Saudi Arabia is reportedly looking to increase their ownership in Nintendo.
As reported by Kyodo News, Savvy Games’ vice chair Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al-Saud said that “there are always opportunities.” However, the prince fell short of confirming that this would be happening immediately, saying:
“It’s important to keep the communication going so you get there in the right way. We don’t want to rush into anything.”
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has been diversifying the country’s riches into entertainment industries around the world, which includes video games, Hollywood, and esports. The PIF currently owns 8.6 % in Nintendo, and the organization is currently transferring that ownership to its subsidiary, Savvy Games. It would be a smart play to increase that investment in Nintendo, if an investor expects a windfall from the launch of their highly anticipated next video game console.
In this capacity, Savvy is ramping up in a sort of competition with Chinese companies like Tencent. Tencent has a longer lead over Savvy in its big investments in the video game industries in American and Japan. Tencent has money in Epic Games, Riot Games, Krafton, and most notoriously, Ubisoft. Of course, if you think about it for a minute, one company having money in Fortnite, PUBG, and Valorant all at the same time seems wholly inappropriate. But then, it’s also about in line for how the investment side of the video game industry works.
On Savvy’s end, their investments include Take-Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, Capcom, Nexon, EA, and Embracer. Many gamers rightly blame Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors for making a foolhardy bet that cost the company millions in investments, as well as hundreds of laid off developers and more than a dozen cancelled games.
However, we should never forget that that big bet was that the PIF or Savvy Games would buy Embracer. It was long rumored that Embracer had been assembling that many independent game studios under their umbrella precisely because the PIF or Savvy Games wanted them to.
And so, while gamers may feel they should be relieved that Saudi Arabia is not investing more into Nintendo, that’s a shortsighted way of looking at things. Big investors like Tencent and Savvy Games literally hold the fates of several game companies in their hands. Choosing not to invest money may have led to one of the most catastrophic parts of the two year wave of layoffs in the video game industry.
Saying this does not mean that gamers should want to see Saudi Arabia put even more money into the industry, either. Sometimes, several things can be true at the same time, and we can often feel how even an industry as prosperous as video games can be moved around by forces beyond their control.
