best workplace for innovators last year, and it's because of this vision. If you wanna take advantage of the scale and speed of ServiceNow in every corner of your business, go to servicenow.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

感谢ServiceNow。好了，关于评分，你可以选择其他评分方式，但我想做个有趣的对比。2004年2月，有两家消费电子公司的市值都约为300亿美元——这是在索尼大崩盘之后。

Thanks, ServiceNow. Okay. So grading, you can choose to have another way to grade this one, but I wanted to draw a fun comparison. So in 02/2004, there were two consumer electronics companies that both had a market cap of about $30,000,000,000. So this is after that big Sony crash.

两家公司的净利润率都很微薄，只有2%到3%，所以都没赚多少钱。其中一家显然是索尼。索尼后来市值增长到惊人的1500亿美元，基本就是现在的水平。而当初微不足道的净利润率如今也提升到了13%。

They both had pretty thin net income margins of around two or 3%. So neither is really making a lot of money. Sony's obviously one of them. Sony grew to an impressive market cap of a $150,000,000,000, and, it's about where they sit today. And they grew that piddly net income margin to, 13% today.

他们现在确实在创造收益。但不幸的是，对我们这个对比而言，当年和索尼站在同一起跑线上的另一家公司是苹果。

So they're generating income. Now, unfortunately, for our comparison, the company that started right at that same starting line as them is Apple.

我猜到了。

I figured.

如今苹果市值2.8万亿美元，大约是索尼的19倍。其净利润率更是达到近26%，是索尼的两倍。更扎心的是，即便在现有惊人基数上，苹果年收入增速仍达30%，是索尼15%增速的两倍。所以索尼从那个低谷走出来的策略虽好，但苹果的策略堪称史上最佳。

So Apple is now worth $2,800,000,000,000 or about 19 times what Sony is worth. And they generate twice the net income margin percentage at nearly 26%. And to add insult to injury, Apple is also growing their revenue twice as fast even with the crazy high numbers that they have today at 30% per year versus Sony's 15% per year. So Sony's strategy coming out of that terrible era for them was good. Apple's was the greatest in history.

是的。一如既往地感谢伯克希尔·哈撒韦让我持续投资苹果。

Yes. Thank you as always to Berkshire Hathaway for keeping me invested in Apple.

所以情况就是这样。好吧，你们俩其实都有相同的机会，而索尼，你只得了F。就这次机会而言，它本属于他们双方。我是说，你看他们当时都在开始做MP3播放器，都有自己的电脑产品线。

So it's like, okay. Well, you both kind of had the same opportunity, and Sony, you get an f. To the extent that this was the opportunity, and it was for both of them. I mean, you look at they were both starting to make m p three players. They both had a line of computers.

索尼没有自己的操作系统。所以在很多方面他们看起来有点像九十年代的苹果，产品线非常多元，比如相机、耳机、PDA等等，但缺乏优秀的软件。而苹果通过精简产品线，专注于硬件、软件和服务的整合，更不用说像App Store这样的准垄断分销渠道，打造了可以说是史上最伟大的企业。索尼则继续作为一个相对缺乏差异化的电子设备制造商，现在业务范围更广了。

Sony didn't have an operating system. So they looked in many ways sort of like Apple in the nineties in their diversity of products, you know, cameras and headphones and all this stuff, PDAs, all that, but without good software. And Mhmm. Apple, by shifting down to just a few product lines and focusing on the integration of hardware, software, and services, not to mention pseudo monopolistic distribution channels like the App Store, have just built, like, the greatest business in history. And Sony sort of continued as a reasonably undifferentiated manufacturer of electronics and now other stuff.

这确实令人惊叹。先把Mac业务放一边。你知道，苹果的所有业务，比如iPod代表的MP3播放器，

It is amazing. Put the Mac business aside for a second. You know, all of Apple's businesses, m p three players with the iPod, all

他们那些伟大的成功产品——iPhone、iPad、Apple Watch。我确信索尼某个时期也生产过电子表，我可能还戴过。

their great successes, the iPhone, the iPad, the watch. I'm certain Sony at one point made a digital watch. I I may have even had one.

