Panel: Consolidation in Gaming: The Impacts & Implications of Mergers & Acquisitions in the Industry

so we're here talking about consolidation in gaming and the impacts of M A but we can we can sail around a little bit it's all about investment so let's kind of kick things off with a quick introduction of kind of who you are and what you do in the in the space and also tell me one word right now are you kind of bullish or bearish on games investment so Peter I'm going to start with you at the far end there so tell us who you are what you do yes um Peter vonapell I'm co-founder of triple Dragon we're at a london-based games financing firm so we're mostly doing load-based lending and in some cases we'll do project finance and Equity Finance as well um I would say I would be kind of cautiously optimistic cautiously

that's not bullish or bearish well I would say the bell's ringing are you buying or celebrating leaning bullish I mean yes we're investing we are seeing opportunities out there um but um yeah treading carefully I would say okay so cautiously bullish that's a good start Maria how tell us who you are is that is on yeah I think it's on okay so my name is Maria and I'm one of the founders and managing partners of the games fund and the games fund is an early stage VC fund we manage 50 million dollars and we invest in video game industry so in startups related to video game industry and answering the question I'm absolutely bullish on the investment yeah that's what we want to hear yeah so you don't want to have a panel of investors who are all bearish yeah you know despite some technical challenges like idfa and some macroeconomic turbulence I still believe that investments in video games is a very attractive business and

um kind of historically investors achieved the highest returns when they invested during crisis here so if you're cautious about economic terms like valuations burn rate and if you're able to locate the best companies on the market before other competitors and if you have a strong investment thesis I think it's like time for opportunity that probably happens once in a lifetime okay cool hey guys my name is Anuj I've been in the gaming industry for the last 13 years as an operator investor my last role was I was head of corporate development and Investments for craft and pubg for India and Meena and currently I'm I'm a CEO of jet synthesis one of the portfolio companies of ours is a invest and operator that means we acquire gaming Studios under that so in one word this is the best time to buy Studios it's the best hundred five years the last kids okay so that's pretty bullish Paul I know you're very unenthusiastic gentleman so you're

probably going to be uh [Laughter] um that's not true I am Paul dewalibi I'm the CEO of Holodeck Ventures um people most commonly know me as the prophet especially in this region um I host a show on CNBC Arabia called Game Changers which everyone should check out covering the business of gaming um I've been investing in Venture for 25 plus years or on one side of the Venture table or another either building companies or investing in companies I'm a hardcore gamer myself I'm massively bullish I don't know if there's any way to be more than a hundred percent bullish answer to your question I think actually most people including people in this room are massively underestimating how big the industry is going to be people talk about billions I think you're massively underestimating we're talking in my mind we're talking trillions tens of trillions and I've built the thesis based on that and the portfolio based on that so we can say broadly bullish on that basis that's

good that's good so but okay so that's great we're all optimistic that's what we're here with investors so but obviously um M A has been going crazy the last few years every year got bigger and bigger these Mega deals happened up until about a half of last year and then it's sort of stopped like a lot of other things stopped not just in this space um there was kind of a real dip in both a little bit of the volume and certainly the the value of deals um from Q3 onwards and q1 as well um there's been a little bit of a ferry recently the the the the scopely acquisition is going through there's the the Rovio deal and a few others kind of in the wind so where are we in terms of actual M A do we do we see there's going to be a lot more are we going to get back to those Mega deals of course we haven't got the Microsoft Activision deal actually done yet where there'll actually ever happened we don't know but is there going to be more of that do we see more more Big M A activity do you want to go first pull I mean I definitely think there's going to be continued consolidation the space still is quite fragmented especially if you're looking at the game development

side there's still a lot of small Studios so I think no question you're going to see more consolidation I look at the scopely deal though as more of an anomaly and not so much a trend yeah um you know For Better or For Worse that they way overpaid um and and I think that skews the numbers a little bit um and the enthusiasm there what about Rovio if they got that right do you think that I think you're advising saying uh I think all of these valuations are a little bit tricky and but I think part of the challenge is there's not really a path an exit path for gaming companies today that's really clear right and part of the reason is just the markets are not that great right like the the paths for IPOs like if you look at gaming companies that are public and especially like Esports companies that are public most of them are complete garbage um and so like there aren't great examples that other people can follow to sort of get to an exit and I think

