In The News
Vivendi has sold the last of “its final shares in Ubisoft, completing the deal that was announced last year when the publisher avoided being taken over by the conglomerate,” PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown reports. “The threat of a corporate takeover seemed very likely, with [Ubisoft CEO Yves] Guillemot even pleading with the Canadian government to stop it. Instead, they managed to come to an arrangement, with Vivendi selling 30,489,300 shares for $81 each.”
A partnership report between Newzoo and Activision Blizzard titled “Betting on Billions: Unlocking the Power of Mobile Gamers” found “Gaming is the 3rd most popular app category across the board, but in the 18-20 group, it moves to 2nd,” MMORPG.com’s Suzie Ford reports. “Gamers have larger purchase influence than non-gamers – up to 23% are “more likely” to influence people they know to make purchases.”
Supercell’s Clash Royale pulled in “an estimated $2.5 billion globally on the App Store and Google Play … since its worldwide launch on March 2, 2016,” Sensor Tower writes. “That’s an average of nearly $2.3 million spent by players each day since the game went live.”
What’s Xbox cooking up? Windows Central’s Jez Corden reports “Microsoft has been experimenting with a disc-less Xbox One S console codenamed Xbox Maverick, with a launch window thought to be around Q1 2019,” according to sources.
Developers discovered a way to “keep their titles on the front page of Steam — and an indie publisher is calling for Valve to put a stop to it,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor reports.
Investment:
Rogue Games raised “$1.25 million in seed funding to publish mobile games and to help them reach larger audiences,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports.
Novos has rasied “a $750K USD funding round led by Reimagine Ventures. Overwolf and Intel contributed to the round, as part of the two company’s joint $7M fund for competitive gaming apps,” TEO’s Graham Ashton writes.
N3twork showed off its “platform for scaling third-party mobile games today in an effort to expand beyond its business of creating its own hit mobile titles,” Takahashi writes.
IN: Sebastian Cardoso, Chance Rowe and James Kahn joined Ganymede Games.
Interviews: SIE Bend Studio’s John Garvin (VentureBeat), Keita Takahashi (VentureBeat), Insomniac Games’ Ted Price (VentureBeat).
Extra Esports News:
Congratulations to Chiquita Evans on being the first woman drafted to the NBA 2K League for Warriors Gaming!
McDonald’s and M&M’s have ended their support for King Pro League, TEO’s Hongyu Chen reports. “The total prize pool for Spring Season is $1.19M, one third less than last year’s, and the tournament schedule also decreased from 140 matches to 105.”
Gen.G Esports promoted “Arnold Hur, previously Gen.G Esports’ chief growth officer and managing director … to chief operating officer,” TEO’s Andrew Hayward writes.
OUT: Brice “Faccento” Faccento announced his retirement from competitive Call of Duty.
Interviews: Infinite Esports’ Chris Chaney (TEO).
Happy birthday Clement “Puppey” Ivanov and Aliwi “w33” Omar!