我不太确定。但我相信他们肯定生产过，或者至少完全有能力生产。

I don't know for sure. I'm sure they I'm sure they did or they certainly could have.

平板电脑。个人电脑。这些都是他们业务范围内的事情。

A tablet PC. A PC. Like, this is all their the stuff they do.

要知道，这些市场原本都是索尼的，结果他们全丢了。耳机市场。他们一个都没保住。耳机市场。没错。

These were all markets for Sony, you know, to lose. Headphones. And they lost every single one of them. Headphones. Right.

耳机。

Headphones.

AirPods的业务规模有多大？

How big a business is AirPods?

非常庞大。虽然我没具体算过，但有很多文章说光是AirPods业务就堪比财富50强企业。规模可能和索尼相当。

Enormous. Probably well, I haven't done the math, but there are all these articles about how the AirPods business alone is like, you know, a fortune 50 company. It's probably as big as Sony.

说得好。这或许可以成为我们未来某条推文的后续话题。听众朋友们，如果想帮忙算算AirPods和索尼哪个业务更大——为什么会出现这种情况？我们已经讨论过很多原因了。

That's a great point. Maybe that's a follow-up tweet for us at some point in the future. Our listeners, if you wanna help with the math, AirPods versus Sony, what's a bigger business? So why is it that these things happen? I mean, we've talked about a lot of reasons.

一个重要原因是苹果每次发布新品，都能为已拥有第n代产品的用户找到升级到n+1代的更好理由。而且它们的协同性非常好。比如我有很多苹果设备，真希望AirPods能在电脑和手机之间切换得更流畅——这类问题我遇到不少。

A big one is Apple, every time they released a product, figured out better reasons for you to get product n plus one if you had product n. And they all work together really well. And like, I have a lot of grapes. I wish my AirPods switched, you know, between my computer and my phone more cleanly. Well, I have a lot of stuff like that.

但说到底，苹果构建了真正的生态系统。能在电脑和手机上同步使用iMessage太棒了，彻底改变了体验。我用的索尼产品从没有能这样互相联动的。

But like at the end of the day, there exists our true ecosystem. Getting iMessage on my computer and my phone, amazing. Game changing. I don't think I've ever owned a Sony product that worked with another Sony product in

毫无意义可言。长期以来，他们一直想让你相信这些有意义，我认为这是品牌光环的一部分。我年轻时确实这么觉得，家人也认为拥有索尼全套产品就是品质保证。

a meaningful way. At all. They, for a long time, wanted you to think that they did, and that was part of the brand halo, I think. I certainly felt that way, you know, when I was younger and when I was a kid. I know my family felt that way that having everything Sony Yep.

表面上看，这意味着你得到了最好的产品，而且所有设备都能协同工作。但归根结底，你不过是用同轴电缆连接各种盒子罢了——既没有计算魔法，也没有软件魔法。

Well, a, it meant you were getting the best, but, like, also having it all together. Was like, oh, it's all gonna work together. But at the end of the day, you were just wiring up boxes with, you know, coaxial cables between them. Like, there was nothing there was no computing magic. There was no software magic there.

某种程度上，索尼最近这个市值从300亿增长到1500亿的阶段——虽然给这个成绩打F有点苛刻，但考虑到他们错过的机遇（尤其是以索尼为蓝本的苹果公司创造的28万亿市值对比），这只能是个不及格。

So in some ways, this, like, recent era and I think we should grade the other eras of Sony too. But this recent era where they grew their market cap from 30,000,000,000 to a 150,000,000, it's like it's kind of a bummer to call that an f, but given the opportunity that was in front of them and we kind of have the counterfactual with Apple of, like, what the other opportunity looks like From a company that was modeled after Sony, it's a pure f. There's just no way your net 2,800,000,000,000.0 less of value.

要我说，真正的F应该是诺基亚那种下场。

I mean, I guess an f would be like Nokia or something like that.