consolidation is natural in those cases you're going to have Acquisitions at pretty reasonable valuations and so I think it's an opportunity for buyers obviously yeah yeah but no question that that consolidation trend is going to continue for the foreseeable future because we still don't have other than like the EAS the Activision blizzards like you still have only a small handful of really large scale companies yeah yeah yeah and as you said it's a buyer's market so I'm assuming you you agree there'll be more buying absolutely I think the multiples right now are at its lowest than they can be like even some of the Esports companies that you mentioned are trading at 0.8 X of the of the revenue yeah but the equity is worth zero yeah right and I understand but what that means is that there's opportunity for strategic consolidation that can happen at this point uh I think uh from a larger perspective the public market dictates and the private Market follows uh the private markets have now started to follow more of the guys who

are cash Rich are going to wait it out for a year two years for the markets to improve and they will not sell so that might create artificial scarcity in the market in terms of people willing to hold on for two three quarters so overall I see the activity continuing there's no other way for gaming industry to sort of survive the idfa onslaught in in a lot of other than to diversify the gaming portfolio in a massive manner I think so that's that's primary reason uh for at least mobile companies gaming companies to keep the consolidations pre-continuing yeah okay first thing I think it's worth mentioning is that what we see in reports about these big Deals they were initiated long before so it doesn't really reflect the current state of the market but speaking about the market history right so the 2020 2021 they were

like crazy years very unusual very like unprecedented and it all led to some acquisition frenzy so strategic companies fueled by some like stock market rally and they ramped up their acquisition processes to extremes so it's really hard to slow down because your investors always expect you to grow so the Acquisitions number they kind of went up but the quality went down right and that was a great party right but there is no surprise that right now we all have hangover but I still believe that there will be M A deals and they will be hunt for strong IPS so this all will continue but we definitely see fewer crazy deals right now yeah did you agree with that PC you got anything else to add on that topic or yeah that is consistent with what we are seeing so if you look at a lot of the m

a activity that was driven by the the larger kind of or at the time a relatively large publicly listed companies um very smaller some of them I don't know like 75 kind of shrunk from there but um they were using their shares to kind of pay for Acquisitions um so um they had kind of Highly inflated currency also the ability to tap public markets for more cash and tap into the debt markets for for even more cash and especially the debt markets and public markets are now effectively kind of shut down so we're still seeing and that this is consistent with uh what Maria was saying we're still seeing consolidation at the kind of at the lower kind of range um where it's not so much driven by by ebitda multiple X and get valued on the public market at a higher multiple um it's much more driven by it needs to make kind of sense where you can either squeeze more synergies uh or strategic

benefits out of a transaction so it's it's definitely changed the um uh change the Dynamics quite a bit was there a sensor tool um obviously you know games industry invests in the games industry right you know people except and gaming funds I think we're all still there we're all very was there a sense that the wider world of investors I don't say dumb investors the people that don't know that market so we had games as a trend for like a for a year or two and and now it's it was web three and now it's AI is that is there a sense that that kind of wider Trend eye of moored or kind of moved on some now from games is that fair to say or or not at all I mean this is literally the definition of venture capital like like girls going to the bathroom together um like if you look at the last 25 years of venture it's always something new it's clean tech then it's Ed Tech then it was Social Mobile Local then it was you know like it was there's literally I could name you pretty much every two years

what the thing they were chasing was and and I think there's this natural process that happens where the dumb money gets filtered out eventually um I would argue there's still a lot of dumb money in gaming lots of it um and look if you're if you're smart that's not a bad thing that I have no like I welcome all the money um but um from a from a macro perspective as an industry the problem becomes allocate like Capital allocated to ideas and teams that maybe aren't deserving of it and they're therefore you get subpar allocation of talent yeah and then so from a macro perspective the industry is maybe less efficient than it otherwise would be yeah okay yeah I think uh the thesis of having gaming specific funds was originated from the fact that the other Venture work doesn't understand this space and you know you need to have a thesis for this space to be uh you

