FT graphs: Europe generates almost 50% of all online

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Why GameStop and Ryan Cohen will win. [DD] No Diamond Hands Required.

Alright apes and autists, let me explain why I believe GameStop has a strong fundamental case without mentioning diamond hands and short squeeze. If Ryan Cohen can successfully execute his vision, this leaky vessel will turn into a rocket ship blasting past the moon to the edge of the observable universe.
On November 16, 2020, Ryan Cohen sent a letter to the GameStop's Board of Directors titled "Maximizing Stockholder Value by Becoming the Ultimate Destination for Gamers". In it, Ryan Cohen outlined the roadmap for GameStop to pivot and become a technology first company. Let me boil this down for you in simple language for you smooth brain apes.
The Mission Statement
"GameStop needs to evolve into a technology company that delights gamers and delivers exceptional digital experiences [...] the successful and durable players of tomorrow will be technology-first companies that specialize in gaming products, experiences and services."
The Landscape
The Roadmap
The Financials
Analysts are valuing GameStop as a traditional brick-and-mortar business. If Ryan can properly execute and transform the company, I believe they can become the Target and Chewy of Gaming with potential verticals of streaming and Esports (not factored into this calculation for now). GameStop makes roughly $8 Billion in Revenue, however it is currently valued at a $3.5B Market Cap as it bleeds cash. Target makes roughly $78B in Revenue with $3.3B in Net Income and a Market Cap of $96 Billion. Chewy makes roughly $4.8B in Revenue, losing money but growing quickly, and is valued at $44B in Market Cap. Target and Chewy are valued at 1.25x to 9x Price to Sales respectively. This equates to $10B to $72B Market Cap transposed to GameStop. Obviously, this is very simplistic and does not consider their balance sheet and other factors, but given these metrics:
Note this is assuming $8B in Revenue. If GameStop can grow revenues, focus on digital to improve margins, and expand within the growing total addressable market, I see potential for higher prices and achieving Target to Chewy-like multiples.
The X Factor
I believe Ryan Cohen was offered to lead GameStop's transition with significant control and autonomy. Otherwise, I do not believe he would have joined the Board. In his letter, Ryan simply stated that "RC Ventures is not interested in receiving a lone seat on GameStop's ten-member Board. It is not enticing to become an isolated stockholder advocate on a Board that has overlooked years of digital revenue opportunities and presided over massive value destruction without assuming full accountability." With the recent additions of two Chewy Executives to the Board of Directors, a new Chief Technology Officer who was the Engineering Lead in Amazon Web Services, a new Customer Care Executive from Chewy, and a new Fulfillment Executive from Amazon, I believe Ryan is executing his vision and revamping the GameStop team.
Notice his hires are from Chewy and Amazon? Ryan Cohen was obsessed with Amazon’s customer centric philosophy and built Chewy to follow that same model. He is hiring digital and e-commerce focused leaders to manage this transformation. Ryan's customer centric obsession is what allowed Chewy to beat Amazon. If GameStop pivots to digital and follows that same obsession, this will be a great opportunity to win.
Furthermore, I believe Ryan's vision is the right roadmap for GameStop. Digital e-commerce, streaming, and mobile is the future and Ryan fully acknowledges and embraces that future. GameStop will need to revamp and modernize their website and phone app, but I am sure that will follow in the months ahead. GameStop has the financial and brand assets that should weather this storm, but execution will be key. Ryan owns nearly 10% of GameStop, so he has a vested interest in its success and has much more to lose than my stake.
So degens, I say think with your heart and not with your smooth brain. Strap in and sit tight, this rocket ship may turn into a long journey to Mars. Maybe Papa Elon will be our catalyst.
P.S. If we all buy something from GameStop this quarter we can load this rocket ship ourselves.
TLDR; Ryan Cohen is Jesus. Buy and Hold $GME.
submitted by Yonsei to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

An in-depth look at 18* unannounced PlayStation 5 exclusives | Including a new FROM SOFTWARE collab

