New players, old game

Good evening!

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Happy New Year folks! Hope y’all had a lovely start to the year, not like the one team India had in South Africa. Even though they won the match, the dramatic fall of wickets didn’t exactly inspire confidence. It felt more like EA’s Cricket 07 rather than an actual game.

Speaking of games, I wrote about gaming’s crazy 2023 in our year-end review for The Signal. In that piece, I mentioned the rise of non-gaming giants and so, I thought it best to elaborate further today. There were many contenders to cover: Amazon started and flopped, YouTube is getting started, Disney had a remarkable year with a string of hits based on its expansive IP. Their Spiderman game with Sony broke the record for the fastest-selling title in PlayStation Studios' history. They might be acquiring EA Sports? But for me, two companies stood out from the pack because of the massive strides they made in gaming and hence, today is about them. 

Netflix and play

The streaming giant made its gaming debut back in 2021. It started with simple mobile games, most of them based on its own IP like Stranger Things. Much like their earlier days in streaming, these games were only published, not created, under the banner of Netflix. That changed this year when the company released its first two internally developed games, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals and Netflix Stories: Love Is Blind.

Netflix now has 86 games in its stable, and more than 90 in the pipeline. This number starts to make sense when you see the kind of investments they’ve made over the years. The company has bought four game studios and developed two of its own. The combined strength of its in-house studios has helped the company churn out titles at a steady pace, with a focus on its own IP. Moreover, in 2023, when every game developer was reducing its workforce, Netflix didn’t fire anyone from its game development unit.

Netflix is also focusing on the experience of gaming. Back in March 2023, a code was found hidden in the Netflix app that allowed gaming on TV (Apple/Android TV) by using your phone as a controller. Months later, Netflix officially announced that it’s launching a beta test to allow cross-platform gaming. That puts it directly in competition with the likes of Microsoft and Sony, who’ve been providing a similar service with much success. 

For now, Netflix remains a fringe player but it’d be foolish to discount it. The company’s massive subscriber base, coupled with its ability to churn out massive cultural hits, holds it in good stead. Add to that the industry’s mergers and acquisitions spree, and one senses more opportunities to acquire greater talent and IPs for Netflix. 

Apple of our eye 

The other non-gaming giant making inroads into this space is Apple. The Cupertino-headquartered company has had an interesting relationship with gaming. Back in 1999, Steve Jobs had promised to turn Macs into the best gaming computers. Of course that never really materialised and Apple’s gaming ambitions remained just that: ambitions. 

In 2019 though, the company released a new service called Apple Arcade. The cloud-based gaming service provided 100 odd franchised games for a flat fee, with no ads or in-app purchases required. That was the time its competitor Google had also launched a similar service, and many thought of it as a reactionary announcement rather than anything substantial. Cut to 2024, Google’s service has shut down and Apple’s Arcade has grown from strength to strength. It has more than doubled the games on offer, bumped up its prices, and attracted a significant customer base (some suggest a customer base of 100 million, but there’s really no way to confirm it).

While Apple Arcade has had some wins, the games on offer are mostly casual, the kind you’d want to play to pass the time. For serious gamers, Apple’s offerings were still not optimal. That changed last year with Apple’s latest generation of silicon chips in iPhone 15 Pros and MacBook Pros. This silicon, aside from being three nano-metre (3nm) chips, had a bunch of features made exclusively for gaming. Stuff like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders, which help deliver realistic graphics on iPhone and Macs. MacBooks in particular got a major gaming upgrade in October last year with Dynamic Caching built into the new chips, which optimise for peak performance while gaming.

Alongside hardware, Apple is also courting game developers to launch games for its devices and services. During the launch of iPhone 15, Apple spent a good chunk of stage time covering  the release of AAA games (i.e. graphics-heavy, narrative-driven titles) like Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, etc. on iPhones. The same strategy was followed in the October event for MacBooks. What’s interesting about the choice of games is that all of them are console- or PC first. Getting them on its devices is a huge win for Apple. 