know you need to go deep in the space you have to have sub-genres understanding of that and and and develop very strong conviction to invest in this industry and you need to have a Heart Of Steel to survive the ups and downs so I think the normal Venture world is sort of still doesn't get it yeah in that sense and that's why you know people like them have been able to create a strong Market presence yeah would you agree with that well you would agree with that because you are yeah I agree that this is true that there are some like hype change in investors let's call them this way uh that like hot deals and um like the strategy for them is to enter the highway as early as possible and then to exit before a new hybrid comes but another problem is and this is also true that it distracts capital and attention from other sub niches from the market uh and I still believe that there are substantially like profitable

businesses um like mobile games still are yeah and I wouldn't level like web3 Ai and Mobile on the same level uh because I think like fundamentally web3 have some challenges in their design and I'm not a strong believer in web 3 in the short run okay we're going to come on this for a minute I like this can we just blame crypto people sorry if there's crypto people here it's your fault it's your fault all of this blew up but I think we can talk about this layer yeah we'll move on a second why can't we blame them now well you can you can you can blame them um yeah I mean so so talking about that you've kind of we've kind of moved into some of the we mentioned the segments we mentioned though we mentioned I wanted to just kind of I'm jumping around a little bit here I want to I want to sort of talk about some of the the trends in our view in our eyes that we think are hot or summer segments to the market that are hotter than others so so mobile it's a good place to start it's where we've been focused a lot of our time it's been the growth engine of the whole

industry for for some years IDF phase being a problem right um thanks Apple well it's not all crypto they want the crypto guys um not yet um but um yeah where are we with mobile gaming what's what do you want Peter I mean you have you investments in that space what do you think are we is it still we're waiting to see how people get around idfa as idfa just made everything so hard now and we asked I mean we're seeing some developers and um uh some UA specialist who I finally workarounds around idfa um not fingerprinting you'll be on the naughty list if you do that no no no no no um and and I mean you you mentioned AI uh I mean for example we're seeing more applications of more kind of in the kind of uh machine learning automation of UA processes yeah where you can use technology to do things that would otherwise just taken up too much resources and

if you're smart there you can find ways to kind of get to a level of efficiency that is not still kind of at the same level as in the pre-id of a era but it's getting closer it's getting there so AI can save us from idfa that's great that's good yeah the savior of everything there's no downsized AI That's great and we're seeing a few of those kind of operators using that it's not okay it's a kind of wide scale yet but um I think that that's an area to watch out I mean Maria I know you said you were quite you still saw mobile mobile still mobile right still people still making so you're still mobile still a hot space for you uh yeah that's true that we're still considering investments in the mobile space uh though uh definitely idfm makes things much more challenging but I believe that even for mobile Studios um like like teams they can use some gorilla techniques for marketing uh and rely Less on UA and to use some alternative ways to attract users yeah

and can build like profitable businesses bad news the UA companies possibly uh bad news for Facebook obviously didn't realize this but I'll come to you Paul I know you guys have to say Andrew what do you think yeah I think starting a mobile gaming studio now if you're in the developed world so to say yeah getting funding is gonna is super tough uh if you if you don't have a Strong pedigree uh but if you're in the Emerging Markets like India I mean uh I think there is still a massive opportunity to create a local ecosystem with the local content I think that is still a lot of content consumption is happening none of most of it is non-local so I think there is still a massive Trend that you know you can potentially develop for the local audience okay so there's still an opportunity there cool Paul what you think about mobile I mean that that question needs to be taken into context a little bit right yeah who the investor is what their time Horizon is what kind

of money they're deploying like I don't know if there's a clear answer I can tell you my opinion I think short term there's opportunity in Mobile yeah no question these can be very profitable games that's I think everyone knows this it's the majority of the revenue from the gaming market today but I think unless you have a billion dollar fund like if I had a billion dollar fund and I could invest in 500 mobile games or mobile game studios that to me is the only way I would feel really comfortable about that strategy because it's a crowded space it's a noisy space there at least I have some possibility of investing in the next Angry Bird or the next you know whatever that next great IP that comes out is um as the kind of investor that I am where I'm investing my own money um my core belief is I think Mobile's not the future of gaming it's just not like I I don't think mobile games are that interesting I think they're very limited experiences I don't think that they're that immersive they're most of

