Tag: bullish

And Why We’re (Even More) Bullish on Games

Audrey

Now is the time to be serious about investing in and building great games.

NFX has been bullish on games from the very beginning. While other investors seem to have lost some interest in the sector, we remain deeply confident in it. We know that games are a strong area where a lot of value can be created in a short period of time.

Let’s get the obvious reasons out of the way.

First, we love games. That’s where I found my first major success, having co-founded Playtika which sold for $4.4 billion. I’ve since invested in more than 10 successful gaming companies like Plarium, Moon Active, Papaya Gaming, Superplay and others. I’ve always played games and enjoy playing today just as much as when I was a kid.

Next, gaming is a massive market that will only continue growing. The growth is easy to see: In 2019, the global gaming market was $152 billion. By 2021, it reached $214 billion and is on track to generate over $300 billion in 2026. Bigger than all other forms of entertainment.

Third, this sector has an unfair number of elite product minds. Games founders and their teams are faster than any other companies we see, and they understand user psychology and delight better than anyone.

But what’s less obvious are the drivers behind the ongoing growth of gaming. There are evergreen attributes unique to games that give them an incomparable ability to grow fast – and there are also exciting new trends to pay attention to. (Generative AI among them).

That’s why we wrote this essay.

It’s an update to our gaming thesis from 2019. It’s an open letter to the world’s next, best games founders. It’s time to play offense. It’s time to make legendary games that will deliver joy to many millions of users.

The global gaming market is on track to top $300B+ in the next 2-3 years. We’re even more bullish when you take the longer view, given the trends we outline in this essay.

Games as a Platform

Back in the early days of gaming, when users bought a game, they bought one experience (often out of a box). They played it through once and were done. With the acceleration of the internet we saw the rise of “games as a platform.”

No longer do game developers create a game and ship it and move on. You can now constantly run updates, analyze user activities, understand what works, offer personalized and live activities, and add new meta game layers. In other words, you can constantly improve and optimize your game.

If you know games, you know this story. But it bears repeating because this is the origin of two advances that are still making games better today than they were even before.

First, games became infinitely evolving platforms.

When you put a game out, that’s just the beginning. Game founders understand you must continue developing and keep adding content, features and live operations. If data

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U.S. ‘very bullish’ on new nuclear technology, Granholm says

Audrey

GLASGOW, Scotland — In an job interview at the U.N. Local weather Improve Convention, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm advised Yahoo News on Friday that the Biden administration is “very bullish” on constructing new nuclear reactors in the United States.

“We are incredibly bullish on these sophisticated nuclear reactors,” she claimed. “We have, in simple fact, invested a ton of dollars in the investigation and improvement of all those. We are pretty supportive of that.”

Nuclear vitality is controversial between environmental activists and gurus for the reason that whilst it does not create the greenhouse gasoline emissions that induce local climate improve, it has the opportunity to set off risky nuclear meltdowns and makes radioactive nuclear squander.

Most of the Biden administration’s effort and hard work to cut down reliance on fossil fuels, and practically all the rhetoric at the weather improve conference, also recognized as COP26, is about marketing other clean sorts of electricity, these types of as wind and photo voltaic electricity.

But Granholm mentioned that wind and photo voltaic are not but able of producing “baseload” potential, meaning power that can be reliably ramped up to meet demand from customers even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sunlight is not shining.

President Biden stands at a podium as he delivers remarks about the October jobs report at the White House.

President Biden in the State Dining Area at the White House on Friday. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

“Half of the United States’ clear energy now — when I say ‘clean’ I’m talking about net-zero carbon emissions — is by means of the nuclear fleet,” she noticed. “If you glimpse at the general ability, it is about 20 percent. Globally, 29 % of the clear power is nuclear.”

Granholm implied that there is no for a longer period a sizeable hazard of nuclear meltdowns like the infamous past incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

“These advanced nuclear reactors, and the current fleet, are safe and sound,” she mentioned. “We have the gold standard of regulation in the United States.

“And they are baseload energy,” she continued. “The holy grail is to detect clean up, baseload electrical power. … Nuclear is dispatchable, clean up baseload electric power, so we want to be equipped to convey far more on.”

A further objection from critics to building new nuclear power reactors is that carrying out so is much more high priced than competing sorts of energy, and that subsidies for it would be superior used on renewables. Granholm tackled that objection head-on, without even remaining asked about it. She argued that the emerging know-how of smaller, modular reactors will be a lot more very affordable than the hulking behemoths of yore.

The towers of a nuclear power plant in Gundremmingen, Germany.

A nuclear energy plant in Gundremmingen, Germany, on Feb. 26. (Lennart Preiss/AFP via Getty Images)

“Now, the kick is that it is highly-priced, nuclear is far more costly, and so we want to make confident that these scaled-down, modular reactors are a lot less high-priced,” Granholm explained.

“There’ve been a quantity of them, a few of them, that are on a sort of pilot demonstration

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