Niantic, the developer of massive mobile hit Pokemon Go, released in recent weeks in collaboration with Japanese game maker Capcom its newest location-based and augmented reality (AR) title, Monster Hunter Now. The game lets users explore the world and achieve missions while fighting gigantic monsters, the AR technology allowing to blend the digital monsters with…
Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard has faced many antitrust hurdles since its announcement in January 2022, but the legal challenges now seem to be easing. In the US, a federal judge rejected yesterday the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for a preliminary injunction to block the deal, considering that the FTC had not…
Newsflow is the video gaming industry is definitely improving after the post-pandemic lull. Nintendo’s latest Zelda set a new record for the series (10 million units sold in 3 days), confirming that consumer spending on well-known franchises remains well oriented and largely unaffected by the macro environment. And importantly, most game publishers are now taking…
After a tough 2022 year (-7%) dragged down by unfavorable comparisons with a pandemic-driven 2021, videogame content sales in the US are showing signs of life with a 1% growth in February, according to industry tracking group Circana. While this recovery is not impressive yet, hardware spending, which can be viewed as an early indicator…
Nvidia’s Gaming revenue in Q4 came out sharply down again (-46% year-on-year) as the company is navigating an unprecedented inventory correction related to the post-pandemic video gaming slowdown (and, to a lower extent, the collapse of demand for crypto mining cards) and is still facing tough quarterly comparisons. Even if the top-line figure was uninspiring,…
Over the last couple of months, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed to block two M&A deals in the video game space, first the acquisition of virtual reality start-up Within (that developed a VR fitness app) by Meta and, last week, the blockbuster takeover ($69 billion) of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Both legal…
Despite the post-pandemic gaming slowdown and initial macro headwinds, quarterly reports from game makers have been decent overall, with revenue/bookings hovering between moderate growth (Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, Roblox…) and moderate decline (Tencent, Activision, Take-Two…) and earnings expectations/guidance being materially cut in a very limited number of cases (Roblox, Take-Two). As expected, console and…
Even if the gaming industry is still affected by tough comparisons with a pandemic-driven 2021, there are some encouraging signs giving confidence in the 2023 outlook. Notably, console sales, which had been underwhelming due to supply constraints, have been accelerating in the last three months and reached 19% growth in the US in September according…
In line with recent press reports, Tencent has acquired a 49.9% stake in Ubisoft’s family holding company, Guillemot Brothers Ltd (which owns a 13% stake in Ubisoft), in a deal that values the French video game maker (a portfolio company) around EUR75-80 per share and reflects a premium around 80%. Tencent, which already owned directly…
The crypto community has just been shattered by the biggest crypto heist to date: 173,600 ethereum and 25.5 million USDC (a U.S. dollar pegged stablecoin), or an equivalent of $622 million, have been stolen on the Ronin network. This network is a so-called sidechain used to settle crypto transactions on Axie Infinity’s video gaming platform.…