them and apologies to the mobile game developers mobile game developers maybe industry people we've got here most of them that's all right that's good not you guys though but most of them are glorified slot machines right like tap until your finger gets tired and we need to we need to give Paul some some recommendations to GameStop the mobile Pub g i get it it's okay but the the reality is the large majority if you look on the App Store are are not that are not great experiences and I think the future of gaming is moving towards holodex like obviously I called my company that I believe in this Holodeck Future Okay um and so I wouldn't bet as a as an investor who has a 10-year or 20-year time Horizon I wouldn't be betting money today on mobile but okay while we've got you then so because we've not got time to go through isn't too much deal but looking at web 3 the metaverse VR AI ugc games tool ad Tech where what sort of areas would you be betting if not mobile where where are the hot spots for you

know they're all writing this down who here is a Star Trek fan who here understands the Holodeck reference okay there's a few of you old enough in here to get the reference but the short of it is uh in Star Trek there's a room on the Starship called a Holodeck and you could go into this room and you could ask for anything you want you could say I want to go skiing in the Alps I want to be Sherlock Holmes in a detective novel and the Holodeck would turn into this reality and you you're a part of the story you're a part of the adventure you're a part of the experience I think human beings over the next 15 20 years we're going to create Holodeck so my thesis is sort of backing out of that okay towards that so it leads towards that you're not you're not you're not hating apples that arrival on the VR Arc no I think this is a great development okay cool fair enough what about yourself are you you know you've been in various parts of the industry what bits excite you most at the moment I think this year is probably just a wait and watch to exceed what's what's what's

going to evolve because I think a lot of technological shifts uh take some time I think with the latest Apple Vision Pro announced I'm personally as a developer old entrepreneur very excited about the new platform because it's uh it's it's it's it's it's revolutionary in multiple ways of of the most expensive Hardware yeah so that's why uh the Early Access guys paid 3 500 for the developers to develop two years later so so that's so that personally for me is very exciting in Mobile I still feel Emerging Markets is a big Trend to keep an eye on I think local content consumption I know we are getting more and more Global in content consumption but there is still a massive Market of how popular local games can be from culturally uh responsible perspective so that that for me is the biggest thing not necessarily much platform but just the original Regional Center um

uh yeah I think like the word of the year is AI definitely yeah it's a very hot topic and we pay close attention to it but I still have many concerns about AI of course like last year most of like let's say 50 of our pitch decks were about well three and this year they're about AI right but at the same time most of these startups they kind of building like front end for the existing technology so it means that they rely a lot on the third party uh technology owners and my question is how defendable is that technology that the business is so that's why we're a little bit cautious about AI right now yeah um so what else uh we were quite bullish about ugc and we saw big potential there but again with these big developments uh when like major players like fortnite Roblox yeah they just introduce their own creative economy with amazing tools and I think it's super challenging right now

to enter this market for newcomers and without some core gaming experience it's impossible to build UDC platform right now okay and another Point uh we expanded our thesis to PC and console games because I think uh this specific platform they use to generate the strongest eyepiece on the market and right now that's probably one of the most attractive things for uh buyers yeah like strong IP strong IP okay very future looking at couldn't agree more PC does not get enough love you CIP there we go um what do you think um what are you excited about well we um we definitely have seen a shifted activity from from Mobile to PC um and and also seeing more developers kind of moving more into PC console whereas previously they were kind of hopping on the kind of on the mobile network and then and and this is also something that

unfortunately we're still seeing in the market um there's a quite large number of developers who are kind of rather than really thinking about what they want to do and where they see kind of the future in gaming they're kind of hopping onto Trends yeah and um we've seen it with developers who were initially on PC then got frustrated that steam was so crowded and they went somewhere else and then they tried mobile that didn't kind of came too late to the party then you know what we'll give switch a try we'll bring out a game or switch it's not a Nintendo IP and it's already way too crowded I mean it didn't work out well either and then you see those very same Studios or web3 yeah and um I I I mean they see the same the same Deck with a different like from page on it and it's you know I've seen it so so I I think this is where where developers should be looking a little bit more on on what they want to create