确实。至少他们还没破产。

Yeah. That's right. I guess that was positive. It didn't go to business.

所以勉强算D吧？毕竟他们还活着不是吗？

So sure. Maybe it's a d. It they're still alive. Right?

对啊，他们核心业务还翻了五倍呢，打F确实太严厉了

Yeah. Oh, they only five x to their really big business over it's it's probably harsh to call it an f, but

我要说f是极端的。我们做得不够，你知道的，c和d。我会选d。

I I'll say I'll say f is extreme. We don't do enough, you know, c's and d's. I'll go d.

你对其他时代怎么看？

How do you think about other eras?

我很难想到除了a，也许是a+，对于从初始时代到鼎盛时期。比如，二战后，公司和国家的牌面都极为不利，却打造了一个全球最受尊敬的品质品牌，几十年来持续创新。井深的创立宗旨，你知道，就是为工程师创造一个追求技术乐趣并造福社会的场所，我认为这几十年来索尼做到了。是的，一个不可思议的故事。

I'm hard pressed to think of anything except, you know, a, maybe an a plus for the initial era through the heyday. Like, coming out of World War two with every card in the deck stacked against the company and the country to then build one of the most respected brands for quality around the whole world and a true innovation for decades. Ibuka's founding prospectus, you know, to create a a place for engineers to work in the joy of their pursuit of technology and, you know, benefit to society that I think was probably Sony for decades. Yep. An incredible story.

很难不称之为a+，从二战后的日本一直到九十年代中期。执行力惊人。你知道，这可能

It's hard not to call it an a plus coming out of World War two in Japan, the whole run all the way up to the mid nineties. Just astonishing execution. You know, this may have been

是个时间巧合，但真的，你知道，当大贺最终退位时，那个时代就结束了，他是连接原始时代的最后纽带。

a timing coincidence, but really, you know, the run was over when Oga finally stepped aside, and he was he was the last link to the original days.

是的。最初的创始人。很奇怪，对吧？因为这很不日本，但它不是一个多代传承的公司。

Yeah. The original founders. It's weird. Right? Because it's very un Japanese, but it is not a multigenerational company.

是的。它不太可能成为延续400年15代的王朝。

Yeah. It is unlikely to be a 15 generation four hundred year dynasty.

也许它会，但在创始人一代之后，那些后续发展就失去了意义。这是一家全球性企业。坦率地说，它是日本市值第二大的公司。这是一家举足轻重的全球企业，是三大巨头之一。

And maybe it will, but it just won't be meaningful in those latter, really after the first generation of founders. So it's a company in the world. I mean, frankly, it's the second largest company by market cap in Japan. So it's a big it's an important company in the world. They're one of the three majors.

就像我在节目开头说的那样，他们在许多重要领域的主导地位——或至少前三的地位——依然存在。但与此同时，我觉得没人会认为他们是未来的创新者。这两种情况似乎可以同时成立。

Like, everything I said at the top of the show, their dominance across or at least top three in many important categories is still true. And yet, I don't think anyone's really looking at them and saying they're the innovators of tomorrow. Nope. It's like somehow both of those can be true at once.

是啊，快结束了我反而觉得有点奇怪

Yeah. I feel strange coming to the end of

这一期节目，你知道的。我们可以让它永不结束。

this episode, you know. We could just make it never end.

对，这是个老生常谈的话题了。但在这个节目里，我们很少遇到这样的情况：讲完一个故事后只能说'最多算平庸'，就我们目前的处境而言。

Right. That's that's an acquired theme. But it's not often, you know, on this show where we get to the end of a story and we're like, that's mediocre at best, you know, in terms of where we are right now. Yeah.

嗯，我们很少讲述那些辉煌已成过去的故事。

Well, we just don't tell the stories very often where the brightest days were behind them.

是啊。谁知道呢？也许索尼的人会听到这期节目——况且市场上对他们的批评也不止这些。

Yep. Well, who knows? Maybe folks at Sony will listen to this and there's plenty of other criticism in the marketplace on them too.

