Kliuless? Gaming Industry Insights #63
Hi, my name is Kenny Liu, and each week I compile a gaming industry insights newsletter that I publish broadly. Opinions are mine.
See more or subscribe at: https://tinyletter.com/kliuless
Insights
- HBR: The Loyalty Economy
- [KL: Recommend reading section titled "How to Value a Company by Analyzing Its Customers"]
- "Using customer metrics to assess a firm’s underlying value [...] is called customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV). This approach is driving a meaningful shift away from the common but dangerous mindset of 'growth at all costs' toward revenue durability and unit economics—and bringing a much higher degree of precision, accountability, and diagnostic value to the new loyalty economy"
- "The premise behind CBCV is simple. Most traditional financial-valuation methods require quarterly financial projections, most notably of revenue. Recognizing that every dollar of revenue comes from a customer who makes a purchase, CBCV exploits basic accounting principles to make revenue projections from the bottom up instead of from the top down. Although this may seem like a radical departure from traditional frameworks, that’s not the case: CBCV simply brings more focus to how individual customer behavior drives the top line"
- HBR: The New Analytics of Culture
- GamesIndustry.biz: The Year In Numbers 2019
Creative
- How Trico Was Animated
- The Outer Worlds interview: Crafting a corporate dystopia
- Expect "seven or eight" Dungeons & Dragons games in the near future
- Related: Dark Alliance is a new D&D action-RPG starring Drizzt Do’Urden and the Companions of the Hall
- 30 little touches in The Witcher 3 that show its amazing attention to detail
Cross-Platform / Multi-Platform
- Portraits of Roblox: The view from the platform
- Google buys triple-A game dev Typhoon Studio to beef up Stadia
- Facebook acquires Spanish cloud video gaming company PlayGiga
- Tencent soft-launches its Start cloud gaming service in China with handful of PC titles
PC / Console
- Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s next console, launching holiday 2020
- Opinion: Microsoft has admitted defeat in the console wars and just built a PC
- PlayStation 5 gets Godfall looter-slasher from Gearbox Publishing
- Amazon Games’ New World open world MMO arrives in May 2020
- Riot Games' publishing label expands LoL universe with two new games
- Embracer Group acquires Little Nightmares dev Tarsier Studios for $10.5m
Mobile
- App Annie: Mobile Highlights of 2019
- App Annie: A Look Back At the Top Apps & Games of the Decade
- Animoca Brands acquires Power Rangers: Legacy Wars developer nWay for $7.7mm
XR: AR / MR / VR
- Snapchat Cameos edit your face into videos
- High Fidelity lays off half of staff, pulls plug on open-source VR platform
- Pokémon Go’s Buddy Update brings a new way to play with your monsters
- The Information: To Control Its Destiny, Facebook Bets Big on [VR & AR] Hardware
- WP: This virtual reality dining experience is trippy — and might be the future of restaurants
- BBC: Getting VR to mainstream audiences: what we learnt from our partnership with local libraries
Esports & Influencers
- Esports platform Game.tv secures $25 million in funding
- Fortnite lost 28% of its viewership hours on Twitch in 2019
- Twitch sued for £2.1bn over Premier League by Russian firm
- Tencent-Backed Global Esports Federation Formed in Singapore
- Shroud's U.S. audience on Mixer is one-third of what it was on Twitch
- EA & Respawn unveil Apex Legends Global Series esports competition with $3mm in prizes
- WSJ: China’s Influencers Hawk Their Wares on Live Streams
Tech
- Accenture: Fjord Trends 2020
- First Round: State of Startups 2019
- NYT Opinion: Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy
Overtime
- Paul Graham: The Lesson to Unlearn
- Ars Technica: 2019 ultimate board game gift guide
- Kotaku: The Most Underrated Games Of The Decade
- The Best Video Games of 2019: The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Verge
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Twitter: @kliuless
LinkedIn: @kliuless