and and again it comes back to creating IP yeah that people want to kind of play and experience and and this is where we're kind of seeing the trend um if you're able to create kind of really good IPS you can do much more than with that than just making a game um and that also opens up a lot of other kind of monetization streams and I think just getting back to um kind of the the point about the Holodeck reference I I think we will cut off go into that direction question is kind of when and personally I think we by the time it happens it will be without the actual Hollow deck because somehow there will be a device that can kind of communicate pardon me where you can basically plug it to nerves or kind of uh into the brain yeah elon's already way ahead of that he's he's down the line um okay um let's switch around a little

bit and look at look we talked about it being a buyer's market um and it's obviously you know the deals have slowed a little bit the the evaluation is a bit more sensible so so what what are we looking at from an investor perspective how much have the terms change is it is it and what has changed is it now taking you seeing you're looking a lot less doing a lot less deals you're just looking at much uh sort of tighter multiples or additional terms I mean you're not giving your entire strategy but like what what sort of things have changed in the last year in terms of you know what you're offering what you're prepared to offer go on yeah if you look like you want to go for it yeah I think uh if I think there's a lot of deal activity happening yeah that is going to be probably announced in one or two quarters because it takes a lead time for for that stuff I think uh very attractive valuation multiples there's a lot of companies in 2021 20 for example Crofton raised 3.5 billion dollars in public markets they

have that war chest uh that they're willing to deploy and this is the right time to pick off targets and yeah and and expand on that so I think next three to six months you will see a lot of news of Acquisitions coming up that's happening I think uh it it will continue I think except for the the large guys consolidation that will one of deals like The Savvy scopely deal we will see a lot of you know 200 300 million dollar deals being announced in the next two quarters okay cool well I think it's difficult for me to comment on multiples because they were around many factors like the adaptability margin the growth of the company it's not that relevant for early stage companies I would say like um usually when we invest we expect that uh each of our investment can return the whole fund but what has changed for us that's a nice model yeah I should get into this this is great but what has changed for us is that I can see that it

takes longer to close the deals yeah um of course you cannot expect any light due diligence anymore and it gets longer to find the right partner and to find the first yes I mean obviously I know that every deal is different and everything but what sort of time frames are we talking like going from months before like to six months or what is it like doubling or trebling or what I think it depends if it's a VC deal for a visit deal the average would be around six months right now and yeah what also changed for us is that we became more cautious about burn rate and about Runway so when we invest we expect that the company will have at least 18 months of cash okay yeah cool just just adding to that I think a lot less VCS are now leading deals they're ready to sort of back if someone is leading they're not a lot of lead investors now in the gaming space that's at least my observation last two quarters okay cool yeah VCS who don't want to lead deals these are bad VCS that's just the I mean that they're in the wrong business if they're only

followers and they want to take no risk like that you're you're doing you should change jobs in my opinion I think again the answer to your question depends on what kind of money you are the reality is for most VC funds um while they may get gunshot trigger shy a little bit you know the market takes a bit of a downturn most of them have investment periods tied to their funds they have to deploy all the capital within four years whether the deals are good whether the valuations are good sort of doesn't really matter if they don't deploy the capital they probably don't raise another fund there's quite a lot of money sat on the bench right now so the sitting on the bench for institutional VCS always has a time limit yeah exactly eventually they have to get off the bench and they have to deploy Capital um if you're patient money if you're investing your own Capital like me um my thesis or philosophy hasn't really changed right like I'm still not going to overpay for deals I still don't think you're worth this just because that guy's willing to give you money at that valuation so like the fundamentals for

me haven't changed I think I understand you mentioned it or alluded to it maybe the most important thing if you're on the other side of the table and you're raising Capital right now the biggest impact on your valuation is not Revenue it's not it's not the team it's not any of those things it's fundamentally how long is your Runway how much cash do you have right now and how long will it last you because if you can wait out the next two years you don't need money this is this is the best time to be raising and this is when you're going to be able to command the greatest valuation when you're desperate trust me I know like this is not rocket science I know and and this is when you will get the worst valuation that's just the reality of it yeah um what was you here okay we're here in the market we're here in Dubai um so let's look a bit about that there's obviously been a lot of investment um a lot of money kind of in the region you know obviously savvy's kind of investment pool wallets well whatever you call it