Arrowhead Game Studios (Magicka, Gauntlet, Helldivers)
Testament
In 2016, Arrowhead started to work on their first ever AAA game - a project that would require not only the attention of the entire team, but also to grow the studio way beyond the 35 employees that worked on Arrowhead around that time. That's why in 2017 they moved into a bigger office where they could accommodate all of their staff - both old and new.
Then in 2018, Arrowhead's co-founder stated in an interview that they were making a third-person game this time around and, due to the change in perspective, moving the focus from local co-op to making it purely online co-op. Friendly fire is confirmed to be making a return.
In early 2019, some Arrowhead developers were spotted at GDC wearing jackets with a "Testament Dev Team" written in the back. While recapping 2019, it was stated on the Arrowhead website that they had made a "butt-ton of progress" on the game and that by the end of the year the studio had already grown to roughly 60 people.
Bend Studio (Siphon Filter, Days Gone)
Days Gone
Days Gone ends on a cliffhanger, but so did The Order 1886 and, well, we all know how that ended up - so let's delve a bit deeper into why Days Gone 2 will be a thing.
In 2019, a couple of weeks before the game's launch, a Sony PR guy said that Days Gone was seen as a "franchise" in Sony's eyes, stating that "the goal is always to make a game that people love and want more of". One month later, the game came out and delivered some surprisingly solid numbers not only at launch but also throughout the year, thanks to the good word-of-mouth it had amongst the community.
According to snort_cannon, the success of the game came as a surprise even to Sony, who was expecting Days Gone to be the disappointment and Death Stranding being the one doing crazy numbers.
Later that year, Bend Studio managing director Chris Reese kind of teased that a sequel was in the works when asked about it during an interview: "This is a world that we want to keep breathing more life into, and explore many, many different avenues. So who knows, we'll see!"
Bluepoint Games (Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon's Souls)
Bloodborne Remastered
In May 2020, NeoGAF user Celine.D.Sykes - who previously discussed this project in February 2019 on the ResetEra forums - talked about the Bloodborne remaster in greater detail: "During my time on ResetEra, I only knew that From Software wanted Bloodborne to release on PC. Unfortunately, a PC port would need a lot of work […] and reworking Bloodborne's engine would take a great amount of work. The game logic is tied to framerate, among many other baffling decisions. The last time From Software tried to change the inner logic of an engine; it resulted in the infamous PC port of the first Dark Souls."
"Making a long story short, Sony said they were interested in a potential Bloodborne remaster for PS5, with a lot more work done, like some QoL added and some cut-content being introduced. Both From Software and Sony agreed to not just up the resolution and the framerate, but to make something great. FromSoftware has been authorized to release the game on PC, but only some months after the remaster hits PS5."
"Last time I heard about it, Bloodborne remaster would be part of PS5 line-up, but I don't quite believe it since I think the spotlight will be stolen by another similar title [Demon's Souls] that should be announced in June. I think they might save the Bloodborne remaster for some months after PS5 release, but I could be wrong about that particular point."
According to another report by a different source, the game is being developed by both QLOC - the studio behind 2018's Dark Souls: Remastered - and Bluepoint Games. Now that Demon's Souls is out and considering how far along Bloodborne Remastered has been reported to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it is currently planned to be revealed at The Game Awards.
Unannounced
On November 20th 2020, in response to a user who claimed that the rumored Bluepoint acquisition by Sony would be very boring as far as hype goes, KatharsisT said: "If you knew what Bluepoint is on at the moment, you wouldn't say that (Yeah, it's a hype post [and] you'll have to wait to know what it is)". Shortly after that, a mod stepped in to say that "KatharsisT has shown sufficient evidence to support this claim."
A couple of posts later, MarsipanRumpan - the guy behind the Bluepoint acquisition rumor - also backed the statements made by KatharsisT "I’m totally on your side. Talked with my source, I think we have the same info regarding their next remake. People who aren’t hyped for Bluepoint don’t know what their next project is as you said. Because that shit is [mindblowing]."
Regarding the rumors of a Metal Gear Solid remake, all I'm gonna say is: don't listen to what Moore's Law is Dead and other youtubers are saying, it is all bullshit; but at the same time don't lose faith, as chances of Bluepoint's next remake being MGS are high, considering how it seems they're working on a bigger and more prestigious title than Demon's Souls and also the good relationship Sony currently has with Konami.
From Software (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Deráciné)
Unannounced
A couple of weeks ago, MarsipanRumpan - the guy who recently reported about Bluepoint's acquisition on ResetEra - said that he has heard that Sony is in talks with From Software regarding the making of a new PS5 exclusive directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. This would be the third game From has currently in their pipeline, with Elden Ring and a new Armored Core being the other two.
MarsipanRumpan also clarified that it will be a while before we see this new game in motion anyway.
Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon)
Unannounced
In February 2018, Simon Larouche - former multiplayer designer on Killzone 2, R6 Patriots and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, as well as game director on R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as game director, starting to work on an unannounced project completely unrelated to the Horizon sequel (now known as Forbidden West), which was also in development at the time. Then in July, Hermen Hulst announced plans for Guerrilla to move into a new, bigger office where they could expand their staff count from 250 to 400 people, allowing them to make games faster and release a new title every two to three years.
In October 2018, Chris Lee - former multiplayer designer on several SOCOM titles at Slant Six Games and on Ubisoft's R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as principal game designer on Larouche's project. Apart from the fact that Lee's hiring makes it pretty clear that Guerrilla's second team is working on a shooter game of some sorts, it's worth pointing out that Lee lists "cooperative and competitive multiplayer, open world systemic gameplay and online social experiences" as his current interests on his LinkedIn profile - with the open world bit being especially interesting as it was also mentioned in certain job listings for the project in 2019.
In August 2020, Guerrilla finally moved to their new office, which means the studio is now ready to begin large-scale recruiting on its second project once they see it fit - although I don't expect to hear about this project until after the release of Forbidden West in the second half of 2021.
Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Marvel's Spider-Man)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
The recently released Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales entered development in May 2018 under the direction of Brian Horton, while Bryan Intihar was finishing up his work on the original Marvel's Spider-Man, which came out in September of that year. So right after wrapping up the first game and with Miles Morales in the hands of a separate team, Intihar started preparing the next main entry in the series as teased in January 2019 when he posted on Twitter "Few things are more nerve-wracking than sharing your first story draft to others."
Japan Studio (Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Astro)
RaySpace
Sometime in spring 2014, a couple of weeks before E3, Reddit user Ruin4r leaked a number of titles in development exclusively for PS4, including a new God of War, The Last Guardian, a The Last Of Us sequel, Dead Don't Ride (later confirmed to be Days Gone's codename) and an "unnamed space game" - which by the way wasn't Santa Monica Studio's cancelled new IP for PS4, as that project was axed earlier that year.
A year later, Shuhei Yoshida stated in an interview at E3 2015 that "Japan Studio is now producing a really great project that I'm really excited about" - which also wasn't Gravity Rush 2, as that title was referenced as a different project later in the interview.
In April 2016, Ruin4r said that all the games previously teased by him were still in development and clarified that many of them - God of War, TLOU2, Days Gone and the "unnamed space game" - were in early stages when he first talked about them.
Then on June 6th 2016, during a livestream in celebration of Famitsu's 30th Anniversary, SIE's Yasuhiro Kitao teased a a new title to Famitsu's editor-in-chief Katsuhio Hayashi by letting him read some text from his tablet, as Kitao didn't have any images to show. Hayashi was blown away by whatever thing he read and stated that "this will definitely be worth waiting for."
In December 2017, SIE trademarked "RaySpace" in Canada - which most probably was the final title for the "unnamed space game" mentioned by Ruin4r. That same month, Japan Studio's award-winning creative director Tsutomu Kouno stated in an interview "I have not been able to announce a new title in a long time, but in 2018, I would like to announce what I am preparing". Japan Studio producer Teruyuki Toriyama - who has been teasing this project since 2015, describing it in multiple occasions as an "ambitious title" - also promised an announcement in 2018.
Sometime in 2018, an interview to a Japan Studio employee was posted on the SIE website; in it there was an image that contained shots of two upcoming games in the background: the Demon's Souls remake (top right corner) and some sort of sci-fi first-person game.
But 2018 went by without any sort of reveal regarding this project and in December, Toriyama once again teased an announcement for the coming year "In 2019, we are preparing for the debut of unannounced title(s) currently in production". It is worth noting that Japan Studio didn't reveal any new games in 2019.
I doubt that RaySpace was cancelled, as you don't pull the plug on a project that has been in the works for four or five years and was so close to being revealed. So what I believe is that they decided to move it to PlayStation 5 - just like they did with other projects such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure or Horizon: Forbidden West - and maybe even bring it back to the drawing table a little - which would explain why we haven't seen it this year during the PS5 reveal events.
Silent Hill
In 2018, Konami reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games: one a soft-reboot of the franchise; the other an episodic Telltale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. In fact, one of the studios contacted by Konami was Supermassive Games, creators of Until Dawn, although they ultimately didn't get the job.
Japan Studio's creative director Keiichiro Toyama, who had been wanting to work on a new horror game for quite some time, was developing a new entry in the Siren franchise at the time. Sony, who weren't fully keen on the idea of investing on a niche series such as Siren, decided to pull the plug on the project as they started negotiating a deal with Konami for getting Japan Studio to work on the Silent Hill soft-reboot - a prestige project for the PS5 lineup based on a globally renowned IP, something that would allow Toyama to have a bigger budget and more resources at his disposal.
Eventually the deal would get finalized, putting Sony Interactive Entertainment in charge of developing, funding and publishing the title in exchange for keeping the exclusive and most of the revenue, with Konami being indirectly involved by outsourcing the IP against an 8% of the revenue. And that way, the game entered development in early 2019, salvaging as much from the technological work done for the Siren game as possible.
At some point in 2019, an interview to a Japan Studio employee posted on the SIE website showed a developer working on a handgun model - something that, if we consider the other projects Japan Studio has in the pipeline, would only align with Silent Hill.
On January 21st 2020, Rely on Horror reported that they've heard from a source of their own that a new Silent Hill game was in development. A day later, movie industry insider Emre Kaya posted on Twitter that he has learned that Sony is working on a new horror game for PS5.
On March 12th 2020, Rely on Horror stated that Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka and creature designer Masahiro Ito are returning alongside the series creator Keiichiro Toyama to helm a soft-reboot of the franchise developed by Japan Studio, just called Silent Hill. Both of their sources mentioned Sony as the driving force behind bringing the series back. That same day, Emre Kaya said on Twitter that this was the Sony horror game that he talked about back in January.
In April 2020, ResetEra user KatharsisT backed Rely on Horror's information regarding the Silent Hill soft-reboot and confirmed a third-person perspective and that the game was playable already. She also said that it is planned to be announced before PS5's launch, with a release in spring 2021 - although these reveal and release windows were from before COVID started to fuck up their schedule. Shortly after, a mod stepped into the discussion to state that they've verified her information on the subject.
In May 2020, Reddit user snort_cannon, who had already discussed the game months ago, said that "the game was planned on being shown off this summer. Unless something bad happens, it should happen. The plan at first was just to do a CG trailer to announce that the game exists, but I personally think at this point [they] might delay the reveal and add some gameplay footage as well". When asked about his sources, he answered "Same source that told me about the Sony deal, albeit last update came in early February and COVID didn’t rampage as hard as it’s going now."
On August 3rd 2020, ResetEra user Navtra, who leaked a list of games that went on to be present on both PS5 events days in advance to June's The Future of Gaming, commented on the Silent Hill rumors "I can only confirm one thing: it was never on the table for June's event. FFXVI and Marvel's Avengers Spider-Man character announcement were among other things that were supposed to be there and were moved last minute. Silent Hill never was". If we look at both KatharsisT and snort_cannon's comments in regards to the reveal window for the game after having learned this, it becomes clear that the reveal was initially planned for the second PS5 event, that being September's PS5 Showcase - an event that the game missed because of delays in production related to the COVID pandemic.
On October 31st 2020, KatharsisT stated that something had just made her expect a reveal at The Game Awards. A couple of days later, Rely on Horror reported that recent rumors of a Silent Hill announcement at The Game Awards line up with some information they received a while back but choose not to report on.
On November 21st 2020, KatharsisT once again teased a Silent Hill reveal at The Game Awards "You'll celebrate it before the end of the year if everything goes as planned" while also stating that she thinks the game is still planned for 2021.
London Studio (The Getaway, PlayStation VR Worlds, Blood & Truth)
Horizon VR
On October 2019, VR consultant Callum Hurley posted on Twitter that he had learned about an "exciting new PlayStation VR game coming out of London Studio" through someone who had just playtested the title. He also vaguely implied it was a Horizon VR game and, when news outlets started to report on his tweets, he apologized to the development team as he didn't expect such coverage.
Same as the unannounced VR titles from Supermassive Games, I do expect this Horizon VR game to be a cross-gen release sometime next year.
MediaVision (Wild Arms, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Valkyria Chronicles 4)
Wild Arms
In July 2018, we've learned thanks to a job listing that MediaVision was working on a new PlayStation 4 RPG. It is worth noting that a year earlier Sony stated that, even though their investments have been mainly focused on titles aimed to a global audience do to the soaring in development costs, the success of recent titles such as Persona 5 or Nier Automata amongst overseas audiences has made them consider a return to first-party JRPG development.
Then in June 2019, DasVergeben posted on Reddit "Something I have heard for a while now is that a new Wild Arms game is in development but it has been over a year long journey getting that verified. I still struggle to get definite enough confirmation but I think it might have been because I heard about it too early". In a separate post, Vergeben added "I don't know much other than that it apparently is in development by Media Vision for PS4. I haven't been told anything specific yet at least. I do wonder if Sony might try and shift over to push it as a PS5 launch game or something if they don't reveal it this year [...] but that's simply speculation on my behalf."
At this point I expect the game to be a cross-gen release, as it wouldn't make sense to leave the PS4 users behind with a title that surely won't be a technological showcase unlike native PS5 games such as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last Of Us)
The Last Of Us: Factions
On September 26th 2019, Naughty Dog posted a statement on Twitter in which they basically announced that the multiplayer mode they had planned for The Last Of Us: Part II had grown beyond an additional mode that could be included alongside the game's enormous singleplayer campaign, so they decided to turn it into a standalone game in order to not compromise on the ambitions of the studio's multiplayer team.
Then in April 2020, a short gameplay clip from a March 2018 build of the multiplayer leaked online as part of a bigger leak that revealed tons of story spoilers and cutscenes from The Last Of Us: Part II. Assuming that this TLOU multiplayer game is planned for a release on both PS4 and PS5 sometime next year, we would be in front of a title with over four years of overall dev time - meaning that the project might be greater in scope than what most of us are expecting it to be.
Unannounced
On October 10th 2018, movie industry insider Daniel Ritchman reported that Naughty Dog was in the process of casting an actor to play the lead role on an upcoming game. According to the casting description, the studio was looking for a "Black/African American male, 40s to 60s, short to medium length hair, with a body type similar to those in the images below, strong but not chiseled". But since this doesn't tell us much about the game, apart from hinting at it being a new IP, let's go a little back in time in search of more potential details.
During the The Last Of Us: Part II panel at PSX 2017, Neil Druckmann stated that Naughty Dog will "forever continue to make singleplayer, linear, narrative-based games". He also mentioned during an interview from February 2018 that the studio was totally open to make a first-person game in the future - and, since they seem to be making a new IP, this new project might be the perfect time for them to try a different camera angle in their games.
New San Diego Studio
Unannounced
In April 2018, David Hall - former Double Helix/Amazon Game Studios - joins an unnamed SIE studio in San Diego as game director on an unannounced title. Since then, rumors about a new Sony first-party studio have been circulating due to a job listing - also from April - in which it was stated that "PlayStation is building a new game development team in partnership with the Visual Arts Service Group" to work on a "high visibility project" described as a third-person action/adventure game "developed in collaboration with a major Sony studio."
A month later, Quentin Cobb - former singleplayemultiplayer designer at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us - also joins this new studio in San Diego and in December a new job listing mentions that the team was looking for a lead character artist to work on "the next chapter of cinematic storytelling."
In January 2019, James Martinchek - former cutscene/gameplay animator on The Last Of Us, Uncharted 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 - joins the studio as a lead gameplay animator. Also in January, Cobb was asked on Twitter why he couldn't even reveal what studio he was working for, to what he replied that "it is difficult to explain why" - further reinforcing the theory that Sony has assembled a secret studio in the San Diego area.
Then in November 2019, Sony announced their plans to set up a support studio in Malaysia and, just a couple of weeks ago, a job listing from SIE Malaysia unveils that they're currently working on "one of PlayStation's [most] well-known and well-loved franchises" for which they are looking for "talented, highly-motivated and creative animators to breathe life into the next chapter of cinematic storytelling."
In November 2020, both Quentin Cobb and John Bautista left the studio and the internet started to speculate that Sony had shut down the studio and cancelled the project, something that Bautista denied by stating that "the studio is still there and the project is still ongoing."
Santa Monica Studio (God of War)
Unannounced
On April 12th 2018, Cory Barlog spoke during an interview about his desire to work on a new IP "I really would love to create something of my own next. Something that really, really is truly 100% coming from my original vision. That would be awesome, but we have to see if I can convince Sony on that one". Over half a year later, in November, film director Duncan Jones - who had just met with Cory looking for his opinion regarding a certain script - said on Twitter that "If you think that God of War is [Cory’s] magnum opus, just you wait!"
Since then, little we've learned about the development of this project, other than the recent news that Alanah Pearce has joined Santa Monica Studio as a junior writer on, apparently, Cory's game. And I say that mainly because, while members of the team behind the next God of War were able to publicly announce their involvement in the making of said title on social media, Alanah is not allowed to reveal what she is working on over at SMS - that being due to the fact that, unlike the upcoming GOW game, Cory Barlog's new project hasn't been revealed yet.
Sucker Punch Productions (inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima)
¿Ghost 2?
Look, I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet, so I don't know how it ends or if it sets up a sequel or not - but a few weeks ago a job listing from Sucker Punch mentioned that the studio "is looking for a narrative writer for our upcoming projects" and that the ideal candidate would "have previous success as a game writer, outstanding dialogue skills and an excellent understanding of how to tell impactful, character-driven stories within a AAA open-world game" and also "knowledge of feudal Japanese history". That last bit kind of screams some sort of GOT sequel to me.
Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient)
Unannounced Titles
In November 2018, Supermassive Games managing director Pete Samuels confirmed that the studio was "working on several unannounced PlayStation exclusives" and stated that their relationship with Sony "is still excellent", even though they choose another publisher for The Dark Pictures Anthology as they wanted to reach the widest possible audience.
What that might mean is that they wanna go the multiplatform route with their biggest titles - that being The Dark Pictures Anthology, their response to the requests of an Until Dawn sequel - while keeping the most experimental and smaller stuff exclusive to Google or Sony - meaning that these unannounced titles would probably be cross-gen PSVR games, as Jim Ryan stated that they will not be releasing VR titles exclusively for PS5 until the new headset comes out in a couple of years.
Wild Sheep Studio
WiLD
During Sony's GamesCom conference in 2014, Michel Ancel took the stage to introduce WiLD, a new PS4 exclusive developed by his recently formed indie studio. It was described as a title with an open-world "potentially as big as Europe", day and night cycles, dynamic weather and seasons, as well as a seamless online system, in which you could play not only as a human but also as any living creature. Ancel also stated that for the past year, the studio had been working very hard on the proprietary technology and tools they would be using in order to create this very specific type of game that was WiLD.
A year later, this time at Sony's Paris Games Week conference, Ancel showed a super early gameplay demo of WiLD. This was the last time we saw WiLD in action, as the information drops regarding this title started to slow down over the years - with most updates consisting of Sony denying cancellation rumors, trademark renewals or off-screen pictures of the game posted on Michel Ancel's Instagram.
The most notable piece of news from this period however, was an interview with WiLD producer Mitsuo Hirakawa from November 2017. During said interview, he stated "We are not going to rush [Michel Ancel] to make something that he doesn't want to compromise on." and then he followed "Even experienced developers make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to find the right choices for the design of the game and we want to provide [Wild Sheep Studio] with all the support necessary, so that's why things sometimes do take a lot longer than we expect but we feel that WiLD deserves the extra time and quality before it comes to public."
A creative that doesn't want to compromise on his vision? Mistakes that lead into things taking longer than expected? Call me crazy, but I think those statements are pointing directly to some heavy project mismanagement on Ancel's part, as we've seen reports of similar things happening during the development of Beyond: Good & Evil 2.
According to snort_cannon "[BG&E2] has been a mess behind the scenes for a pretty long time. To give you a rough idea of how bad it's going, the game was supposedly gonna come out next year [in 2021], but it's not even 50% done. I wouldn't be shocked, if we get an investigation article on its development troubles, soon". Which did in fact happened, as, a couple of months ago, national newspaper Libération published an article on BG&E2's troubled development "Ganesha City, which [he] asked us to do with a completely stupid level of detail, we only just finished it three years later, and we've had to redo it four or five times. Knowing that we have to do several planets, you can imagine the absurdity of this kind of reasoning." "When [Ancel] was spoking to the press, we were taking notes because [...] it could concern points on which we would have been stuck on for months, waiting for directions."
Moving onto something else, in July 2018, both Michel Ancel and Wild Sheep's CEO and art director Celine Tellier visited Guerrilla Games. This is interesting, because considering that WiLD went through some serious development hell difficulties, it is not farfetched to think that one of the solutions proposed by Sony to one of the several the problems the game was facing at the time was to drop the in-house engine that Wild Sheep was using up to that point and move the game over to DECIMA - the Guerrilla Games engine that has powered PS4 titles such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn but also Until Dawn and Death Stranding. Such a change could come in handy, especially when we take into account that, just like Horizon and Death Stranding, WiLD is an open-world title that takes place in natural environments.
On September 18th 2020, Michel Ancel announced his departure from the games industry and regarding Beyond: Good & Evil 2 and WiLD he stated that "since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon". Hopefully we get to see something next year.
submitted by FLACO1942 to PS5 [link] [comments]

Why GameStop and Ryan Cohen will win. [DD] No Diamond Hands Required.

