Gaming/Metaverse: New Product Cycle To Provide A Top-Line & Earnings Boost

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…

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Gaming: The Recovery Is Taking Shape

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…

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Gaming/Metaverse: Nvidia CEO: “Gaming is recovering from the post-pandemic downturn”

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,…

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Gaming: M&A or FTC?

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…

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Gaming: Some Light At The End Of The Tunnel

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…

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Metaverse/Fintech: Axie Crypto Hack Highlights The Importance of Metaverse Infrastructures

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.…

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