is is sizeable and and has drawn a lot of attention internationally but it's you know money's being invested and deployed all over the space we've got especially in web 3 a lot of Money's been spent here in Dubai can you I mean I know that all of you are from the region but Paul you are can you can you have say anything if there's any particular variations or any particular character to the scope of investment that's happening here um look you you still don't have a huge number of Highly specialized VCS in the region investing in gaming but there's not you know there's not 25 funds 30 funds that you can go to to raise money for a gaming company locally yet um a lot of the outflow of capital still today is coming from Saudi so a lot of the companies are chasing that money yeah I think everyone a little bit overestimates how easy it is to go like you're gonna fly to Riyadh and come back with just a big bag of money yeah um like that that's just not the reality I think they're a bit smarter than that

I think that's how you've got the money in the first place but but um I think what you're starting to see is smart VCS in the west um start to pay attention to what's going on in the region so more and more they're you know I get phone calls you know every month from a VC in the west going hey what are you seeing are there interesting deals what companies are you talking to right like they want to have a finger on the pulse of what's going on here I think that's a positive sign places like Dubai specifically never have been the place where the government writes big checks no it's just not it's not Dubai so I don't think that's ever going to happen but I think we will start to see big funds in the west have dedicated Partners here that leads to maybe dedicated you know satellite funds here and over the next 10 years I think you're going to see a lot of capital very much dedicated to the region that's not Saudi Arabia yeah maybe I'll just make a quick Point here I think uh the Mina ecosystem is still very mature and

compares to you know the deal flow as well right I looked at this region when I invested our intermatum for Crofton and there's only few pockets of places in the Middle East region where you can find good Studios that make or publishing models that make some revenue for sizable for a strategic like crafting to invest so I think there's large amounts of capital 100 million dollar Plus available and there is probably accelerators available yeah there is a broken infrastructure of ecosystem which is the series a b c d uh which you require to build an ecosystem right yeah and that is missing from this region and it's not just alone to this region it's missing in India as well but there are companies are growing despite that here the good thing is at least there is a high level policy in some countries to promote gaming yeah yeah

that's a big win it's just that the capital is going outside the region in companies get they're getting acquired outside the region I think once that Capital starts to come trickle down within the region that's when the ecosystem development will happen you you guys put some into into Tama time I believe is that right Grafton invested in tomato yeah okay um you're obviously not from the reach well maybe I'm assuming but yeah yeah I want to say that uh I understand that it's still very early and it requires lots of time lots of capital uh to build the whole ecosystem from the scratch but I think that the region has done tremendous work to do so and I see that companies they open offices there like people move here one of our portfolio companies they move from the UK to Abu Dhabi like because of the government incentives like low tax so basically zero tax yeah would be the right word for it and I think like right now many companies that can raise funds from like International

investors and still move here to enjoy some benefits that this region can provide no it's when we're partnering with a number of the the groups here the dmcc there's a lot of support and incentives to come to these areas um I've got I've got to put more questions I've only got like four or five more minutes really here so I'm going to ask if anybody's got a question out there for what is an incredible panel there is a chap at the back I'm is anybody else I'm going to do this myself am I have I got one of my glorious assistants Dave yeah well I'll pass you on [Laughter] sorry Dave because I it's difficult to come up and down that's all there you go are you coming up you're coming up that was very nice of you there you go thanks thank you so much cheers thank you um so um considering the significant growth in the market for VR what do you think investing in VR companies and what would be the right

um Showcase from a VR company to get this kind of investment you've been talking about different examples and plus Apple Vision right now so do you think that it's a right time to invest in VR um well I mean a triple Dragon we've gone from like VR from a no-fly zone to well yes we're deploying capital in VR um so it has definitely kind of improved um and a kind of the install base has obviously increased but it's it's not kind of at the same level as as PC console obviously so it's um we're more looking at kind of VR projects as um what do we kind of see in kind of realistic sales proceeds versus cost of production and and also how much support can you get from platforms because that will make a massive difference