Alright apes, let me explain why I believe GameStop has a strong fundamental case without mentioning diamond hands and short squeeze. If Ryan Cohen can successfully execute his vision, this leaky vessel will turn into a rocket ship blasting past the moon to the edge of the observable universe.
On November 16, 2020, Ryan Cohen sent a letter to the GameStop's Board of Directors titled "Maximizing Stockholder Value by Becoming the Ultimate Destination for Gamers". In it, Ryan Cohen outlined the roadmap for GameStop to pivot and become a technology first company. Let me boil this down for you in simple language for you smooth brain apes.
The Mission Statement
"GameStop needs to evolve into a technology company that delights gamers and delivers exceptional digital experiences [...] the successful and durable players of tomorrow will be technology-first companies that specialize in gaming products, experiences and services."
The Landscape
The Roadmap
The Financials
Analysts are valuing GameStop as a traditional brick-and-mortar business. If Ryan can properly execute and transform the company, I believe they can become the Target and Chewy of Gaming with potential verticals of streaming and Esports (not factored into this calculation for now). GameStop makes roughly $8 Billion in Revenue, however it is currently valued at a $3.5B Market Cap as it bleeds cash. Target makes roughly $78B in Revenue with $3.3B in Net Income and a Market Cap of $96 Billion. Chewy makes roughly $4.8B in Revenue, losing money but growing quickly, and is valued at $44B in Market Cap. Target and Chewy are valued at 1.25x to 9x Price to Sales respectively. This equates to $10B to $72B Market Cap transposed to GameStop. Obviously, this is very simplistic and does not consider their balance sheet and other factors, but given these metrics:
Note this is assuming $8B in Revenue. If GameStop can grow revenues, focus on digital to improve margins, and expand within the growing total addressable market, I see potential for higher prices and achieving Target to Chewy-like multiples.
The X Factor
I believe Ryan Cohen was offered to lead GameStop's transition with significant control and autonomy. Otherwise, I do not believe he would have joined the Board. In his letter, Ryan simply stated that "RC Ventures is not interested in receiving a lone seat on GameStop's ten-member Board. It is not enticing to become an isolated stockholder advocate on a Board that has overlooked years of digital revenue opportunities and presided over massive value destruction without assuming full accountability." With the recent additions of two Chewy Executives to the Board of Directors, a new Chief Technology Officer who was the Engineering Lead in Amazon Web Services, a new Customer Care Executive from Chewy, and a new Fulfillment Executive from Amazon, I believe Ryan is executing his vision and revamping the GameStop team.
Notice his hires are from Chewy and Amazon? Ryan Cohen was obsessed with Amazon’s customer centric philosophy and built Chewy to follow that same model. He is hiring digital and e-commerce focused leaders to manage this transformation. Ryan's customer centric obsession is what allowed Chewy to beat Amazon. If GameStop pivots to digital and follows that same obsession, this will be a great opportunity to win.
Furthermore, I believe Ryan's vision is the right roadmap for GameStop. Digital e-commerce, streaming, and mobile is the future and Ryan fully acknowledges and embraces that future. GameStop will need to revamp and modernize their website and phone app, but I am sure that will follow in the months ahead. GameStop has the financial and brand assets that should weather this storm, but execution will be key. Ryan owns nearly 10% of GameStop, so he has a vested interest in its success and has much more to lose than my stake.
So degens, I say think with your heart and not with your smooth brain. Strap in and sit tight, this rocket ship may turn into a long journey to Mars. Maybe Papa Elon will be our catalyst.
P.S. If we all buy something from GameStop this quarter we can load this rocket ship ourselves.
TLDR; Ryan Cohen is Jesus. Buy and Hold $GME.
submitted by ThePyroTheory to Wallstreetbetsnew [link] [comments]

$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)

$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)
Listen up retards. Do you happen to feel regret because you always think “ohhh if I yoloed my savings on TSLA/AMD/NVDA 🚀 leaps years ago I could be rich by now!!!”
Well if you didn't know already, it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past. Hindsight will always be 20/20. You shouldn’t be harsh on yourself on your past self that your past self wasn’t retarded enough to yolo their savings into AMD/TSLA/.... Your past self doesn’t have the same knowledge that your current self has. It’s fine. If you judged those stocks with the best DD you could do at the time and didn’t think they were worth it, then you did a good job.
If you always think about what you could/should have done in the past, then you don't have the right attitude to play the stock market casino imho.
The single most important thing is to be able to look ahead. There are always plenty of opportunities around. There are thousands of rockets that are still on earth right now. Some may depart this year, others will stay a little longer on earth. The true strength lies in being able to identify those rockets with the knowledge you have right now. And if you still miss most rockets that will take-off this year that's fine, maybe you'll learn, get better and you'll do better next year.
Now, what if I told you there’s a big rocket that’s parked right right here on earth and it has decent chance for take-off this year? Maybe it won't quite reach the moon this year yet, but hey leaving the exosphere should already be a cool milestone.
It has rock-solid fundamentals and will see lots of growth in the following years/decade.
It’s a company that has the fundamental technology to power all the computer vision tech, which is bound to boom this decade.
The company we’re talking about is of course Sony, and it is extremely undervalued right now.
Its P/E is only 14. They have a P/S of 1.65, a PEG of 0.92 (< 2 is already somewhat exceptional for a company/conglomerate of Sony’s size, under 1 is a steal)
Much lower than all of its same-sector peers. This indicates significant undervaluation.
Next up Sony has a P/CF 13.2, ROE of 20% (S&P 500 average is 14% which would already be considered pretty good. 20% ROE is excellent), PEGY of 0.89, P/B of 2.65 and finally Sony has $41.6B in cash on hand. This makes Sony one of the cheapest tech/entertainment/EV/semiconductor growth stocks you will find on the market.
(ROE of 20% + PEGY of 0.89 + PEG of 0.92 means this company is a growth stock based on the numbers alone, but we’ll dig into the actual company and overall outlook in a moment)
I challenge all retards to find a company with similar benchmarks in one of the mentioned sectors, seriously.
Quite frankly doing this DD honestly blew my mind. I kept looking everywhere for reasons why the company could be so undervalued and why they may struggle in the future. Very important to look at all the challenges the company faces to make sure I’m not just doing confirmation bias DD. But all I could find was the opposite. After several weeks and months of working on this DD, I can only conclude that it is overall a very solid company for a bargain price. The new CEO is taking the company in a great direction imho and I'm begin to think he could be Sony's Satya Nadella.
So if you want some easy tendies, maybe consider $SNE while it is still cheap, I’d say.
For the autists out there who care about analyst ratings, SONY ($SNE) currently has 18 BUY ratings, 2 OVERWEIGHT, 4 HOLD and 0 SELL. (= analyst consensus is a STRONG BUY). Very little analysts cover this stock compared to other entertainment/tech companies, so this adds to my assertion that the stock is very much under the radar. Which means you have time to get in before it gets noticed by the larger investing world and before it starts to get a more fair valuation (P/E of around 30 would be more fair for this company I think, but still cheaper than many same sector peers). But, anyway the few analysts who do happen to cover this company are basically all saying it’s an instant-buy at its current price.
Most boomer investors still think big Japanese tech companies are dinosaurs that have long been surpassed by China, South Korea and Apple etc ages ago. Young boomers may think Sony = PlayStation and that it's it. But the truth is that PlayStation, while very important (about 24% of Sony's total revenue last year), is a part of a larger story.
Lots of investors in general associate Sony with the passé Japanese electronics companies from the 80’s and the 90’s. Just like a lot people may think BlackBerry is a struggling phone company.
While Sony may not be the powerhouse in consumer electronics it was in the 80’s and the 90’s, in a lot of ways they are more relevant than ever before. Despite being a well-known brand and being known as the company behind PlayStation, for some reason its stock still seems to be under the radar among both retail and institutional investors. And boy, are they mind-blowingly undervalued. Even if a big part of its business would collapse tomorrow, they would still be slightly undervalued. And I am about to tell you why.
(& btw compared to Japanese tech/entertainment stocks $SNE is still super cheap (Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Square Enix, Capcom, Nintendo, Fujitsu all have P/E ratios ranging from 18 to 77 and none of them have the combination of global clout, fundamentals & growth prospects that Sony has))
2021 Sony as a corparation is not the fucking Sony from 2005-2015’s, just like BlackBerry in 2021 is not the fucking Blackberry from 2012. Just like Garmin in 2021 is not Garmin from 2011. Just like AMD in 2021 is not AMD from 2012.
No, in 2021, Sony is the global leader in imaging technology and people do not fucking realize it. Sony has 50% marketshare in the CMOS image sensor market. There’s a very good chance the smartphone in your pocket has Sony image sensors (unless it’s a Samsung phone). Sony image sensors are powering a big part of today's vision/camera technology. And they will power even more of tomorrow's computer vision tech.
In 2021, Sony is a behemoth in video games, music, anime, movies and TV show production. Sony is present in every segment of entertainment. Sony’s entertainment branches have been doing great business over the past 5 years, especially music and PlayStation. Additionally, Sony Pictures has completely turned around.
In 2021, Sony is the world’s biggest music publisher (and second biggest music company overall). Music streaming has been a boon for Sony Music and will continue to be.
In 2021, Sony is among the biggest mobile gaming companies in the world (yes, you read that right). And it’s mainly thanks to one game (Fate/Grand Order) that nets them over $1B revenue each year. One of the biggest mobile gaming companies + arguably biggest gaming brand in the world (PlayStation).
In 2021, Sony is an EV company. They surprised the world when they revealed their “Vision-S” at CES 2020. At the reception was fantastic. It is seriously one of the best looking EV’s. They already sell sensors to Toyota. Sony will most like sell the Vision-S's tech to other car manufacturers (sensors for driving assistence / autonomous driving, LiDAR tech, infotainment system).