从情感上讲，我确实觉得它们的黄金时代已经过去。但从理性角度看，它们未来十年赚的钱可能比以往任何十年都多。不过我们分析这类公司的惯常思路是：它们能否继续保持每年300%的增速？要知道，即便是苹果，年增长率也只有多少？30%而已。仅仅30%啊。

Emotionally, I do feel like their best days are behind them. Rationally, they'll probably make more money in the last 10 than in any other 10 before it. But the way that we're sort of trained to analyze these companies is, are you gonna continue growing at 300% a year for the you know, or or like like even Apple only grows at what? 30% a year? Only 30%.

微软在其第四十五或第五十个经营年头反而在加速发展，不管具体是哪年。没错。

Microsoft's only accelerating in their forty fifth or fiftieth year of business, whatever this is. Right.

亚马逊，这些公司中的任何一家。

Amazon, any of these companies.

但我们确实相信这些公司会推出下一个创新平台，而且我们对这些充满期待。就像我们现在讨论苹果头显的方式，就完全不同于讨论索尼头显的态度。对。对。好吧。

But we do have faith that those companies are gonna come out with the next innovative platforms, and, you know, we're excited about those. The way that we're talking about the Apple headset, we are not talking about the Sony headset that way. Yep. Yep. Alright.

这个话题我们已经谈透了。要不要快速讨论些具体案例？

We've beat the horse. Should we do some quick carve outs?

好，我们来讨论具体案例吧。

Yes. Let's do carve outs.

好的。我读了摩根·豪塞尔写的一篇超棒的文章《这一切是如何发生的》。哦，我强烈推荐这篇文章。它提供了一个非常精彩的视角。

Alright. I read an awesome, awesome article called How All This Happened by Morgan Housel. Oh. And I cannot recommend it enough. It is a fascinating look.

这个故事始于二战时期，延续至今。它主要审视了美国消费者所经历的经济困境，涵盖了从房地产繁荣到人们随时间累积的债务负担，再到购物狂潮的兴起——那种极端的消费主义，以及不同年代人们对这些现象的情感基调。它巧妙地串联起这些线索，解释了我们社会如何走到今天的经济状态。

It's another story that starts in World War two and comes to today. And it's basically a look at the plight of the economics that consumers experience in America. And it talks about everything from, you know, housing booms to people's debt load over time to, the rise in, people buying stuff, like hardcore consumerism and the national tenor of people's feelings toward all these things throughout different decades. And it winds this wonderful story sort of explaining how we got to where we are today as a society economically.

听起来这完全符合'Acquired'家族的调性。

That sounds like right up the acquired family's alley.

是的。而且比你想象的要短。虽然篇幅不短，但比我刚才描述的方式要简洁些。

Yes. And it's shorter than you think. It's a long piece, but it's shorter than you think based on the way I just described it.

太棒了。

That's so great.

摩根真的是位顶尖作家。读他的任何作品都不会错。好了，我...

And Morgan's just such a stellar stellar writer. I mean, you can't go wrong reading any of his stuff. Alright. I have

这期节目安排得恰到好处。我期待已久，你应该知道是什么内容吧？

very apt carve out for this episode. I'm very excited about it. I've been waiting a long, long time for you know what it's gonna be, don't you?

我不知道。感觉是和游戏相关的。

I don't. It feels gaming related.

不。不。不。不。好吧，也许，勉强算是。

No. No. No. No. Well, maybe, tangentially.

终于，我提到了几个月前订购的Model 3。太棒了，简直完美。就像，你知道的，我们试驾了Polestar，沃尔沃的电动Model 3竞争对手。还看了其他一些车型。

Finally, took delivery of the model three that I ordered months ago. It's awesome. It's so great. It's just like, you know, we test drove the the Polestar, Volvo's electric model three competitor. And we looked at a few other things.

