Tencent’s return to form
It sounds like China gaming giant Tencent is returning to form as analysts estimate that its battle-royale game PUBG Mobile has knocked Honour of Kings off the top spot in terms of revenues.
It made $146m last month versus the Honour of Kings, which “only” made $125m.
Although Tencent had to change the Chinese version of the game – which is now, somewhat ironically, called “Game For Peace” – players still want to play it.
This is great news for a company that has been in the wilderness for a while as the government ordered a crackdown on gaming, citing the negative effects its addictive qualities were having on youth.
After a long period where new games weren’t being granted licences, it seems that Tencent’s games are now starting to trickle through – and if these figures are anything to go by, it seems that the company is returning to form in a highly lucrative sector.
Salesforce’s big acquisition
The other thing I wanted to mention today was Salesforce’s all-stock purchase of data analytics company Tableau in a $15bn deal.
Although this is probably a good strategic acquisition, investors did balk at the price it paid, which was at a whopping 42% premium over Tableau’s Friday closing price.
This strengthens Salesforce’s CRM offering with additional functionality as Tableau’s software enables companies to build databases, spreadsheets and graphs from internal data.
Other tech companies have been sniffing around for acquisitions recently to enhance their offerings – Alphabet bought Looker last week for $2.5bn to help it do more with its data and Microsoft is also in the market.
This just gives us more evidence that data is the new oil!