40 sensors in the Sony Vision-S
Considering the overwhelmingly good reception of the Vision-S so far, I suspect the Vision-S could be another catalyst that will put Sony as a company on the radar of investors and consumers.
We've seen insane investment hype for anything even remotely related to EV over the past year. We've seen a company that barely had a few EV design concepts (oh wait, they had a gravity-powered truck though) even get a $30B market cap at some point lmao.
But somehow a profitable company ($SNE) that has an EV that you can actually drive, doesn't even have a fair valuation?
In 2020’s Sony’s brand value is at their highest point since 12 years. In 2021, it is projected to be a its highest point since 2001 assuming same growth as average yearly growth from 2015 to 2020. Keep in mind brand valuation is a bit bullshitty as there’s no standardization to compare brands from different sectors, let alone non-consumer-facing brands with consumer-facing brands. But one thing we can note is that Sony both as B2C brand and as a B2B company is on a big upwards trend.
https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/sony/
https://careers.uw.edu/blog/2020/03/17/these-are-the-10-biggest-video-game-companies-in-north-america-shared-article-from-zippia/
In 2021, Sony is an entertainment behemoth. They have grown their entertainment branches by a huge amount over the past 5 to 10 years (they made some big acquisitions in the music space especially and they’re now also all-in in anime). I don’t think people realize how big Sony is as an entertainment company. I dug up the numbers and as of Q3 2020, PlayStation is the second biggest video game company in the world (Tencent is #1) in revenue (I suspect Sony might dethrone Tencent after Sony’s FY Q3 2020 is released). But Sony already comes very close to Tencent especially if you add Fate/Grand Order (which is under Sony Music and not under PlayStation) under PlayStation.
There’s no single other company that has this unique combination of a dominant/important position in all entertainment segments. (video games + music + movies + TV series + anime + TV networks). I guess Tencent maybe?
In 2021, Sony has amazing momentum in the camera space. If you’re familiar with the enthusiast photography space, you should know this. Basically, the market is slowly shifting from SLR to mirrorless cameras. This is because mirrorless cameras tend to smallelighter, have faster AF, better low light performance, better battery life and better video performance. Sony is the company that has been specializing in the development for mirrorless cameras for over a decade while Canon’s bread and butter has always been SLR cameras. Sony is in the lead when it comes to mirrorless cameras and that’s where the market is shifting towards. Because the advantages of mirrorless have become more and more apparent and Sony’s cameras have become technically superior, Sony has gained quite a bit of market share over Canon and Nikon in the last few years. In 2019, Sony overtook Nikon as the #2 camera manufacturer. Sony is in an upwards trend here. (they have the ambition to become the world’s #1 camera brand) Sony also has very good marketing for their cameras. (Sony has a lot of YouTubers / influencers / brand ambassadors for their cameras despite being a smaller brand than Canon)
(just search on YouTube and/or Google “switching to Sony from Canon” just to give you an idea that they do have amazing brand momentum in the camera space. You won’t get as many hits for the opposite)
A huge portion of Sony’s profit comes from image sensors in addition to music and video games. This is in addition to their highly profitable financial holdings division & their more moderately profitable electronics division.
Sony’s electronics division, unlike other Japanese brands, has shown great resilience against the very strong competition from China & South Korea. They have been able to maintain their position in the audio space and as of 2020 are still the global market leader in high-end TV’s (a position they have been holding for decades) and it seems they will continue to be able to maintain that.
But seriously this company is dirt-cheap compared to any of its peers in any segment and there’s various huge growth prospects for Sony:
  • CMOS image sensors & Sony’s overall imaging prowess will boom due to increased demand from automotive sector, security & surveillance industry, manufacturing industry, medical sector and finally from the aerospace & defence industry. On the longer term, image sensors will continue to boom due to increased demand for computer vision & AI + robotics. And for consumer electronics demand will remain very high obviously.
  • Sony is aiming for 60% market share in the CMOS image sensor market by 2026. Biggest threat here is Samsung here who have recently started to aggressively invest in image sensors and are challenging Sony. Sony has technological lead + higher production capacity (and Sony will soon open a new plant in Nagasaki), so Sony should be able to hold off Samsung.
  • The iPhone 12 Pro has 3 cameras + a lidar sensor. Apple now buys 3 image sensors (from Sony) + LiDAR sensor (from Sony) per iPhone 12 Pro they manufacture. Remember the iPhone X and iPhone XS? That one had “only” 2 rear cameras (with image sensos from Sony of course). Basically, Sony will be selling exponentially more image sensors as more smartphones get equipped with more and more cameras.
  • Now think about how many image sensors Sony can sell to Apple if the iPhone 13 will have 5 cameras + LiDAR sensor (I mean the number of cameras on smartphones certainly won’t decrease)
  • Gaming (PS5 hype, PSN game sales are booming, add-on content is booming, PS+ subscribers count is booming and finally PSNow & first-party games sales are trending upwards as well). Very consistent year-on-year profit & revenue growth here. They have a history of beating earnings expectations here. The number of PS+ subscribers went from 4M to 48M in just 6-7 years. Investors love to hype up recurring revenue and subscription services such as Disney+ and Netflix. Let’s apply the same logic to PS+? PS+ already has more subscribers than HBO Max in the USA.
  • PlayStation (video games in general) has not even scratched the fucking surface. Most people who play video games now are millennials and kids. Do you think those millennials will stop playing video games when they grow older? No, of course not. Boomers today also still watch movies and TV. Those millennials have kids and those kids are now also playing video games. The kids of those kids will also play video games etc. Basically the total addressable audience for video games will by HUGE by the end of the decade (and the decades after that) because video games will have penetrated all age ranges of the population. Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the whole entertainment business. By a large margin. PlayStation is obviously in a great position here as you can guess from the PS5 hype, but more importantly imho, the growth of PS+ subscribers (currently a bit under 50 million) and PSN users (>100 million MAU) over the past 5 years shows that PlayStation is primed to profit from the audience growth.
  • On top of that you have huge video game growth in the China where Sony & PlayStation is already much better established than Xbox (but still super small compared to mobile games and PC gaming in China). Within the console market, Xbox only competes with PlayStation in North America. In the rest of the world, PlayStation has an enormous lead over Xbox. Xbox is simply a lesser known and lesser desirable brand in the rest of the world
  • Anime streaming (basically they have a monopoly already + vertical integration, it might still be somewhat niche right now, but it will be big within 5 years. Acquiring Crunchyroll was a very good move)
  • Music streaming (no, they don’t have a music streaming service, but as music streaming grows, Sony Music also gets a piece of the growing pie through licensing/royalties, and they also still have a little 2.8% stake in Spotify)
  • Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are currently battling it out in the streaming wars. When there’s a war you have little chances of winning, you shouldn’t be the one waging the war. You should be the one selling the ammo. Basically Sony Pictures (tv shows + movies) is in that position. Sony Pictures can negotiate good prices for their content because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T are thirsty for content and they all want their own exclusive content. Sony Pictures does not need to prop up their own streaming service just like Sony Music doesn’t need their own music streaming service when they can just license out their content and turn a profit. There will always be demand for TV & movies content, so Sony Pictures is well positioned is as an independent content provider. And while Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are battling it out on the forefront, Sony is quietly building their anime empire in the background. Genius business move from Sony here, seriously. They now have anime production & distribution.
  • Netflix has 200M subscribers and they currently have a 250M market cap. Think about what Sony will have in 5 years? >30M Crunchyroll subscribers (assuming all anime will be consolidated into Crunhyroll) & >100M PS+ & PSNow subscribers? Anime and gaming is growing faster than movies and TV shows. (9% CAGR for anime, 12% CAGR for gaming vs. 5% CAGR for the whole movies & TV show entertainment segment which includes PVOD, SVOD, box office, TV etc etc). And gaming as a whole is MUCH bigger than SVOD streaming. Netflix gets 99% of their revenue & profit through subscriptions. For the whole Sony Group Corporation, their subscription services (games + anime) it’s currently only 4.5% of their total revenue. And somehow Sony currently has a meagre $128B market cap?
  • PlayStation alone is bigger than Netflix in terms of operating profit. PlayStation has a MUCH higher profit margin than Netflix. For Q3 2020 Netflix posted $790M operating profit and PlayStation posted $988M operating profit. Revenue was was $6.44B for Netflix vs. $4.77B for PlayStation. (and btw Sony’s mobile gaming revenue (~$1B / year) is under Sony Music, it is not even in those PlayStation numbers!!!)
  • Think about it. PlayStation alone posts bigger operating profit than Netflix (yes revenue is bit smaller, but it’s the operating profit that matters most). And gaming is growing faster than movies. And PlayStation is about 24% of Sony’s total revenue. And yet Netflix has a market cap that is equal to the double of Sony's market cap? Basically If you apply Netflix’ valuation to PlayStation then PlayStation alone should have a bigger market cap than Netflix' market cap.

PS+ growth and software digital ratio growth

  • Sony Vision-S & autonomous driving tech (selling sensors + infotainment system to other car manufacturers). Sony surprised everyone when they revealed their Sony Vision-S electric vehicle last year at CES 2020 (in-house design and made in cooperation with Magna Steyr). And it’s currently being tested on public roads. Over the past year we have seen absurdly big investment hype into anything even remotely related to EV’s (including a few questionable companies). We’ve even seen an EV company with a gravity-powered truck get a $30B market cap in June last year. Meanwhile Sony, out of nowhere, revealed what is arguably (subjectively) one of the best looking EV’s. It got very positive reception at CES 2020. An EV that you can actually drive. But somehow their stock is still dirt-cheap based on their current fundamentals alone? Yet some companies that had pretty much nothing but some EV design concepts got insane valuations purely due to hype?
  • LTE chips for IoT & Industry 4.0 (Altair Semiconductors)
  • Cross-media IP (The Last of Us show on HBO, Uncharted movie etc). Huge unrealized potential synergy here (it’s about to change). We have seen that it can turn out super well when you look at The Witcher, Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. When The Witcher released on Netflix, sales of The Witcher 3 significantly increased again. Imagine the same thing, but with Sony IP’s. Sony Pictures is currently working on 7 video game IP based TV shows and 3 movies. We know The Last of Us tv series is currently in production for HBO. And then the Uncharted is currently in post-production and scheduled to be released in July this year currently. If Uncharted turns out to be successful, it will mark a big, new milestone for Sony as an entertainment company imho.
  • Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan subsidiary for anime production, distribution & mobile games) had a fantastic year in 2020. (more on this later) There is a lot of room for mobile games growth with Aniplex. Thanks to Aniplex, Sony might beat their earnings forecast.
  • Drones. DJI just got put on Entity List in USA and Sony started developing drones for prosumer / professional a few years ago. Big opportunity for Sony here to take a bit from DJI’s dominance. It only makes sense for Sony to enter the drone market targeting the professional & prosumer video market, considering Sony’s established position in the professional audio/video/photography space
  • Currently Sony also has several ventures & investments in AI & robotics
  • Over the past decade, Sony has also carefully expanded into medical equipment tech & biotechnology. Worth noting that Sony also has an important 33% stake in M3 inc (a medical services through-the-internet company with a market cap of $65.5B) (= just their stake in M3 Inc is worth $22B alone, remember Sony, with their large, diversified revenue streams & assets only has a market cap of $128B?)
  • Sony Pictures has a great upcoming movie slate (MCU Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Venom 2, Morbius, Spider-Verse sequel, Hotel Transylvania 4, Peter Rabbit 2, Vivo, The Nightingale). They will profit from the theatre reopening and covid recovery. They may even become more favourable among movie theatre chains because they won’t release their movies on the same day on streaming services like Warner (and yeah movie theatres are here to stay, at least for a while imho)
  • All the above comes on top of established, mature markets (Financial Holdings & Electronic Products)
  • Oh yeah, btw though TV’s are a cyclical and mature market and are not that important for Sony Group Corporation’s bottomline*, Sony TV’s will continue to do well for the following successive years: o 2020: continued pandemic boost
  1. 2020-2021: PS5 / Xbox Series X/S
  2. 2021 Summer Olympics (tv sales ALWAYS spike during the olympics) (& the effect is more pronounced for high-end TV’s, = good for Sony because Sony’s market share is concentrated in the high-end range (they are market leader in the high-end range)
  3. 2022 FIFA world cup (exact same thing as for the olympics)
  4. You could say it’s already priced in, but the stock is already ridiculously undervalued so idk…
You would think this company somehow has a bad outlook, but that could not be further from the true, let me explain and go over some of the different divisions and explain why they will moon:
Sony Entertainment
While Netflix, Disney, AT&T, Amazon, and Apple are waging the great streaming war, Sony has been quietly building its anime streaming empire over the past years.
  • Sony recently acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175B (it is a great deal for Sony imho and will immediately be more valuable under Sony. Considering the growing appetite for anime I honestly do not even understand why AT&T sold it, they could have integrated it with their other streaming service (HBO Max) but ok)
  • With Crunchyroll Sony now has the following anime empire:
  • Aniplex (anime production & distribution, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan) F
  • Funimation
  • Manga Entertainment UK (production, licensing, and distribution, UK)
  • Wakanam (licensing and distribution in Europe)
  • AnimeLab (licensing and distribution in Australia & New Zealand)
  • Crunchyroll (3 million paying subcribers, 90 million registered users and 50 million social media followers)
* Why anime matters:

Anime growth
“The global size is expected to reach USD 36.26 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing popularity and sales of Japanese anime content across the globe apart from Japan is driving the growth”
(tl;dr anime 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀, Sony is all in on anime and they have pretty much no competition)
Anime is the fastest growing subsegment of movies/video entertainment worldwide.
  • Sony also has a partnership with Bilibili for anime distribution in China:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/26/WS5c990d93a3104842260b2737.html
  • Bilibili already partnered with Sony Music Entertainment Japan to bring Aniplex’s hugely successful Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile game in China.
  • Sony acquired a 5% stake in Bilibili for $400M in March 2020 (that 5% stake is now already worth $2.33B at Bilibili’s current share price ($BILI) and imho $BILI still has lots of upside potential considering it is the de facto video creation/sharing/viewing à la YouTube/Twitch for GenZ in China)
https://ir.bilibili.com/news-releases/news-release-details/bilibili-announces-equity-investment-sony

Sony Music Entertainment Japan
Aniplex
  • Sony Music (mobile games) generated $400M revenue from its mobile games in Q2 FY2020, published through Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan, “SMEJ”) subsidiary
  • They are the publisher of Fate/Grand Order, one of the most profitable mobile video games of the past 5 years (has generated $4B in revenue (!!) by the end of 2019 and is still as popular as ever). Fate/Grand order is the 7th most profitable mobile game in revenue worldwide as of 2020 (!)
Fate/Grand Order #9 game by revenue last year as of Q3 2020

  • Aniplex launched Disney: Twisted Wonderland in March this year. In Q3, it was the #10 most downloaded mobile game in Japan. (Aniplex now has two top ten games in Japan)
  • Fate/Grand Order was the #2 most tweeted game in 2020 and #3 was Disney: Twisted Wonderland. You can see that Aniplex has two hugely successful mobile games. (we are talking close to $1B of revenue a year here). It is the #2 game in Japan by total revenue from Q1 2016 to Q3 2020 and the #9 game in worldwide revenue from Q1 2020 to Q3 2020.
Aniplex has two very popular mobile games
  • SMEJ earns about > $1B from mobile games in revenue from mobile games and there is still a lot of future growth potential here considering Japan’s mobile game market grew a whopping 32% yoy from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020.
  • Aniplex recently co-distrubuted the movie Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in Japan in October 2020. It became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan with a total gross box office revenue of $380M. In the middle of a pandemic. It still needs to release in South Korea, China and USA where it will most likely do great as well.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (Game & Netwerk Services business unit):

  • We all know 2020 was a huge year for video games with the stay-at-home pandemic boost. The whole video game sector brought in $180B of revenue in 2020, a whopping 20% increase yoy.
  • But 2020 will not be just a one-off temporary exceptional year for video games. The video game market has a CAGR of 13% which means it will be worth $291B in 2027. Video games is by far the segment with the highest growth rate in the whole entertainment industry.