especially if you're dealing say with meta quest for example um so I think it's uh kind of trying to develop that relationship with the platforms is is probably even more important now on VR so you will find investors who will kind of put money into VR um probably not not kind of all of the kind of VCS or investors but there'll definitely be a few um I can say about the games funds so we don't invest in VR and I AR from this current fund because we have some restrictions in terms of time frame for the fund so we need to exit within like the next six five years and we still see that the audience is quite small and I also see like the current devices kind of the barrier for the mass adoption I mostly believe in the cheap in the brain that can transform the image directly to your brain and that can bring to mass adoption of VR technology

so we were discussing our partners to expand our strategy for the second fund but investing right now I think it's kind of early for VC funds cool um I'll just say that doesn't he just need a mic click the man I oh yeah you definitely want to get me on the record um look the the core of what I believe besides the Holodeck is in the short term I always ask one question is this fun it seems very simple but I think so few people actually stop and ask this question because no one would have invested in crypto games had anyone just sort of stopped and asked are you are you a big web pretty fast I don't know it's coming across but but like if it's fun I think you have something investable right I think you have the start of something that yes the install base of people with uh you know VR

headsets is not as big as people who have PlayStations or PCS but I think this is going to change pretty pretty rapidly The Quest 2 proved that a headset could sell on mass like in large numbers um the next iteration the quest 3 is going to sell even bigger I think it's going to be cheaper so I I think we're getting there we're past the point I think of this is just super early adopters and I I would argue it's probably the right time to be thinking about what content's being built for those headsets um but I haven't seen I personally haven't seen anything that's blown my socks off yet that goes yes this is the the game that's going to get everyone to run out and buy a VR headset if I saw that I think that that would be interesting for me okay and I think we saw that game in AR Pokemon go yeah but still the adoption I mean it's not really an AR games it's a location-based game but but we still did not see the massive adoption of investment happening in that region so I'll just be a little cautious I think

at strategic level you would want to see a consumer hit like you said uh really taking off before you see more people sort of putting capital in this street in this cool I think we've got time for one more question there is one there there's a Peter can you pass to David oh there you go sorry keep hold of the mind don't hand the mic back it's disaster there's a Chapman are you race asking yeah that's you it's gonna pass you the mic the white shirt you're very hesitant with your hand raising I don't know what you're going for here thank you very much uh just a quick question you mentioned earlier that you believe that in the long run mobile games might not be like the dominant marketing gaming if it's not mobiles and what do you think will be like a dominant Market this will be like PC console games and just add to this question so we have seen some success stories recently is mobile platforms like Nintendo switch team deck do you see a lot of market for that build a like replace mobile to that extent successful or what what is your opinion on this I think um me wrong I don't like the the chip

that's in your iPhone is pretty similar to the chip that's in your your laptop in your PC even right like fundamentally from a hardware perspective the differences are getting smaller and smaller and smaller so I'd say it's you with mobile as a hardware platform I think the way I think about mobile is what is the experience that you can deliver to the user and when you have a six inch screen and no buttons and no interface other than touch the the limitations the Box you sort of put yourself in in terms of what can be built what possible experiences you can deliver is very small by definition right you make the Box small the kind of experience you're going to be able to deliver is small and so I I don't get hung up on Hardware or platform what I'm thinking about is what is the platform that's going to allow experiences that I haven't even thought of right that that's going to blow people's minds it's

going to be so much fun uh you did you ever play WoW in its beginning I don't know how old you are but like that feeling where you're ready to give up your entire life your marriage your with a girlfriend your to just go play this game that's the feeling I think gaming needs to get back to and this is the kind of future experiences that I'm thinking about not so much platform but the platform if it restricts that experience that's when I take issue with it okay it's a good answer I'm gonna have to wrap it there I'm afraid because we've got other contents come we could probably speak for another hour these guys are brilliant thank you so much for your time and for your Insight really appreciate it uh please do grab them outside for more insight but Round of Applause for this amazing power thank you very much