说到底，天啊，它真的太棒了。我觉得特斯拉的品牌和整体体验就像九十年代的索尼一样。我们的Model 3没有发现任何面板缝隙之类的问题，一切看起来都很好。但整个体验的整合度惊人，从购买流程到交付过程，再到提车。

And at the end of the day that, like, gosh, it's just so good. I feel like the Tesla brand and the experience and all about it is just like Sony back in the nineties. We haven't noticed any panel gaps or anything on on our model three. It's, you know, seems to be all fine. But, like, the experience is so amazingly integrated, like, from the buying process to the delivery process to, like, picking it up.

我手机收到一条短信通知，让我在特斯拉应用里完成文件手续。由于某些原因，在旧金山他们不提供送货上门服务。所以我去了马林的经销店，他们告诉我‘你的车停在E车位，过去看看，检查一下没问题就在应用里点击接受’。哇哦，然后我就点击了接受。

I got a text on my phone with a notification to go in the Tesla app, finish up my paperwork, and then they're not for whatever reason in San Francisco, they're not doing driveway deliveries. So I went to the dealership in Marin, and they're like, your car is in Parking Stall E. Go to it, you know, look around, see if it looks right to you, and then click accept in the app. Woah. And then I just hit accept.

我坐进车里。这车基本上就是个带轮子的电脑，我知道这说法很老套，大家都这么说。但亲身体验后，我心想‘天啊，还真是这样’。

I get in. The car is basically a computer on wheels, which I know is trade. Everybody says that, but, like, experience it. I'm like, holy shit. It really is that.

然后我就开走了。那个应用太神奇了，有实时哨兵摄像头视图。我现在就能调出车上摄像头的实时画面，通过应用远程控制车里的一切。

And then I just drive off, you know. And, like, the app is amazing. You get the live Sentrycam view. I can pull up right now, live cameras on the car in the app. I can do everything from the app remotely in the car.

这真的很酷。

It's it's pretty cool.

很高兴你也很高兴。虽然这类话常听到，但从一个真心实意的人口中说出感觉特别好，比如你现在容光焕发的样子。懂我意思吗？好了各位听众，现在正是感谢我们Acquired新合作伙伴Sentry的绝佳时机。

I'm delighted you're delighted. You hear these things, but it's nice to hear it from, like, someone who is actually going like, you're glowing right now. You know? Alright, listeners. This is a great time to thank a new partner of ours here at Acquired, Sentry.

拼写是S-E-N-T-R-Y，就像站岗放哨的人。没错。

That's s e n t r y, like someone standing guard. Yes.

Sentry帮助开发者调试错误和延迟问题，几乎能解决任何软件故障，并在用户发怒前修复。正如其官网所言，它被超过4,000,000名软件开发者评价为——引用原话——'还不错'。

Sentry helps developers debug errors and latency issues, pretty much any software problem, and fix them before users get mad. As their homepage puts it, it's considered, quote unquote, not bad by over 4,000,000 software developers.

今天我们要讨论的是Sentry如何与Acquired生态中的另一家公司Anthropic合作。Anthropic原本有套旧的基础设施监控系统，但在其庞大的规模和复杂性面前，他们转而采用Sentry来加速问题定位与修复。

So today, we're talking about the way that Sentry works with another company in the acquired universe, Anthropic. Anthropic used to have some older infrastructure monitoring that was in place, but at their massive scale and complexity, they instead adopted Sentry to help them find and fix issues faster.

确实。在AI领域崩溃可是大问题。当你运行像模型训练这样的大型计算任务时，一个节点故障可能波及数百甚至数千台服务器。Sentry帮他们检测故障硬件，在引发连锁反应前快速剔除，还能将大规模问题的调试时间从数天缩短至几小时，让训练任务尽快恢复。

Yep. Crashes can be a massive problem in AI. If you're running a huge compute job like training a model and one node fails, it can affect hundreds or thousands of servers. Sentry helped them detect bad hardware so they could quickly reject it before causing a cascading problem. Sentry enabled them to debug massive issues in hours instead of days so they could get back to their training runs.