US video game market growth (worldwide growth has a 13% CAGR)

PlayStation revenue and operating profit growth

  • PlayStation obviously has a huge piece of this pie and over the past years has seen consistent yoy revenue and profit growth. Think about it, for every FIFA/Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed sold on PS4/PS5, Sony gets a 30% cut. There have been sold a billion PS4 games so far.
  • 5 years ago 20 to 30% of PS4 games were purchased digitally. Flashforward to 2020 and it’s 60-75% and the digital ratio looks set to still increase a bit. This means higher profit margin for game publishers and for Sony at the expense of retailers
  • SIE has seen huge success in its first-party games over the past 5 years. Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank have all been huge successes. This is really big and represents a big change compared to the previous generations where Sony never really hit it big as a games publisher even though most of their games were considered quality games.
  • SIE is now not only a powerful platform holdeprovider, but also a very successful games publisher with popular IP’s (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank). This is an enormous asset, because firstly it increases the chances of success for cross-media opportunities (Sony Pictures can make TV shows and movies out of it to expand the popularity of those IP’s even more). And secondly, it is an obvious selling point for PS5. The more popular and bigger their exclusive content, the more they can draw people to their platform/service. This should increases PS5 total marketshare over its competitor.
  • The hype for God of War: Ragnarok will be absolutely through the roof. Hype for Horizon: Forbidden West is also very good already (10 million yt views, 273K likes which is very good). Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank will also do very well in 2021. (I suspect that GoW oand Horizon might be delayed to 2022)
  • PS5 reception has been extremely good. Demand is through the roof as well all know. The only problem is that they cannot quite capitalize on the demand due to lack of supply, but overall, it is a very good thing that demand is very high, and that reception has been very positive. The challenge will primarily supply and production-related for the following 6 months and to be able to maintain brand momentum. Hopefully, they won’t push disappointed/inpatient customers to competitors.
  • Considering there’s backwards compatibility from PS4 to PS5, users will want all their PSN content to transition with them as well, so I expect them to lose very little marketshare to Xbox. Also, I do not know if Americans realize it, but Xbox is not nearly as big as PlayStation in the rest of the world as it is in the USA. PlayStation just has global brand power that Xbox just doesn’t have, so Xbox isn’t much of threat at all I’d say. Where I live, in Belgium, In Europe everyone is talking about the PS5, nobody really seems to care about Xbox Series S/X that much. Comparing PlayStation to Xbox in terms of mindshare is like comparing Apple to Motorola (not meant to be a diss to Motorola, I have a Motorola phone myself, just saying that Xbox has significantly less mindshare / brand power in Europe).
  • SIE is likely working on PSVR 2, this could be big.
  • Sony has a small stake in Epic Games (1.4%) and they have a good business relationship with them, so this might also make them open to release first-party games on Epic Games Store after exclusivity period on PS5.
  • Remember the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? I believe that was one of the reasons why Sony invested in Epic Games. It serves as an example how music can sometimes converge with video games, and this can play to Sony’s strengths.
  • PlayStation also has way superior presence in Asia compared to Xbox. Have been expanding into China as well. Another great opportunity for revenue growth.
  • PS+ subscribers grew from 5.7 million by the end of 2013 to 46 million by October 30th, 2020. This is an average growth rate of 28% over the past 5 years. Considering most of the growth was early on, it will slow down, but I predict that they will have about 70 million PS+ subscribers by the end of 2023. This is huge and represents a stable, recurring source of income. Investors who keep hyping Netflix/Disney+ will love this, but it seems they have yet to discover $SNE.
  • There is a reason why Amazon, Google, Nvidia have been aggressively investing in video games & games streaming. They know the business is huge and is about to get even bigger. But considering the established, loyal PlayStation userbase, the established global brand of PlayStation and the exclusive games, PlayStation should be able to easily standoff competition from Amazon, Google and Nvidia (GeForce Now) in the next few years. So far, Amazon’s venture into game development, publishing & streaming has completely failed. Stadia and GeForceNow seem to have a bit more success, but still relatively niche. Therefore, I think PlayStation is well-positioned to remain one of the leaders in the industry for the following decade.
I'll get to the other divisions later, I figured this is a good first step.
But so far the tl;dr
Image sensors: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
IoT/Industry 4.0 chipsets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
PS5/PSN/PS+: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Online medical services (M3 inc.): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Anime: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Fate/Grand Order: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Music / music streaming (the performance of Sony Music’s in Sony’s business is seriously understated. The numbers speak for themselves): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Electronics 🚀
Sony Financial Holdings (very stable & profitable business, even managed to grow slightly during pandemic when most insurance companies performed more poorly): 🚀🚀🚀
Still have to cover Sony Pictures, but their upcoming movie slate looks pretty good honestly (Spider-Man sequel, Venom: Let There Be Darkness, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Uncharted, Morbius, Hotel Transylvania 4 so that's worth one rocket as well imho 🚀
tl;dr of tl;dr:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot that's trying to understand why $SNE stock is so cheap.
Positions: SNE 105C 21st January 22
submitted by Audacimmus to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

I did some boring 20 page DD on $KSMT SPAC. Spoiler: I expect it to go up 70-100%

Disclaimer: This article my article. You are reading it first, as I didn't post it anywhere else.
Summary

Kismet Acquisition One (KSMT) to Combine with Nexters Global in $1.9Bn Deal

Not much information about this company, so I started writing my own research on the company. Here is the investor presentation:
https://nexters.com/images/inv_info/Nexters_Investor_Presentation.pdf
If want to understand the valuation of the company, the risk/reward, and the potential I need to answer the following questions:
  1. What is Nexters Global?
  2. SPAC is a safe bet?
  3. Comparison with its competitors?
  4. $1.9B is cheap or expensive?
Let's begin!

1. What is Nexters Global?

Nexters Global is a fast-growing mobile game development company with $450 million gross revenue* (2020), 85 million total game installs, 5.4 Million monthly active users, with 10x growth of revenue in the last 2 years. Already profitable with $110 million net profit in 2020.
The management has more than 10 years of experience in creating games. Located in Cyprus (Europe) with roots in Russia (a very strong IT region). They are well known for being in Game Development since early 2005 in the epicenter of the web, social and mobile game development.
https://preview.redd.it/juhbhhuwhmg61.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=529a0e927aa3bc3205430d97204d3d625f36fc8d
Since the launch, the company has proven that it can develop, publish and use marketing to scale its games. With 37% of its revenue coming from the US/Canada, 23% from Europe, 19% from Asia it is already an international company.
\In the investor presentation Nexters Global states 310 million net revenue, as at the* sec.gov reports it is more common (example) to use the gross revenue for gaming companies as their base metrics. That's why here and below I’m using gross revenue. Please see the spreadsheet below with a comparison to other companies.
Further plans are:

https://preview.redd.it/t9kdphd0img61.png?width=994&format=png&auto=webp&s=b70e92455e253033e99a91b17b0a1f85012e1e5b

2. SPAC is a safe bet?

There are so many SPACs, that we should be very selective on what we choose to buy. To do that we need to check if the business is real.
There are different kind of risky SPAC’s on the market:
We need to verify that Nexters Global is not on that list. Let’s have a look at the company:
The product? Web, Social, Mobile Games.
To check if their numbers are real simply open the game page in App Store and Google Play store.
Android Apps by NEXTERS GLOBAL LTD on Google Play
‎Nexters Global LTD Apps on the App Store
The top game has more than 50,000,000 installs with more than a million positive reviews and an average rating of 4.6. With other games/stores combined, it correlates with the company's stated 85 million installs.

https://preview.redd.it/jwh51gm2img61.png?width=735&format=png&auto=webp&s=428ec2dc85a4a6c1d51c67aa8fa1f7876edd3dab
I like that I can see the numbers myself, and also can "touch" the product and how it works. it increases my confidence in owning the stock.
Actually, I have been playing their top-grossing game Hero Wars for several months last year. And I loved it... loved it so much that I’ve spent around ~1000 dollars within 3 months. And I’ve seen players that spent much much more than me (higher ranked, had much more power and ranks). And there were so many players that they had to add new servers each week, or even daily.
The first impression is that I really like the product. I see how it works.
The revenue. It's huge.
In the SPAC world, there are companies that can’t make revenue but predict that their revenue will go up 10-20-50x times in 3-5 years. Usually, such companies are SCAM as they mislead investors with revenue that will never happen.
On another side, Nexters Global has already $450 million in revenue with a $110M profit. And the growth rate is +177% YoY. And even the slowdown in growth means the actual increase in revenue substantially, just by the magic of the compound growth.
I like the numbers very much here.
The addressable market
How big is the addressable market? The World’s 2.7 Billion Gamers Spent $175 Billion on Games in 2020; The Market Will Surpass $200 Billion by 2023. So Nexters Global is well-positioned in expanding market.

https://preview.redd.it/tf41au04img61.png?width=888&format=png&auto=webp&s=7547a1d3c2c8da43554a655d9b32bb4aaf4f2d97
Revenue geography shows that it is also diversified well. The company has proven that it can generate revenue all around the world, not just in its local market. That is very important in order to calculate the valuation of the company.

https://preview.redd.it/sxq08qg5img61.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed9b771d632268efb31d96d57c831d61d8caf12f
But how long Nexters can generate revenue?
Unlike the traditional PC gaming, where the peak of sales occurs after the launch of the game and then shrinks a lot, in the online mobile game market - games get updates each month/quarter to engage customers and make them stay in the game longer.
Games with great engagement + marketing resources can stay on top charts for many years.
You just reinvest part of your revenue into marketing to earn even more. It works for games with high revenue per player (ARPPU).
Nexters Presentation: $106 - Average net bookings per paying user(2) (Q4’20)

https://preview.redd.it/jsqcmby6img61.png?width=666&format=png&auto=webp&s=f96f6ef490ee2b16cf6ca01e8508df578bfdd302
Percentage of paying users increases. Average net booking increases.
With the 6% of paying users and $106 net payment - it is quite easy to calculate that you earn $6.36 from any user that downloads the app, so you can spend on advertisement a lot of money and you will earn even more.
When you have 277% revenue growth in 2019, 177% in 2020 it won’t just stop growing. Next year double-digit growth of revenue is highly probable.
From a statistical behavior the growth slowdown to zero is very unlikely. If we take examples of other super-hit games from Supercell (Clash of Clans) and Playrix (Gardenscapes).
Example: Playrix did continue to grow since 2016 explosive revenue withadding +41% YoY growth in 2018 +35% in 2019.

https://preview.redd.it/so9ijp08img61.png?width=667&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f6acbdf41374f89c045bb07c4b4e5f7dc235bf9
Another example: Supercell's revenue continued to grow at least 2 years after the revenue explosion before slowing down.

https://preview.redd.it/tjjuf159img61.png?width=855&format=png&auto=webp&s=01116616d83bbeeb34bbe98da012d22c3964f5d5
The growth
Great games could continue to grow. Nexters Global estimates their net revenue to reach $562 million dollars. That equals to ~$802 million gross revenue in 2023. And the company is valued at just 1.9B now. Re-think that.📷
This chart also shows that they project only +10.5% YoY growth in revenue in its current games after this year's gain. Which I think is too conservative considering the examples above. I understand that they’ve chosen the strategy not to mislead investors and should stay conservative, but I think they will easily beat their own estimates and 20-25% growth is much more realistic.
The good thing is that we can track their performance in terms of downloads and revenue in stores. We can stay ahead and know the data earlier than official numbers come out, which brings another level of transparency for investors.

Kismet Acquisition One Corp company

The company is led by CEO and Director Ivan Tavrin, the founder and Principal of investment firm Kismet Capital Group. Tavrin previously served as the CEO of PJSC MegaFon, Russia's second largest telecommunications operator, and before that, he founded UTH Russia, one of the largest independent media broadcasting groups in Russia.
Kismet Acquisition Two plans to target the internet and technology sectors operating in Europe, including Russia, as well as businesses established by founders with Russian origins.
Credit Suisse, BofA Securities and LionTree Advisors served as financial and capital markets advisors to Kismet Acquisition One Corp.
Advisors look good to me. The CEO's background and experience too. Additionally, he was one of the shareholders in the recently launched Russian IPO "OZON" marketplace. Which is now +120% up.
The only thing that sounds scary here is the word “Russia” everywhere. Is there an unwanted geopolitical risk? From the legal point of view, every entity is registered under British Law jurisdictions (Cyprus, BVI). So, basically, there shouldn't be any problems.
Well... they would better be in the US as many investors don’t like foreign companies. But there are great examples of super successful Supercell and Rovio that were NON-US too. And we know that the Russian Tech-sector is high qualified (Google Founder - Sergey Brin, Pavel Durov - Telegram, Vitalik Buterin - Etherium, and even Russian Hackers is a “meme”).
And as I said before their business looks crystal clear, anybody can check their metrics so they can’t fraud the data, unlike, for example, Luckin Coffee did in China. Therefore, this kind of risk is eliminated.

3. Comparison with its competitors?

Let's talk about numbers. I’ve tried to compare the game developer to its direct competitors. I've selected only companies with major mobile game-driven revenue.
Here is the full spreadsheet access: Nexters Global Comparison
I’ve marked the concerning metric with yellow and red, Good metric with green, Superb one with dark-green color.

https://preview.redd.it/tmsosbtaimg61.png?width=1079&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b50cd7a1a54115bb496849c43b3611094fc6309
Please take time to read the numbers and come back after.
Update! With the latest news that Electronic Arts buys GLU Mobile with +39% premium from the market - the sector is officially undervalued.
Thoughts on Nexters Global
I ended up with numbers: P/S = 4.19, P/E = 17.27. This valuation seems just right with current earnings and the sector, but not with the future growth. As there is a Hot trend in gaming and with outstanding YoY growth could be worth much much more.

4. $1.9B is cheap or expensive?