Apple isn’t taking this lightly at all. The company’s going out of its way to bring in more games. Last year, it launched the Game Porting Toolkit, which allows developers to bring PC games to Mac without rewriting any codes. Coupled with Apple’s ecosystem advantages and its own custom chips, the upsides for developers are massive as well. 

Unlike Netflix, Apple’s ambitions are not about creating games. It’s coming for the massive console market. It needs to get buyers away from consoles to counter the dwindling sales of Macs and iPhones. A surge in gaming on Mac would do just that, as well as justify the massive capex for making custom chips. One announcement that can potentially help them do that? GTA VI. The game’s set for console release in 2025 and will most likely release the next year for PCs. If Apple manages to get that on Mac on the same date as PCs, leave alone consoles, that would be a game-changer for the company. 

Both of these companies seem to be playing the long game here. With abundant cash and sway in the stock market, this year could just be the most exciting year for these two companies in gaming. Should that be a cause for worry for the incumbents? Probably not, but they’ll be closely watching these two.

⚡️Quick Singles

⚽️🆕💰: English football club Chelsea has roped in cryptocurrency exchange BingX as its sleeve sponsor for the remainder of the ongoing 2023/24 season. The deal will also involve BingX becoming Chelsea’s main training kit sponsor from the next season. Chelsea famously began the season with no sponsorship on its shirts, before agreeing a £40 million ($48 million) deal with sports technology company Infinite Athlete for the current season. It is unclear if the “front of shirt” partnership will continue beyond the end of the season. However, Infinite Athlete will find a place in the sleeve of Chelsea training kits.

⛳️📋🔛: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and The PGA Tour have agreed to extend their merger negotiations into 2024, with the lapse of the initial December 31 2023 deadline. The PGA Tour has also been the subject of investment interest, with a consortium known as the Strategic Sports Group keen to take a minority stake in a for-profit entity called PGA Tour Enterprises. Elsewhere, Rory McIlroy, a one-time staunch opponent of LIV Golf, indicated that he was open to playing the Saudi-backed tour if it became the “IPL of Golf.”

♻️🏁🏎️: The Formula 1 team formerly known as Alfa Romeo F1 will rebrand and compete as Stake F1 for the next two years after its owners agreed to a partnership with online betting company Stake. This could be an interim arrangement for the team’s Swiss owners Sauber, which has agreed to a partnership with Audi from the 2026 season, with another rebrand expected. Stake’s other high-profile sponsorships include English football club Everton and the UFC.

🇮🇳🏏💸: The Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has set the base price for the title sponsor rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) at ₹1,750 crore (2024-2028), The Economic Times reported. While the aggregate rights come to ₹350 crore for 74 matches, the report claims that the BCCI had asked prospective bidders to bid “for 84 and 94 matches at ₹375 crore and ₹400 crore base price respectively.” The BCCI wants to increase the number of IPL matches to 84 in the 2025 and 2026 season and to 94 from 2027 onwards. Its existing title sponsor Tata Sons will also have a right to matches, while Chinese brands could be disallowed. The BCCI is also seeking a title sponsor for the Women’s Premier League. 

🏏📺💰: Reliance Industries and Walt Disney have begun antitrust diligence on their proposed merger of the latter’s India business, Reuters reported. The move follows the signing of a non-binding term sheet between the two parties in late December, which would have Reliance Industries own 51% of the merged entity, per The Economic Times. The report said Viacom18 will absorb Star India’s businesses via a share swap, with Reliance paying cash for the controlling stake. Both parties are also working out a plan to inject fresh capital to the tune of $1.5 billion into the business, the report added.

📖 Weekend Reading

The Underwear Model Who Is Undressing The Rest of NBA [The Wall Street Journal]

The People Who Brought You Travis Kelce [The New York Times]

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