如今Anthropic依赖Sentry实时追踪异常、分配错误并分析故障，覆盖其研究团队使用的所有主要语言，包括Python、Rust和C++。Anthropic团队表示：'Sentry为开发者提供了调试问题所需的全部信息集成平台'。

And today, Anthropic relies on Sentry to track exceptions, assign errors, and analyze failures in real time across all the primary languages used by Anthropic's research teams, including Python, Rust, and c plus plus According to the Anthropic team, Sentry gives our developers one place where they have all the information they need to debug an issue.

还有个关于Sentry的有趣更新：本月起他们推出了名为SEER的AI调试器。这个AI代理能整合Sentry的问题上下文和代码库，不仅猜测问题根源，还能针对具体应用提供可直接合并的修复方案。

And one other fun update in the world of Sentry is that as of this month, Sentry now has an AI debugger called SEER. SEER is an AI agent that taps into all the issue context from Sentry and your code base to not just guess, but root cause gnarly issues and propose merge ready fixes specific to your application.

我们非常兴奋能与Sentry合作。他们拥有令人惊叹的客户名单，不仅包括Anthropic，还有Cursor、Vercel、Linear等。如果你想像超过13万家从独立爱好者到世界顶级公司都在使用Sentry的组织那样快速发现并修复问题代码，可以访问sentry.i0/acquired了解更多，他们还为所有Acquired听众提供两个月免费服务。就是Sentry，sentry.i0/acquired，只需告诉他们是本和大卫推荐你的。

We are pumped to be working with Sentry. They've got an incredible customer list, including not only Anthropic, but Cursor, Vercel, Linear, and more. If you wanna fix broken code like the over 130,000 organizations using Sentry from indie hobbyists to some of the biggest companies in the world to find and fix broken code fast. You can check out sentry.i0/acquired to learn more, and they are offering two free months to all Acquired listeners. That's Sentry, sentry,.i0/acquired, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

好了听众们，我想差不多就到这里。如果你觉得'天啊，真希望有更多人能和我讨论这个话题'，我预感在acquired.fm/slack上会有很多人讨论。所以快来加入我们，聊聊今天的新闻。

Alright. Well, listeners, I think that about does it. If you're like, man, I I wish more people would talk about this topic with me. I have a feeling at acquired.fm/slack, there will be plenty of people talking about this. So come join us, talk about the news of the day.

我们会讨论微软收购动视暴雪、索尼收购Bungie这类并购案。我们还有有限合伙人专属节目，最新一期请到了NZSCapital的返场嘉宾，探讨当前市场的混乱局面及其观点。如果你是付费LP，就能提前两周收听这些内容——在市场动荡时期，这些虽非投资建议但可能改变你思维方式的见解会很有帮助。加入LP计划还能参与专属Zoom会议。想收听公开版本或成为Acquired有限合伙人，节目说明里都有链接。

We'll talk about acquisitions like Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard and Sony buying Bungie. We also have our limited partner show, and our latest episode is with repeat guests from NZS Capital talking about what on earth is going on in the markets right now and their view. If you are a paying LP, you have access to those episodes two weeks before they hit the public feed, which in market choppiness like this is helpful to the extent where you're learning things that you think, of course, aren't investment advice, but may help the way that you think. You'll also if you join the LP program, you'll get access to our LP only Zoom calls. So if you wanna access the public version of that feed or become an acquired limited partner, both of those are linked in the show notes.

最后我们有个很棒的招聘板。如果你在寻找新机会，我和大卫亲自在acquired.fm/jobs上精选了一些节目朋友提供的工作岗位。喜欢本期内容的话，请分享给朋友——我们最看重口碑推荐，所以请选择你共事的同事或密友。

Lastly, we've got a great job board. If you're looking for what's next, David and I personally have curated some jobs at acquired.fm/jobs with some friends of the show. And, if you like this, share it with a friend. We love one on one recommendations. So pick someone that you work with or a close friend.

如果你愿意亲自推荐并说他们应该听听，那就太感谢了。听众们，我们下次见。

And, if you you would personally endorse it and say they should check it out, please do that. With that, listeners, we will see you next time.

我们下次见。

We'll see you next time.