The current price of $KSMT (“GDEV”) is $10.15 which represents a $1.9B valuation. Before the deal is completed the price cannot be valued less than $10 due to SPAC rules. So there is simply no downside risk at this point..
But can it go up? What is fair valuation? Is there a risk of a selloff from shareholders? How rich the valuation can be in terms of P/E (Price to Sales ratio)?
First, let's find out the risk of insider selling:
Here is the sec report: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1814824/000121390021005589/ea134294ex99-1_kismet.htm
The Transaction is expected to deliver up to $150 million in cash to the Company’s balance sheet before advisor fees and/or redemptions by Kismet Acquisition One Corp. current shareholders, with proceeds expected to be used for general working capital purposes and potential acquisitions. Existing shareholders of Nexters will receive a cash payment of up to $150 million pro-rata to their pre-money shareholdings, and will roll approximately 92% of their holdings into the combined company while agreeing to a 12 month lock-up (subject to certain exceptions). In addition, the founders and the management will receive 20.0 million Earn-Out shares over 3 years (with 50% of the Earn-Out released at $13.50 VWAP and 50% released at $17.00 VWAP), also subject to a 12 month lock-up. The Transaction will be funded by approximately $250 million held in trust by Kismet Acquisition One Corp., subject to any redemptions, as well as the additional $50 million investment by the SPAC Sponsor, Kismet Capital Group, via an affiliate.
The investors will have a 12-month lock-up on selling + they get benefits on reaching the valuation 35% and 70% higher from the current price. This means that there will be no insider selling in the near term, which is very positive signal.
Acquisitions
Nexters Global plans to use proceeds in M&A (buying small game development studios with great projects that just don’t have enough cash, expertise, or right developer team) to benefit from its situation in order to launch great games worldwide.

https://preview.redd.it/xhypgzqfimg61.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=642c03fecbb851984527c46774beb0ecc44eba0a
It is a common mistake to assume that great games can be run by small studios or individuals, as in 2020 you need at least a couple of million dollars spent on marketing to understand if the project is worth it, or not. Small developers can’t afford it. On the other side, Nexters can benefit from it really well.
If they are successful in that, we could see 10+ new titles in the future. That could diversify its game portfolio, making this company a safe bet for Hedge funds and other market players, driving future growth.
“Hero Wars 2” game announcement.
Hero Wars is the top-grossing game, which generates most of the revenue. With “Hero Wars 2” announcement the company can benefit a lot..
Usually, game sequels can do very well, as they are easier to promote, finding their “fan base” from the beginning. This could create a new source of income, work as a diversification, launch the new cycle of the revenue stream for many years ahead.
Partnership with Playrix founders
Here is another thing that I want to focus on:
Bukhman brothers acquired a 43% stake in Nexters in 2018
They are founders of “Playrix” - a private mobile game developer company, currently valued at $7B(valued in Q1 2020). Now more likely ~11B as their revenue increased 1.5 times during 2020.
Please read these articles in Bloomberg and Forbes first:
  1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-29/billionaire-gaming-brothers-emerge-as-tencent-s-biggest-rival
  2. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://www.forbes.ru/milliardery/410509-nash-rost-ne-svyazan-napryamuyu-s-lokdaunom-milliarder-igor-buhman-o-tom-chto
Summary from the articles:
Cashing out (selling out to Tencent or Activision Blizzard) is not interesting right now. We are growing every year. Game industry multiplicators of public companies were priced wrong . This year has changed it. And this trend will continue as top games can grow for many many years, reengaging users with updates.
Playrix is not interested in IPO's at this valuation. They want to wait until the market changes and start pricing gaming companies at different valuations, not the 4-5 year revenues, but maybe more like Tech companies are valued now (P/S 20-30 instead of 4-5)?
I can assume that Playrix founders are interested in the long-term success of Nexters Global SPAC-merger in order to change how markets price the gaming companies as they want to bring Playrix to an IPO in the future. They want to wait until the market starts pricing gaming companies at different valuations, not the 4-5 year revenues, but maybe more like Tech companies are valued now (P/S 20-30 instead of 4-5)?
So, for the Bukhman brothers who own 43% shares, Nexters Global is a long-term play company. They don’t want/need to cash out.
I also think that at some point, Tencent could just buy 20-30% of the company through the open market (buying shares). Why? Because it is common for Tencent to buy a stake in gaming companies that earn a lot of cash and priced at these valuations.

https://preview.redd.it/uphpbubcimg61.png?width=804&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f35889049fa9302786bf65d1b83f02a92d71eef

Summary

In my personal opinion, this is a great company with a bright future.
Valuation seems reasonable and there is a big upside if any of those happens:
At this exact moment, the fair valuation of the company will move to $3-4 billion dollar. (+100% upside).
At this right moment of the time as the price is near $10 there is literally no risk in a pre-merger state, as SPAC can’t go below $10 price by its concept.
Disclosure: At the moment of writing this article I do have a position in $KSMT, that is not more than 10% of my entire portfolio. I do not plan to sell at any nearest time in future. Stocks are risk assets and this is not investment advice.
submitted by khollekhokk to SPACs [link] [comments]

NOK NOK, WHOSE THERE?

Current Status Report:
The Bull Case:
The Bear Case:
Summary Recommendations:
If you are bullish) Buy more and hold. You currently own a safe haven asset that is unlikely to be affected by further market downturns related to COVID-19. Unemployment is still sky high and the rest of the market hasn't realized the consequences of this yet.
If you are bearish) Hold until at least March or April. Recent sell off is the market reacting irrationally to Pekka Lundmark saying the forbidden words of "price erosion" and "difficult year" in the same sentence - even though the fault of this is largely due to American companies engaging in bidding wars and the U.S. dollar shorting itself into the ground. All in all the earnings report was still good and I expect a rebound.
submitted by TheAngryItalianMan to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

NEW INFO - Funko Toys DD

Funko (FNKO)
Share Price (2/9/21) : $13.30
Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86
Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14%
Next Earnings Release: March 2021
Updating a previous DD post on Funko Toys with additional data points from the earnings releases of two major toy companies (Mattel and Hasbro). Strong toy sales performance from both companies suggests that Funko sales should be solid when they report in March.

Here are some highlights on the two major toy companies below with additional detail on each company’s performance in the body of this post:
· Q1 2021 sales volumes continue strong in January; following a robust Q4 in 2020
· E-commerce is a major driver of toy sales during the holidays and in a “COVID World”
· The toy segment has recovered quickly from the industry challenges faced in early 2020
· Very strong sales growth in North America & Europe; slower growth in LatAM and Asia
· Mattel and Hasbro’s sales performance aligns well with other data points suggesting that the toy industry overall was strong during Q4 2020 and will continue to do well in 2021

SUMMARY FROM THE ORIGINAL FUNKO DD
Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties.
Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021:
· Increasing search traffic for Funko products
· Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability
· Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID
· People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out
· Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021
· Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity
· Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive

MATTEL - KEY INSIGHTS FROM THEIR Q4 2020 EARNINGS RELEASE (Feb 9th)
It was a “banner quarter” with Mattel's “best performance in years,” per the CEO.
· Total revenue up 10% during Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
> North America up 13%; International up 8%
> Achieved revenue growth in all four regions in constant currency
> Highest 4th quarter growth rate in 15 years
o EMEA up 12%
o Latin America up 3%
o Asia Pacific up 8%
· Gross margins were up 300 basis points to 51.4%
· Adjusted EBITDA was up 53% to $284 million
· “The fourth quarter and full year demonstrated the resilience of the toy industry and the priority that parents place on quality toys, trusted brands, and purposeful play” - Ynon Kreiz, Mattel Chairman & CEO
Segment sales accelerated in Q4 2020 (vs. the prior three quarters)
· Dolls:
> Up 13% in Q4 2020 (vs. up 11% in constant currency for full year 2020)
> Includes "Barbie" and "American Girl" brands
· Infant, Toddler, & Preschool:
> Up 7% in Q4 2020 (vs. down 8% in constant currency for full year 2020)
> Includes "Fisher-Price" and "Thomas & Friends" brands
· Vehicles:
> Up 12% in Q4 2020 (vs. up 3% in constant currency for full year 2020)
> Includes "Hot Wheels" brand
· Action figures, Building Sets, & Games:
> Up 9% in Q4 2020 (vs. up 2% in constant currency for full year 2020)
> Includes "Star Wars," "MEGA," and "Uno" brands
E-commerce maintained strong momentum during Q4 2020
· POS was up more than 40% (vs. Q4 2019)
· Represents more than 35% of global POS
HASBRO - KEY INSIGHTS FROM THEIR Q4 2020 EARNINGS RELEASE (Feb 8th)
Sales in 2021 are starting off strong; extending the longer than normal holiday season
· Strong consumer demand starting in Oct 2020 continuing through Jan 2021
· January 2021 POS sales are up nearly 30% vs. the same time the prior year
· “Weeks following Christmas have been incredibly strong. And in January, we are actually seeing an acceleration. I think as people get gift cards and as people who weren’t together for the holidays, and sends presents and other gifting, gift cards and other formats, we’re just seeing an immense amount of consumption of Hasbro brands and products, lots of strong launches coming as we move our way through the first quarter.” – Brian Goldner; Hasbro CEO
· Hasbro believes they can deliver mid single-digit revenue growth in 2021
> “This year, and we believe we’ll be in line with or ahead of the industry depending on where they land. But again, I’ve said around mid single-digits is in a good, robust year is where we should be able to deliver toys and games growth.” – Brian Goldner; Hasbro CEO
Net revenue increase of 4% during Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
· US and Canada segment revenues up 16%
· Hasbro gaming segment up 21%
· Franchise brands up 7%
· Gains in US and Canada offset by sales declines in LatAM and Asia
· Hasbro had strong performance during Q4 despite tough comparables to the prior year where they were drafting off of Frozen’s strong sales performance
E-commerce revenues were up 43% in 2020 (reaching $1 billion for the first time)
· E-commerce was approximately 30% of global revenues in 2020
· E-commerce POS up 19% during the Q4 2020
· “Pure-play and omni-channel retailers led this growth and omni-channel made significant strides to double their e-comm revenue for the year. Our teams work closely with retailers to expand their online offerings as many added click and collect to their capabilities during the year. With channel support and innovative tailored product, Hasbro also grew revenues with the fan channel last year.” – Brian Goldner; Hasbro
Hasbro continues to reduce its reliance on China in 2020 by diversifying manufacturing as a way to reduce supply shocks and potential tariffs in a China trade war
· “In addition to our global retail network, our global supply chain capabilities and our evolving geographic manufacturing supplier base were essential to meeting demand. Due to COVID and changing consumer behaviors, we had disruptions from production to logistics, but the team worked tirelessly to meet the demand and successfully execute the year. We added new e-comm capabilities and identified opportunities to further enhance these going forward. We continued to diversify our manufacturing, reducing our reliance on any one country, ending 2020 with approximately 55% of production in China.”
> For comparison, 70% of Funko’s goods were produced outside of China as of late 2019.
Latin America and Asia were down in 2020 given e-commerce is underdeveloped
· “As we discussed throughout the year, Latin America was challenging. The toy and game market declined. Retailers were closed. E-comm is underdeveloped. And we reduced our inventory at retail. This impacted 2020 revenue and margins and we are now better positioned to stabilize the business and drive profit improvement this year.” – Deb Thomas; Hasbro EVP & CFO
· “To better help you understand the components of cost of sales we included the 2020 breakdown in our earnings presentation today. The improvements were partially offset by additional markdowns in Latin America and Asia to reduce inventory levels at retail.” – Deb Thomas; Hasbro EVP & CFO
TL;DR:
After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum.
Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock. Additionally, strong earnings releases from Mattel and Hasbro bode well for Funko when they release their Q4 2020 numbers in the coming weeks.
Positions: Long Shares & Calls
Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier.
Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment.
Previous DD: Herman Miller, Funko
submitted by LavenderAutist to smallstreetbets [link] [comments]

Not your parents PLAYBOY: How Playboy is reinventing themselves and why you should Invest $MCAC

