This Theme May Be Huge For Our Stocks!

Recently, video gaming stocks have been gutted because of a disruptive business model that Fortnite pioneered. Launching a free game, and making it’s money selling digital clothing, dances, and other things that make a player stand out among the 200 million people and counting that play.

It is reported that Fortnite made an estimated 2.4 billion dollars in 2018. The big question was when were the major video game companies going to follow it’s lead and make a free game that could go viral and take share from the Fortnite franchise.

Well 3 days ago EA secretly released a Fortnite clone that many gamers feel is more compelling version for free. It already has attracted 10 million users to download and play the game and by this weekend it will be a household name. The game is called Apex Legends. If you do a Youtube search you will see the gameplay a lot more compelling than Fortnite.

https://www.techradar.com/news/apex-legends-hits-10-million-…

But I’m not interested in buying video game stocks but what interest me is all the saas companies that video game companies are going to tap to get their free game up and running?

Fortnite runs on MongoDb, New Relic went on Mad Money recently and all they talked about is how they help make Fortnite run smoother. Below is a video of this. But the reason for the post is those who work closer in this industry, besides New Relic and MongoDB who else benefits from the future of free gaming and all the data that must be mined and monetized to make money?

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/16/new-relic-ceo-epic-gam…

PS you gotta think that Nvidia will be milking this theme when they announce this coming week.

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…and Blizzaed uses Elastic in their data pipelines. Especially in use with Overwatch.

https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2017/sf/building-a-nea…

https://www.elastic.co/elasticon/conf/2018/sf/watching-overw…

Darth

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Amazon. They own Twitch which is how all these games are being played.

Peace,
Dana

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Definitely Amazon thanks for the feedback. Fortnite actually runs off of Aws also.

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/fortnite-amazon-web-ser…

Amazon is the grandaddy of all this innovation. Twitch which Amazon bought is the promotion engine and EA used the big players on Twitch to promote the game this week.

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PS you gotta think that Nvidia will be milking this theme when they announce this coming week.

I am not a gamer so maybe totally off base but I have heard that some of these free games don’t require state of the art video chips to run smoothly. If so, that could prove to be a negative for NVDA. I had read something to that effect and that convinced me to leave NVDA for the time being. They have warned for this quarter and maybe their earnings report, if even a little bit better than forecast, may serve as a catalyst for an upward move (see FB). I am not willing to bet that way though. For me NVDA is in “show me” status and I will deploy my NVDA money in the companies that report the best this earnings season.

Rob

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This gaming theme actually hurt, not helps, Nvidia.

These mass player games use simpler graphics that will run on lowest common denominator mass GPUs. Nvidia’s gaming business is built on the demand for ever more and more sophisticated graphic rendering and graphic density in video games.

When the gaming world turns to volume over sophistication and graphic density the need for, and thus demand for a chip like Turing in gaming becomes less a necessary feature to enjoy the best gaming in the world.

This may not be the case with eSports type gaming (that I don’t know) but it is with games like Fortnite.

Tinker

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Amazon. They own Twitch which is how all these games are being played.

Peace,
Dana

Most of the game servers run on AWS as well (in addition to Twitch, which is indeed how they are being watched/broadcast).

It’s probably not a huge play, game servers probably make up a tiny percentage of the AWS boxes, but there’s no doubt AWS benefits from the overall trend. (Assumably, the other cloud providers benefit too but all the game companies I know the details about use AWS.)

–CH

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This is a deep dive on why Fortnite is uniquely positioned to be the start of the Metaverse - a world resembling last years “Ready Player One” movie:

https://redef.com/original/fortnite-is-the-future-but-probab…

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Well I can confirm the popularity of Apex Legends (at least with my 14 year old and his friends). I went to ask him about it as he owns a few shares of EA and he was actually playing it with his friends. He says graphics are better than Fortnite and it is more fun. All his friends are playing it and he says it is replacing Fortnite. It’s crazy how these games seem to explode in popularity seemingly over night. Hopefully it’s is good for MDB.

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This may not be the case with eSports type gaming (that I don’t know) but it is with games like Fortnite.

eSports is/will be based on popularity. So it’s precisely the mass market games that will rise to the top.

Starcraft 2, an almost 9 year old game, had the 9th highest prize pool last year.
You’re not going to get the new battlefield with its ray tracing graphics going to have anywhere near the highest prize money any time soon.

Games like DOTA, Apex Legends, Fortnite, that don’t require a £1k+ graphics card to run smoothly…that’s where the money is.
I d/led and played Apex legends when it came out. Ran perfectly on a GTX 970, and was better than Fortnite.

First it was PubG, then Fortnite came out to take its place, and now Apex Legends. I think EA share price jumped pretty well after the release (although down overall 6 months)

Has anyone managed to confirm whether Apex Legends is using MongoDb?

In regards Nvidia - I think we have to wait a couple generations until Ray-tracing is a norm in the mid-range graphics cards, have it propriety and hope AMD doesn’t develop that technology. Then NVIDIA can be sure to retain the mid-market GPU share for gaming.

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