In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay asking if we’ve reached The End of History? Often mischaracterized, the essay argues democracy and free markets represent the last evolution of political-economic systems. Fukuyama writes: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular…
UGC platforms have hailed the rise of the Creator Economy™. Roblox, TikTok, and Youtube have democratized the creation of content, abstracting the costs of getting content to market. But we’ve assumed UGC cuts out content gatekeepers in favor of entrepreneurs. Everyone gets a warm glow when “the little guy wins”. And by all means, this…
The “metaverse” discussion seems more about cultural “in-group” signaling then a thorough exploration of an idea. It’s frustrating. Rather than talking about “what the metaverse will look like” instead we should examine the forecast of a “metaverse” altogether.
Psyonix credits PS+ with vaulting Rocket League to success. Mediatonic decided to follow suit with Fall Guys. And after its success, Destruction All-Stars delayed their launch to be included in the program. Does PS+ deserve all credit it’s been given? There are some stark trade-offs worth examining.
The supply-side economics of subscriptions are fairly straightforward: get massive scale and distribute costs. Netflix has over 160M subscribers meaning a $100M production only costs each user $0.63. There’s zero marginal cost (unlike Spotify), so the more subscribers Netflix has the less a piece of content costs on a per user basis. At $11 per…
Amazon has announced Luna, yet another stab at game streaming and subscriptions. It seems like the failures of Apple Arcade, Stadia, Gamefly, and our oft-forgotten OnLive have not been effective deterrents. Not to be outdone, Rovio’s Hatch continues to drain money every quarter. Perhaps this is what Bezos warned shareholders about when discussing new “multibillion-dollar…
Bloomberg is reporting that Epic is seeking to raise $500M to $1B in new funding. Tim Sweeney, Epic CEO and provocateur extraordinaire, owns 60% while Tencent owns the other 40%. Why would Epic need more funding as it continues to rake in Fortnite money? Tim has bigger ambitions, let’s figure out what they are. As…