Must-read business news, delivered every morning.
Good morning.
Earlier this week at Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, I was accosted by Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga, who lectured me on why Fortune needed to pay more attention to the gaming industry. This morning, I’m happy to oblige: Jonathan Vanian’s deeply-reported piece on the coming battle over cloud-based gaming, featured in the August edition of the magazine, is available online this morning.
Here’s the money line, which justifies Pincus’ case: “Today’s video game industry is a behemoth expected to generate $152 billion worldwide this year, according to market researcher Newzoo. That’s 57% more than the $97 billion generated by the global theatrical and home-movie market last year, and eight times the $19.1 billion generated by the global recorded music market.” We are not just talking games here.
Like the movie, TV and music industries, the gaming industry is now wrestling with the reality that consumers want great entertainment experiences on their smartphones. And with 5G streaming around the corner, the race is on to see who gets this piece right. Microsoft, Google and Amazon—the cloud giants—are all heavyweights in the fight, but a host of others will be battling as well: Activision, Apple, EA, Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft.
You can read the story here. News below.
Alan Murray
alan.murray@fortune.com
@alansmurray
