Amidst incredible challenges and crises in 2020, people remain resilient, innovative, and refuse to quit. This grit was clearly seen as many industries, companies, and asset managers were forced to quickly pivot, adapt, and even grow. Many other well written newsletters and year-end notes are covering the events of a truly unforgettable year, so we won’t do a full recap and will focus on video gaming.
In 2020, the video game industry and the venture capital asset class both have thrived. As a video gaming VC firm, Konvoy sits at the intersection of these two trends. The video game industry flourished because more people realized how incredibly social games can be in a more remote reality. The VC industry thrived on the back of a strong IPO market, spikes in late stage valuations, and the volume of SPACs.
Here are a few highlights of the video gaming industry in 2020:
- Market Size: The video gaming industry expanded from $152B in 2019 to an estimated ~$170B in 2020 (+11.8% y/y).
- # Gamers: The gaming community added several hundred million gamers. In 1995, there were only 100M gamers. In 2019, it was ~2.6B and now it’s well over 3B by the end of 2020 (approximately 40% of the global population).
- Mobile: mobile gaming represents ~20-30% of all apps on iOS and Android, yet gaming is now responsible for well over 70% of all revenue on both stores.
- Console: The 9th generation of console gaming released in 2020 after a 8 year hiatus since the last Xbox and PlayStation consoles came out in 2012. The new hardware capabilities are truly exceptional and took center stage of many Christmas morning highlight videos.
- PC: the new graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD have been sold out continuously, showcasing the consumer demand for cutting edge tech. These new graphics cards are more than sufficient for any game out there today, but the important thing is that these are laying the tech groundwork for the next 5 years of PC gaming.
- M&A: there were over 150 M&A transactions in the video gaming industry this year. The two main trends here are 1) the consolidation of content and 2) the purchase of cutting edge technologies.
- IPO: notable IPOs this year were Unity ($41B), Skillz ($7B), Corsair ($3B), Kakao Games ($3B), Archosaur Games ($2B), and Nacon Gaming ($830M). Two companies that announced their intention to IPO yet pushed to 2021 include AppLovin and Roblox.
In 2020, here’s what happened at Konvoy:
- 10 investments: Origami (game engine), Rupie (talent marketplace), Lootcakes (rewarded data sharing), GameFam (Roblox publisher), Dorian (UGC story-telling), HiberWorld (UGC platform), Blerp (audio platform), Bunch (video chat gaming), Goss (social betting app), and one unannounced.
- Fund I + Fund II: we finished investing Fund I and have kicked off Fund II with Goss and one other startup (unannouced) as the first two investments.
- Our Writing: we wrote 51 newsletters, 55 gaming updates, 1 industry infographic, and more.
- Audience: this newsletter now goes out to a wide readership of investment groups, founders, limited partners, family offices, industry experts, and more.