I know what you're already thinking. Playboy is a dead porn brand that publishes a magazine and doesn't appeal to millennials or gen z right?
Wrong.
Leadership
Let's start with Ben Kohn, the CEO. Kohn has worked in private equity for 25 years and started a firm called Rizvi Travers which invested in pre IPO tech companies. They were the largest investor when Twitter went public and invested in Facebook, Snapchat, Square, SpaceX, Instacart, and Uber.
In 2011, Kohn partnered with Hugh Hefner and took Playboy private. Kohn became the CEO in 2017 with the goal of revitalizing one of the largest, most recognizable brands in the world. Since becoming CEO, Kohn has been shutting down most of the legacy business and most recently discontinued producing a domestic magazine. He's focused most of his attention so far on growing the high margin licensing business and direct to consumer business, transforming Playboy into a consumer lifestyle brand focusing on 4 categories:
Kohn is also placing a strong emphasis on appealing to women and young people, something that Playboy had never done in the past. Over the last 3 years, the female audience has grown by 70% and 90% of their audience today is under the age of 40. Out of the total e-commerce sales, 40% of customers are women.
Financials
Playboy is already a profitable business. They have a highly efficient, high margin business model that accelerates with growth.
For the first 9 months of 2020, Playboy grew revenue by 78% from 57 million to 101 million and grew adjusted ebitda 129% from 9.5 million to 22 million. For 2021, they reaffirmed guidance of 167 million of revenue and 40 million dollars of ebitda. By 2025, Playboy is conservatively projecting 296 million of revenue and 140 million in ebitda, but expects it to be much greater. It's also important to note that they have over 400 million of forward booked minimum guaranteed cash flow, but they only recognize 67 million of that today, so the actual revenue numbers are much higher.
Playboy's business is monetized in two primary ways, licensing and direct to consumer. Licensing is a key part of the revenue stream and they anticipate it more than doubling moving forward. However, Playboy is extremely excited about its growing direct to consumer business as well which I will dive into in the next section.
Growth
Playboy has huge growth opportunities in each of their 4 product categories. First I want to point out that Playboy is HUGE in China and it's growing rapidly in India. In China, Playboy is one of the leading men's apparel brands with over 2500 brick and mortar stores and over 1000 e-commerce stores. Playboy sells products in over 180 countries and is the 17th most licensed brand in the world.
Style & Apparel:
Over the last 3 years, Playboy has partnered with Pacsun, Misguided, Supreme, and others. The Pacsun and Misguided businesses have increased almost 15x over the last 3 years. Playboy also launched Playboy Labs and partnered with Steve Aoki to promote the brand. Playboy intends on transitioning this business from a pure licensing business to a direct to consumer business going forward. They have future collaborations with Yandy planned as well.
Sexual Wellness:
The sexual wellness category is a 240 billion dollar industry today and is projected to grow to 400 billion by 2024. Currently, the industry is fragmented and made up of small businesses with no ability to scale. Playboy is poised to become the leader in this category through strategic acquisitions of existing companies and by growing its product offerings. Yes, I'm talking about lingerie, condoms, sex toys etc. They recently acquired the sexual wellness retailer Lovers for 25 million and expect them to add 45 million in revenue over the next 12 months. They are planning on making more strategic acquisitions in this space moving forward to become the leading direct to consumer brand in this field. They also began offering online sexual wellness classes for women, which have seen large growth since inception.
Gaming & Lifestyle:
The growth opportunities in this category are huge. Playboy is diversifying into online gambling, mobile gaming, CBD/Marijuana, and virtual reality. They have a social club/poker room opening in Houston this year in addition to their casino in London. They currently have partnerships with Microgaming as well as Scientific Games for mobile gambling apps like slots and poker, with plans to build more. They are also planning on entering the sports gambling market through partnerships with well known sports betting operators.
Moreover, they recently launched an exclusive furniture collection on Wayfair and plan on offering more in the future. They currently offer 3 CBD products and have plans to enter the legal marijuana market when it's legalized at the federal level, which might happen soon under the Biden administration. As of now they sell Playboy branded smoking materials like ash trays and grinders. They are planning on launching 4 more CBD products in 2021. Lastly, Ben Kohn said that experiencing Playboy through a virtual world format is something that is "extremely interesting to us". He gave an example of the Travis Scott and Unreal Platform collaboration.
Beauty and Grooming:
Currently, Playboy offers men's and women's fragrances and color cosmetics in Europe. They have plans to expand their product line and enter the North American market this year. In China, a place where Playboy has a large market presence, Men's grooming is one of the fastest growing categories and an area that Playboy is not in today. They are planning on entering this market in the near future with Playboy branded skincare and grooming products.
SPAC Merger
Playboy has a DA with Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp, $MCAC, with the shareholder vote taking place THIS TUESDAY 2/9/21. Once it's approved, the ticker will change to PLBY shortly after. One of the great things about this deal is that there are absolutely no warrants outstanding, meaning there will be very little dilution. They only have 1/10th of a right per share outstanding which automatically convert to common stock. Upon completion of the merger, PLBY will have only 37 million shares outstanding, which is a very low float. Any increase in volume and demand will send the stock price higher.
After the merger, PLBY will have a market cap of approximately 413 million. For comparison to other global brands, Nike's market cap is 185 billion, Disney's is 329 billion, and Lululemon's is 45 billion. Now I'm not saying Playboy is near those companies today. However, if they continue growing and realize their potential, they're massively undervalued.
Additionally, the management team all signed 12-month lock ups, preventing them from selling for at least one year. This is not a transaction sale, but a true capital raise to accelerate growth. They are in this for the long haul.
Conclusion
Playboy has big growth opportunities in multiple product categories to become a leading consumer lifestyle brand. They have a high margin profitable business model and a very healthy balance sheet. They have 100 million in free cash right now and only 40 million in net debt, or one times 2021 adjusted ebitda. They already have global brand awareness and the bunny logo alone has tremendous value. Ceo Ben Kohn knows what he's doing and has a proven track record of success.
It might be flying under the radar right now because all the hype is surrounding GME and EV socks. I believe when the ticker changes to PLBY and people realize that Playboy is no longer what it used to be, this has huge long term upside.
FYI: All of the statistics I mentioned are directly taken from the CEO Ben Kohn in his 1 hour webinar interview with SpacInsider.
Disclosure: Long 500 commons $MCAC
Disclaimer: Do your own due diligence too
submitted by pucklife21 to SPACs [link] [comments]

An in-depth look at 18* unannounced PlayStation 5 exclusives | Including a new FROM SOFTWARE collab

