LIVE After-Show (#126B): World’s Largest Game Dev, Amazon Gaming Store, GameStop $1B Raise, Microsoft Army AR, xQc GFuel, Nielsen Esports Shutdown, AppLovin IPO

A week of news covering the intersection of business and gaming / esports, all in about one minute – everything you need to know from the “profit of esports” himself.

044 – April 11, 2021

In this week’s Business of Esports Minute: Amazon Singapore, Microsoft Army, and Tencent Timi.

From the keyboard to the boardroom, this is the Business of Esports Minute! Every single week, I, Paul Dawalibi, the prophet of esports, will be bringing you my hottest takes from the week, basically, everything you need to know about the business of esports all in about one minute. Let’s go.

Amazon Singapore recently announced it was officially launching a dedicated gaming store. In conjunction with the launch, the Gaming Store will offer several deals on exclusive titles and games over the coming weeks. Amazon is obviously testing a dedicated gaming storefront in a smaller market first. These dedicated storefronts make a lot of sense because they are good for both discovery and shopper education. It also gives Amazon more opportunity to sell specific sponsored product slots. I just don’t fully understand why they don’t make a dedicated gaming storefront part of Twitch instead, where the combination of content and commerce would be very powerful. They seem very reluctant to make Twitch their gaming brand and I think it’s a mistake.

Microsoft recently won a contract for almost $22 billion to supply U.S. Army combat troops with augmented reality headsets. The deal was announced by both organizations at the end of March. Ever since our podcast episode with General Muth, I have been massively excited about the potential for gaming to transform the battlefield. Using AR and gaming technologies to give troops an advantage (and potentially save their lives) sounds like a huge win for both Microsoft and the Army here. I would not be surprised to see even bigger deals being made for deeper gaming integration into every component of modern warfare.

Finally, it was reported that Tencent’s TiMi Studios generated $10 billion of revenue last year, representing almost half of Tencent’s overall gaming business. This potentially makes TiMi, the studio behind Call of Duty Mobile and Honor of Kings, “the world’s largest developer”. The scale of Tencent’s gaming business is incredible. No surprise that a lot of this revenue is driven by mobile games and they have become one of the go-to providers for those who want to outsource or license mobile game development. Seeing as how Activision Blizzard no longer makes new games, TiMi may hold the title of world’s largest developer forever.

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