The games giant behind the US$10 billion Call of Duty franchise has the Middle East in its sights.
Activision Blizzard is looking to the region for possible acquisitions, the company’s chief executive and president Bobby Kotick said.
“We’re trying to move away from selling western games in non-western markets,” said Mr Kotick.
“If there’s a local company that’s well managed, has clear profitability, intellectual property or a specialised technology and is willing to move, we’ll buy it.”
Activision Blizzard is the world’s second-largest games publisher by revenue, having earned $4.3bn last year. The company’s Destiny game, published in September, earned $500 million from pre-orders and first-day sales.
“We make investments in companies that we think have enormous promise in areas where we don’t have special skills,” Mr Kotick said.
“That would include local and cultural context. If there’s a company here that has the ability to create and develop successful games for the market, we would certainly be interested in it,” he said. “We’re sitting on $5bn of cash. We don’t have any difficulty in accessing capital.”
The company has drawn lessons from its experiences in China that it hopes to apply to this region.
“Making western content for the Chinese market was not really going to be successful,” Mr Kotick said. So Activision used “local talent for voiceovers, local composers for music, and local coders for programming”.
Video game audiences “have a wide receptivity” and are “intellectually curious”, Mr Kotick said. “Gaming has the chance to become a dominant form of entertainment.”
The Middle East’s games industry is expected to grow from about $1.6bn this year, to $4.4bn in 2022, according to a report from the management consultancy firm Strategy& and Abu Dhabi’s twofour54.
Overall spending on media and entertainment in the UAE is predicted to increase at a rate of 14 per cent per year over the same period. About 31 per cent of the UAE’s population played video games as of 2012, the report said.
The region’s young population makes it attractive to games developers. People under the age of 34 account for 68 per cent of the population of the Arab world, according to the Strategy& report.
“There’s huge spending [on video games in the Middle East], and a very big mobile market with massive internet and smartphone penetration,” Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh, the chief executive of GameGuise, which localises western games for the Arab market, said this year.
“This market is big and it’s an exciting market because other markets have plateaued in size,” he said.
To foster a successful Arab games industry, the region needs role models, Mr Kotick said.
“In markets like this you need a local success ... if you want people to have hope and inspiration,” he said.
“Those kinds of successes are crucial to attract the technical talent to the market, instead of sending the best and brightest people from these markets to the US and western countries.”
abouyamourn@thenational.ae
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Hydrogen: Market potential
Hydrogen has an estimated $11 trillion market potential, according to Bank of America Securities and is expected to generate $2.5tn in direct revenues and $11tn of indirect infrastructure by 2050 as its production increases six-fold.
"We believe we are reaching the point of harnessing the element that comprises 90 per cent of the universe, effectively and economically,” the bank said in a recent report.
Falling costs of renewable energy and electrolysers used in green hydrogen production is one of the main catalysts for the increasingly bullish sentiment over the element.
The cost of electrolysers used in green hydrogen production has halved over the last five years and will fall to 60 to 90 per cent by the end of the decade, acceding to Haim Israel, equity strategist at Merrill Lynch. A global focus on decarbonisation and sustainability is also a big driver in its development.
Various Artists
Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World (Habibi Funk)
Who has lived at The Bishops Avenue?
- George Sainsbury of the supermarket dynasty, sugar magnate William Park Lyle and actress Dame Gracie Fields were residents in the 1930s when the street was only known as ‘Millionaires’ Row’.
- Then came the international super rich, including the last king of Greece, Constantine II, the Sultan of Brunei and Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who was at one point ranked the third richest person in the world.
- Turkish tycoon Halis Torprak sold his mansion for £50m in 2008 after spending just two days there. The House of Saud sold 10 properties on the road in 2013 for almost £80m.
- Other residents have included Iraqi businessman Nemir Kirdar, singer Ariana Grande, holiday camp impresario Sir Billy Butlin, businessman Asil Nadir, Paul McCartney’s former wife Heather Mills.
Hunting park to luxury living
- Land was originally the Bishop of London's hunting park, hence the name
- The road was laid out in the mid 19th Century, meandering through woodland and farmland
- Its earliest houses at the turn of the 20th Century were substantial detached properties with extensive grounds
RESULTS
6.30pm: Longines Conquest Classic Dh150,000 Maiden 1,200m.
Winner: Halima Hatun, Antonio Fresu (jockey), Ismail Mohammed (trainer).
7.05pm: Longines Gents La Grande Classique Dh155,000 Handicap 1,200m.
Winner: Moosir, Dane O’Neill, Doug Watson.
7.40pm: Longines Equestrian Collection Dh150,000 Maiden 1,600m.
Winner: Mazeed, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
8.15pm: Longines Gents Master Collection Dh175,000 Handicap.
Winner: Thegreatcollection, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson.
8.50pm: Longines Ladies Master Collection Dh225,000 Conditions 1,600m.
Winner: Cosmo Charlie, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson.
9.25pm: Longines Ladies La Grande Classique Dh155,000 Handicap 1,600m.
Winner: Secret Trade, Tadhg O’Shea, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
10pm: Longines Moon Phase Master Collection Dh170,000 Handicap 2,000m.
Winner:
RESULT
Kolkata Knight Riders 169-7 (20 ovs)
Rajasthan Royals 144-4 (20 ovs)
Kolkata win by 25 runs
Next match
Sunrisers Hyderabad v Kolkata Knight Riders, Friday, 5.30pm
Start-up hopes to end Japan's love affair with cash
Across most of Asia, people pay for taxi rides, restaurant meals and merchandise with smartphone-readable barcodes — except in Japan, where cash still rules. Now, as the country’s biggest web companies race to dominate the payments market, one Tokyo-based startup says it has a fighting chance to win with its QR app.
Origami had a head start when it introduced a QR-code payment service in late 2015 and has since signed up fast-food chain KFC, Tokyo’s largest cab company Nihon Kotsu and convenience store operator Lawson. The company raised $66 million in September to expand nationwide and plans to more than double its staff of about 100 employees, says founder Yoshiki Yasui.
Origami is betting that stores, which until now relied on direct mail and email newsletters, will pay for the ability to reach customers on their smartphones. For example, a hair salon using Origami’s payment app would be able to send a message to past customers with a coupon for their next haircut.
Quick Response codes, the dotted squares that can be read by smartphone cameras, were invented in the 1990s by a unit of Toyota Motor to track automotive parts. But when the Japanese pioneered digital payments almost two decades ago with contactless cards for train fares, they chose the so-called near-field communications technology. The high cost of rolling out NFC payments, convenient ATMs and a culture where lost wallets are often returned have all been cited as reasons why cash remains king in the archipelago. In China, however, QR codes dominate.
Cashless payments, which includes credit cards, accounted for just 20 per cent of total consumer spending in Japan during 2016, compared with 60 per cent in China and 89 per cent in South Korea, according to a report by the Bank of Japan.
England XI for second Test
Rory Burns, Keaton Jennings, Ben Stokes, Joe Root (c), Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Ben Foakes (wk), Sam Curran, Adil Rashid, Jack Leach, James Anderson
MATCH INFO
Champions League quarter-final, first leg
Manchester United v Barcelona, Wednesday, 11pm (UAE)
Match on BeIN Sports
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