After posting this in PS5, some people suggested that I should post it here too. So here it is.
Arrowhead Game Studios (Magicka, Gauntlet, Helldivers)
Testament
In 2016, Arrowhead started to work on their first ever AAA game - a project that would require not only the attention of the entire team, but also to grow the studio way beyond the 35 employees that worked on Arrowhead around that time. That's why in 2017 they moved into a bigger office where they could accommodate all of their staff - both old and new.
Then in 2018, Arrowhead's co-founder stated in an interview that they were making a third-person game this time around and, due to the change in perspective, moving the focus from local co-op to making it purely online co-op. Friendly fire is confirmed to be making a return.
In early 2019, some Arrowhead developers were spotted at GDC wearing jackets with a "Testament Dev Team" written in the back. While recapping 2019, it was stated on the Arrowhead website that they had made a "butt-ton of progress" on the game and that by the end of the year the studio had already grown to roughly 60 people.
Bend Studio (Siphon Filter, Days Gone)
Days Gone
Days Gone ends on a cliffhanger, but so did The Order 1886 and, well, we all know how that ended up - so let's delve a bit deeper into why Days Gone 2 will be a thing.
In 2019, a couple of weeks before the game's launch, a Sony PR guy said that Days Gone was seen as a "franchise" in Sony's eyes, stating that "the goal is always to make a game that people love and want more of". One month later, the game came out and delivered some surprisingly solid numbers not only at launch but also throughout the year, thanks to the good word-of-mouth it had amongst the community.
According to snort_cannon, the success of the game came as a surprise even to Sony, who was expecting Days Gone to be the disappointment and Death Stranding being the one doing crazy numbers.
Later that year, Bend Studio managing director Chris Reese kind of teased that a sequel was in the works when asked about it during an interview: "This is a world that we want to keep breathing more life into, and explore many, many different avenues. So who knows, we'll see!"
Bluepoint Games (Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon's Souls)
Bloodborne Remastered
In May 2020, NeoGAF user Celine.D.Sykes - who previously discussed this project in February 2019 on the ResetEra forums - talked about the Bloodborne remaster in greater detail: "During my time on ResetEra, I only knew that From Software wanted Bloodborne to release on PC. Unfortunately, a PC port would need a lot of work […] and reworking Bloodborne's engine would take a great amount of work. The game logic is tied to framerate, among many other baffling decisions. The last time From Software tried to change the inner logic of an engine; it resulted in the infamous PC port of the first Dark Souls."
"Making a long story short, Sony said they were interested in a potential Bloodborne remaster for PS5, with a lot more work done, like some QoL added and some cut-content being introduced. Both From Software and Sony agreed to not just up the resolution and the framerate, but to make something great. FromSoftware has been authorized to release the game on PC, but only some months after the remaster hits PS5."
"Last time I heard about it, Bloodborne remaster would be part of PS5 line-up, but I don't quite believe it since I think the spotlight will be stolen by another similar title [Demon's Souls] that should be announced in June. I think they might save the Bloodborne remaster for some months after PS5 release, but I could be wrong about that particular point."
According to another report by a different source, the game is being developed by both QLOC - the studio behind 2018's Dark Souls: Remastered - and Bluepoint Games. Now that Demon's Souls is out and considering how far along Bloodborne Remastered has been reported to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it is currently planned to be revealed at The Game Awards.
Unannounced
On November 20th 2020, in response to a user who claimed that the rumored Bluepoint acquisition by Sony would be very boring as far as hype goes, KatharsisT said: "If you knew what Bluepoint is on at the moment, you wouldn't say that (Yeah, it's a hype post [and] you'll have to wait to know what it is)". Shortly after that, a mod stepped in to say that "KatharsisT has shown sufficient evidence to support this claim."
A couple of posts later, MarsipanRumpan - the guy behind the Bluepoint acquisition rumor - also backed the statements made by KatharsisT "I’m totally on your side. Talked with my source, I think we have the same info regarding their next remake. People who aren’t hyped for Bluepoint don’t know what their next project is as you said. Because that shit is [mindblowing]."
Regarding the rumors of a Metal Gear Solid remake, all I'm gonna say is: don't listen to what Moore's Law is Dead and other youtubers are saying, it is all bullshit; but at the same time don't lose faith, as chances of Bluepoint's next remake being MGS are high, considering how it seems they're working on a bigger and more prestigious title than Demon's Souls and also the good relationship Sony currently has with Konami.
From Software (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Deráciné)
Unannounced
A couple of weeks ago, MarsipanRumpan - the guy who recently reported about Bluepoint's acquisition on ResetEra - said that he has heard that Sony is in talks with From Software regarding the making of a new PS5 exclusive directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. This would be the third game From has currently in their pipeline, with Elden Ring and a new Armored Core being the other two.
MarsipanRumpan also clarified that it will be a while before we see this new game in motion anyway.
Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon)
Unannounced
In February 2018, Simon Larouche - former multiplayer designer on Killzone 2, R6 Patriots and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, as well as game director on R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as game director, starting to work on an unannounced project completely unrelated to the Horizon sequel (now known as Forbidden West), which was also in development at the time. Then in July, Hermen Hulst announced plans for Guerrilla to move into a new, bigger office where they could expand their staff count from 250 to 400 people, allowing them to make games faster and release a new title every two to three years.
In October 2018, Chris Lee - former multiplayer designer on several SOCOM titles at Slant Six Games and on Ubisoft's R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as principal game designer on Larouche's project. Apart from the fact that Lee's hiring makes it pretty clear that Guerrilla's second team is working on a shooter game of some sorts, it's worth pointing out that Lee lists "cooperative and competitive multiplayer, open world systemic gameplay and online social experiences" as his current interests on his LinkedIn profile - with the open world bit being especially interesting as it was also mentioned in certain job listings for the project in 2019.
In August 2020, Guerrilla finally moved to their new office, which means the studio is now ready to begin large-scale recruiting on its second project once they see it fit - although I don't expect to hear about this project until after the release of Forbidden West in the second half of 2021.
Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Marvel's Spider-Man)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
The recently released Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales entered development in May 2018 under the direction of Brian Horton, while Bryan Intihar was finishing up his work on the original Marvel's Spider-Man, which came out in September of that year. So right after wrapping up the first game and with Miles Morales in the hands of a separate team, Intihar started preparing the next main entry in the series as teased in January 2019 when he posted on Twitter "Few things are more nerve-wracking than sharing your first story draft to others."
Japan Studio (Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Astro)
RaySpace
Sometime in spring 2014, a couple of weeks before E3, Reddit user Ruin4r leaked a number of titles in development exclusively for PS4, including a new God of War, The Last Guardian, a The Last Of Us sequel, Dead Don't Ride (later confirmed to be Days Gone's codename) and an "unnamed space game" - which by the way wasn't Santa Monica Studio's cancelled new IP for PS4, as that project was axed earlier that year.
A year later, Shuhei Yoshida stated in an interview at E3 2015 that "Japan Studio is now producing a really great project that I'm really excited about" - which also wasn't Gravity Rush 2, as that title was referenced as a different project later in the interview.
In April 2016, Ruin4r said that all the games previously teased by him were still in development and clarified that many of them - God of War, TLOU2, Days Gone and the "unnamed space game" - were in early stages when he first talked about them.
Then on June 6th 2016, during a livestream in celebration of Famitsu's 30th Anniversary, SIE's Yasuhiro Kitao teased a a new title to Famitsu's editor-in-chief Katsuhio Hayashi by letting him read some text from his tablet, as Kitao didn't have any images to show. Hayashi was blown away by whatever thing he read and stated that "this will definitely be worth waiting for."
In December 2017, SIE trademarked "RaySpace" in Canada - which most probably was the final title for the "unnamed space game" mentioned by Ruin4r. That same month, Japan Studio's award-winning creative director Tsutomu Kouno stated in an interview "I have not been able to announce a new title in a long time, but in 2018, I would like to announce what I am preparing". Japan Studio producer Teruyuki Toriyama - who has been teasing this project since 2015, describing it in multiple occasions as an "ambitious title" - also promised an announcement in 2018.
Sometime in 2018, an interview to a Japan Studio employee was posted on the SIE website; in it there was an image that contained shots of two upcoming games in the background: the Demon's Souls remake (top right corner) and some sort of sci-fi first-person game.
But 2018 went by without any sort of reveal regarding this project and in December, Toriyama once again teased an announcement for the coming year "In 2019, we are preparing for the debut of unannounced title(s) currently in production". It is worth noting that Japan Studio didn't reveal any new games in 2019.
I doubt that RaySpace was cancelled, as you don't pull the plug on a project that has been in the works for four or five years and was so close to being revealed. So what I believe is that they decided to move it to PlayStation 5 - just like they did with other projects such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure or Horizon: Forbidden West - and maybe even bring it back to the drawing table a little - which would explain why we haven't seen it this year during the PS5 reveal events.
Silent Hill
In 2018, Konami reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games: one a soft-reboot of the franchise; the other an episodic Telltale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. In fact, one of the studios contacted by Konami was Supermassive Games, creators of Until Dawn, although they ultimately didn't get the job.
Japan Studio's creative director Keiichiro Toyama, who had been wanting to work on a new horror game for quite some time, was developing a new entry in the Siren franchise at the time. Sony, who weren't fully keen on the idea of investing on a niche series such as Siren, decided to pull the plug on the project as they started negotiating a deal with Konami for getting Japan Studio to work on the Silent Hill soft-reboot - a prestige project for the PS5 lineup based on a globally renowned IP, something that would allow Toyama to have a bigger budget and more resources at his disposal.
Eventually the deal would get finalized, putting Sony Interactive Entertainment in charge of developing, funding and publishing the title in exchange for keeping the exclusive and most of the revenue, with Konami being indirectly involved by outsourcing the IP against an 8% of the revenue. And that way, the game entered development in early 2019, salvaging as much from the technological work done for the Siren game as possible.
At some point in 2019, an interview to a Japan Studio employee posted on the SIE website showed a developer working on a handgun model - something that, if we consider the other projects Japan Studio has in the pipeline, would only align with Silent Hill.
On January 21st 2020, Rely on Horror reported that they've heard from a source of their own that a new Silent Hill game was in development. A day later, movie industry insider Emre Kaya posted on Twitter that he has learned that Sony is working on a new horror game for PS5.
On March 12th 2020, Rely on Horror stated that Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka and creature designer Masahiro Ito are returning alongside the series creator Keiichiro Toyama to helm a soft-reboot of the franchise developed by Japan Studio, just called Silent Hill. Both of their sources mentioned Sony as the driving force behind bringing the series back. That same day, Emre Kaya said on Twitter that this was the Sony horror game that he talked about back in January.
In April 2020, ResetEra user KatharsisT backed Rely on Horror's information regarding the Silent Hill soft-reboot and confirmed a third-person perspective and that the game was playable already. She also said that it is planned to be announced before PS5's launch, with a release in spring 2021 - although these reveal and release windows were from before COVID started to fuck up their schedule. Shortly after, a mod stepped into the discussion to state that they've verified her information on the subject.
In May 2020, Reddit user snort_cannon, who had already discussed the game months ago, said that "the game was planned on being shown off this summer. Unless something bad happens, it should happen. The plan at first was just to do a CG trailer to announce that the game exists, but I personally think at this point [they] might delay the reveal and add some gameplay footage as well". When asked about his sources, he answered "Same source that told me about the Sony deal, albeit last update came in early February and COVID didn’t rampage as hard as it’s going now."
On August 3rd 2020, ResetEra user Navtra, who leaked a list of games that went on to be present on both PS5 events days in advance to June's The Future of Gaming, commented on the Silent Hill rumors "I can only confirm one thing: it was never on the table for June's event. FFXVI and Marvel's Avengers Spider-Man character announcement were among other things that were supposed to be there and were moved last minute. Silent Hill never was". If we look at both KatharsisT and snort_cannon's comments in regards to the reveal window for the game after having learned this, it becomes clear that the reveal was initially planned for the second PS5 event, that being September's PS5 Showcase - an event that the game missed because of delays in production related to the COVID pandemic.
On October 31st 2020, KatharsisT stated that something had just made her expect a reveal at The Game Awards. A couple of days later, Rely on Horror reported that recent rumors of a Silent Hill announcement at The Game Awards line up with some information they received a while back but choose not to report on.
On November 21st 2020, KatharsisT once again teased a Silent Hill reveal at The Game Awards "You'll celebrate it before the end of the year if everything goes as planned" while also stating that she thinks the game is still planned for 2021.
London Studio (The Getaway, PlayStation VR Worlds, Blood & Truth)
Horizon VR
On October 2019, VR consultant Callum Hurley posted on Twitter that he had learned about an "exciting new PlayStation VR game coming out of London Studio" through someone who had just playtested the title. He also vaguely implied it was a Horizon VR game and, when news outlets started to report on his tweets, he apologized to the development team as he didn't expect such coverage.
Same as the unannounced VR titles from Supermassive Games, I do expect this Horizon VR game to be a cross-gen release sometime next year.
MediaVision (Wild Arms, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Valkyria Chronicles 4)
Wild Arms
In July 2018, we've learned thanks to a job listing that MediaVision was working on a new PlayStation 4 RPG. It is worth noting that a year earlier Sony stated that, even though their investments have been mainly focused on titles aimed to a global audience do to the soaring in development costs, the success of recent titles such as Persona 5 or Nier Automata amongst overseas audiences has made them consider a return to first-party JRPG development.
Then in June 2019, DasVergeben posted on Reddit "Something I have heard for a while now is that a new Wild Arms game is in development but it has been over a year long journey getting that verified. I still struggle to get definite enough confirmation but I think it might have been because I heard about it too early". In a separate post, Vergeben added "I don't know much other than that it apparently is in development by Media Vision for PS4. I haven't been told anything specific yet at least. I do wonder if Sony might try and shift over to push it as a PS5 launch game or something if they don't reveal it this year [...] but that's simply speculation on my behalf."
At this point I expect the game to be a cross-gen release, as it wouldn't make sense to leave the PS4 users behind with a title that surely won't be a technological showcase unlike native PS5 games such as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last Of Us)
The Last Of Us: Factions
On September 26th 2019, Naughty Dog posted a statement on Twitter in which they basically announced that the multiplayer mode they had planned for The Last Of Us: Part II had grown beyond an additional mode that could be included alongside the game's enormous singleplayer campaign, so they decided to turn it into a standalone game in order to not compromise on the ambitions of the studio's multiplayer team.
Then in April 2020, a short gameplay clip from a March 2018 build of the multiplayer leaked online as part of a bigger leak that revealed tons of story spoilers and cutscenes from The Last Of Us: Part II. Assuming that this TLOU multiplayer game is planned for a release on both PS4 and PS5 sometime next year, we would be in front of a title with over four years of overall dev time - meaning that the project might be greater in scope than what most of us are expecting it to be.
Unannounced
On October 10th 2018, movie industry insider Daniel Ritchman reported that Naughty Dog was in the process of casting an actor to play the lead role on an upcoming game. According to the casting description, the studio was looking for a "Black/African American male, 40s to 60s, short to medium length hair, with a body type similar to those in the images below, strong but not chiseled". But since this doesn't tell us much about the game, apart from hinting at it being a new IP, let's go a little back in time in search of more potential details.
During the The Last Of Us: Part II panel at PSX 2017, Neil Druckmann stated that Naughty Dog will "forever continue to make singleplayer, linear, narrative-based games". He also mentioned during an interview from February 2018 that the studio was totally open to make a first-person game in the future - and, since they seem to be making a new IP, this new project might be the perfect time for them to try a different camera angle in their games.
New San Diego Studio
Unannounced
In April 2018, David Hall - former Double Helix/Amazon Game Studios - joins an unnamed SIE studio in San Diego as game director on an unannounced title. Since then, rumors about a new Sony first-party studio have been circulating due to a job listing - also from April - in which it was stated that "PlayStation is building a new game development team in partnership with the Visual Arts Service Group" to work on a "high visibility project" described as a third-person action/adventure game "developed in collaboration with a major Sony studio."
A month later, Quentin Cobb - former singleplayemultiplayer designer at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us - also joins this new studio in San Diego and in December a new job listing mentions that the team was looking for a lead character artist to work on "the next chapter of cinematic storytelling."
In January 2019, James Martinchek - former cutscene/gameplay animator on The Last Of Us, Uncharted 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 - joins the studio as a lead gameplay animator. Also in January, Cobb was asked on Twitter why he couldn't even reveal what studio he was working for, to what he replied that "it is difficult to explain why" - further reinforcing the theory that Sony has assembled a secret studio in the San Diego area.
Then in November 2019, Sony announced their plans to set up a support studio in Malaysia and, just a couple of weeks ago, a job listing from SIE Malaysia unveils that they're currently working on "one of PlayStation's [most] well-known and well-loved franchises" for which they are looking for "talented, highly-motivated and creative animators to breathe life into the next chapter of cinematic storytelling."
In November 2020, both Quentin Cobb and John Bautista left the studio and the internet started to speculate that Sony had shut down the studio and cancelled the project, something that Bautista denied by stating that "the studio is still there and the project is still ongoing."
Santa Monica Studio (God of War)
Unannounced
On April 12th 2018, Cory Barlog spoke during an interview about his desire to work on a new IP "I really would love to create something of my own next. Something that really, really is truly 100% coming from my original vision. That would be awesome, but we have to see if I can convince Sony on that one". Over half a year later, in November, film director Duncan Jones - who had just met with Cory looking for his opinion regarding a certain script - said on Twitter that "If you think that God of War is [Cory’s] magnum opus, just you wait!"
Since then, little we've learned about the development of this project, other than the recent news that Alanah Pearce has joined Santa Monica Studio as a junior writer on, apparently, Cory's game. And I say that mainly because, while members of the team behind the next God of War were able to publicly announce their involvement in the making of said title on social media, Alanah is not allowed to reveal what she is working on over at SMS - that being due to the fact that, unlike the upcoming GOW game, Cory Barlog's new project hasn't been revealed yet.
Sucker Punch Productions (inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima)
¿Ghost 2?
Look, I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet, so I don't know how it ends or if it sets up a sequel or not - but a few weeks ago a job listing from Sucker Punch mentioned that the studio "is looking for a narrative writer for our upcoming projects" and that the ideal candidate would "have previous success as a game writer, outstanding dialogue skills and an excellent understanding of how to tell impactful, character-driven stories within a AAA open-world game" and also "knowledge of feudal Japanese history". That last bit kind of screams some sort of GOT sequel to me.
Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient)
Unannounced Titles
In November 2018, Supermassive Games managing director Pete Samuels confirmed that the studio was "working on several unannounced PlayStation exclusives" and stated that their relationship with Sony "is still excellent", even though they choose another publisher for The Dark Pictures Anthology as they wanted to reach the widest possible audience.
What that might mean is that they wanna go the multiplatform route with their biggest titles - that being The Dark Pictures Anthology, their response to the requests of an Until Dawn sequel - while keeping the most experimental and smaller stuff exclusive to Google or Sony - meaning that these unannounced titles would probably be cross-gen PSVR games, as Jim Ryan stated that they will not be releasing VR titles exclusively for PS5 until the new headset comes out in a couple of years.
Wild Sheep Studio
WiLD
During Sony's GamesCom conference in 2014, Michel Ancel took the stage to introduce WiLD, a new PS4 exclusive developed by his recently formed indie studio. It was described as a title with an open-world "potentially as big as Europe", day and night cycles, dynamic weather and seasons, as well as a seamless online system, in which you could play not only as a human but also as any living creature. Ancel also stated that for the past year, the studio had been working very hard on the proprietary technology and tools they would be using in order to create this very specific type of game that was WiLD.
A year later, this time at Sony's Paris Games Week conference, Ancel showed a super early gameplay demo of WiLD. This was the last time we saw WiLD in action, as the information drops regarding this title started to slow down over the years - with most updates consisting of Sony denying cancellation rumors, trademark renewals or off-screen pictures of the game posted on Michel Ancel's Instagram.
The most notable piece of news from this period however, was an interview with WiLD producer Mitsuo Hirakawa from November 2017. During said interview, he stated "We are not going to rush [Michel Ancel] to make something that he doesn't want to compromise on." and then he followed "Even experienced developers make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to find the right choices for the design of the game and we want to provide [Wild Sheep Studio] with all the support necessary, so that's why things sometimes do take a lot longer than we expect but we feel that WiLD deserves the extra time and quality before it comes to public."
A creative that doesn't want to compromise on his vision? Mistakes that lead into things taking longer than expected? Call me crazy, but I think those statements are pointing directly to some heavy project mismanagement on Ancel's part, as we've seen reports of similar things happening during the development of Beyond: Good & Evil 2.
According to snort_cannon "[BG&E2] has been a mess behind the scenes for a pretty long time. To give you a rough idea of how bad it's going, the game was supposedly gonna come out next year [in 2021], but it's not even 50% done. I wouldn't be shocked, if we get an investigation article on its development troubles, soon". Which did in fact happened, as, a couple of months ago, national newspaper Libération published an article on BG&E2's troubled development "Ganesha City, which [he] asked us to do with a completely stupid level of detail, we only just finished it three years later, and we've had to redo it four or five times. Knowing that we have to do several planets, you can imagine the absurdity of this kind of reasoning." "When [Ancel] was spoking to the press, we were taking notes because [...] it could concern points on which we would have been stuck on for months, waiting for directions."
Moving onto something else, in July 2018, both Michel Ancel and Wild Sheep's CEO and art director Celine Tellier visited Guerrilla Games. This is interesting, because considering that WiLD went through some serious development hell difficulties, it is not farfetched to think that one of the solutions proposed by Sony to one of the several the problems the game was facing at the time was to drop the in-house engine that Wild Sheep was using up to that point and move the game over to DECIMA - the Guerrilla Games engine that has powered PS4 titles such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn but also Until Dawn and Death Stranding. Such a change could come in handy, especially when we take into account that, just like Horizon and Death Stranding, WiLD is an open-world title that takes place in natural environments.
On September 18th 2020, Michel Ancel announced his departure from the games industry and regarding Beyond: Good & Evil 2 and WiLD he stated that "since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon". Hopefully we get to see something next year.
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