Business was finished.
Hattori Kiyoshi gathered up the scattered acquisition proposals and financial statements in front of him and stacked them neatly to one side.
The tension in the conference room dissipated along with it.
Hattori Kiyoshi lifted his teacup, moistened his throat, and began talking about another briefing sent over by the North American branch.
Its contents had nothing to do with capital operations. It was all gossip about this year's North American copyright market and entertainment industry.
North America's consumer market was running extremely hot this year.
The afterglow of the Atlanta Olympic Games had yet to fade, while the Internet gold rush over in Silicon Valley was making a clamor that shook the skies, with new tech upstarts being born every day.
These grand narratives occupied the front pages of the newspapers, yet they still failed to smother the momentum of theatrical box office.
The moviegoing audience base was simply too enormous.
The game industry had been charging ahead madly these past few years, with output value repeatedly hitting new highs, but in terms of social penetration and its reach into lower-tier markets, it still could not compare with the popcorn blockbusters produced by Hollywood's industrial assembly lines.
Independence Day had taken this year's box-office crown so far.
Fox Pictures had earned until its bowls overflowed through the spectacle of aliens blowing up the White House.
Hattori Kiyoshi had a professional sensitivity toward copyright derivatives.
Hollywood studios had always spared no effort when it came to squeezing the remaining value out of an IP.
The game license for Independence Day had been sold off early.
The one taking it over was Radical Entertainment.
This Canadian studio in Vancouver had previously done some outsourcing projects, and it was said that its internal team was developing a new physics