Almost every one of different age groups is into video games these days. People are enjoying indoor gaming more often now while under stay-at-home orders. Naturally, as a result, the gaming industry is thriving with new gamers, and the revenue is at an all-time high. The best part of this gaming revolution is that it has affected both gamers and businesses alike. Big companies are quick to grab the market advantage and diluting more shares to collect maximum investments from the market. Private companies are going public to facilitate investments from retail investors. The gaming industry, in general, is in a lot of profit. Naturally, the stock values of most gaming companies are going up as a process. People are investing in these gaming stocks left and right to be a part of their profit.
Investing In Gaming Stocks
Investing in gaming stocks is the latest trend across the globe. People are well aware of the gaming industry’s success and want a part of it as well. As the number of worldwide gamers increases, so does the stock value of the gaming companies. Big gaming companies keep liquidating more stocks for the public to invite more investments. To invest in any video game stock, there are certain things to look for. First, one should take a look at the past performances of the company’s stock. The way the stock goes up and falls should determine its success ratio. Because investing in stocks can sometimes backfire as well. It always will carry an element of risk. That is why it is important to be aware of the list of Top video gaming stocks of 2021.
Top Gaming Stocks Of 2021
The video game market has benefitted majorly from the COVID 19 pandemic as many people have resorted to playing video games. With a significant rise in the gamers’ counts worldwide, the video game stocks have gone up. Many companies are currently in the race to become the highest valued gaming company. There are many criteria to determine which company has the top video game stocks. Share prices, public sector valuation, investments, and other factors also determine the rankings. Here is the list of the top 10 video game stocks of 2021.
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts currently enjoy the pole positions in the stock rankings of top video game stocks for this year. The video game company operates globally to publish top-ranking titles. Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) is a world-famous studio for publishing Sports video games. Famous gaming franchises like FIFA, Madden NFL, Battlefield are all creations of EA Sports studio.
Electronic Arts is originally an American Video game company from California. Currently, it is the second-largest video game company across nations in terms of revenue. Activision Blizzard still occupies the pole position in this field. The market capitalization of Electronic Arts is immense and widespread. In addition to their signature sporting game titles, Electronic Arts are also famous for publishing the world-famous racing game franchise- Need For Speed.
Electronic Arts are also responsible for creating the mobile games distribution platform Origin. This way, they can directly compete with Valve’s Steam. Arguably, Electronic Arts deliver the most famous gaming titles in the world. FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live, Medal of Honor, NFS are all well-acclaimed titles. Recently Electronic Arts have launched a First Person Shooter game in Battle Royale format- Apex Legends. The game has acquired a lot of popularity in a short time. For the year 2020, Electronic Arts pulled good revenue and had a revenue of $5.5 billion. The operating income of EA stands at $1.45 billion as of last year. Electronic Arts possess a total of $11.11 billion worth of assets.
Zynga
Zynga is predominately a mobile-based video game company. The company is based in San Francisco, California. Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA) started with browser-based games on Facebook and got famous because of this. This video game company specializes in Social video games.
The first launched video game of Zynga was on Facebook, and it was called FarmVille. Zynga Poker is one of the most famous games of Zynga, along with Words with Friends 2. Zynga also publishes the Popular mobile racing game CSR Racing 2. The company passed a struggling phase sometime back, and it’s making a strong comeback with high stock values. Zynga performing very well in terms of business and revenues. The company has been active on the acquisition part and expanding greatly.
Zynga announced in June 2020 that the acquisition of Turkish developer Peak would be its biggest acquisition to date. The acquisition is estimated at $1.8 billion. Zynga is known for its free-to-play business model that yields revenues from partnerships and in-game payments. One of Zynga’s popular partnerships is with Hasbro. In the post-pandemic period with the rise of casual mobile games, Zynga is enjoying steady market growth. This has directly influenced Zynga’s stock prices to go up.
Capcom
Capcom is a famous Japanese Video game publisher and developer who is currently thriving in the gaming industry. The gaming studio is based in Osaka in Japan. Capcom Co. Ltd (OTC: CCOEF) is famous for its multi-million dollar gaming franchises Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, and Dead Rising. Capcom was founded back in 1979 as IRM Corporation. The company started operating in Japan along with its Subsidiary companies Capsule Computers. Capsule Computers later paved the way for the name of Capcom. The company specializes in Arcade, Home computer, Pachinko, and Strategy games.
Capcom has been one of the long-standing gaming foundations in Japan. Recently it is performing very well in terms of revenue and capitalization. So naturally, the stocks of Capcom have gone up this year and are in high demand. Capcom follows a dividend payment business model to return 30 percent of annual profits to shareholders. One of the many reasons why Capcom stocks are so high is their uniform return policies for the shareholders.
Take-Two Interactive
One of the leading Video game holding companies globally, Take-Two Interactive is also high on the list of top video game stocks. The company is the third-largest video game company in Europe and America after Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. Take-Two Interactive is famous for its publishing labels – Rockstar Games and 2K. Both these publishing labels have given popular video games that still cash in buckets of the company’s revenue. One of the most famous gaming franchises under Take-two Interactive is the Grand Theft Auto.
GTA is one-of-a-kind fun, social Open world interactive gameplay. It is prevalent and famous across the globe. Another popular gaming franchise of Take-Two Interactive is the NBA 2K. The company has a market cap of $13 billion.
Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) has huge market popularity. The company is responsible for publishing many entertaining games. In addition, Take-Two Interactive actively participates in Esports competition and owns half of the NBA 2K league. The company first went public in April 1997. It has recorded a revenue of $3.09 billion for the year 2020. Take-Two Interactive enjoys total assets of $4.9 billion. The steady market growth and high stocks of Take-Two Interactive have engaged many investors over the years.
Read: WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF COVID 19 ON THE GAMING INDUSTRY?
Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard was formed by the merger of two top video game companies Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company comprises three main divisions. These are King Digital, Activision, and Blizzard. Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI) is the largest video game company in Europe and America. This video game holding company is based in Santa Monica. The company is responsible for one of the stocks that complete the S&P 500. The most famous video game title under Activision Blizzard is Call of Duty.
Call of Duty is a First-person Shooter game that is immensely popular among competitive video gamers. In addition, the game enjoys pole position among other Esports titles in terms of popularity and Cash prizes.
The other major games published by Activision blizzard are World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and the popular arcade game Candy Crush Saga. In addition, many of the company’s titles are popular Esports games.
Back at the time of the merger, Blizzard Entertainment belonged to the holding company Vivendi Games. In 2013, by buying out major stakes from Vivendi games, Activision Blizzard parted ways with Vivendi Games as a parent company. Recently 14.9 million shares of Activision Blizzard were acquired by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. The value of those shares was around $1.4 billion. The company managed to scoop around $8.09 billion in revenue last year.
IGG
IGG is popularly known as I Got Games. It is a Chinese video game company that is headquartered in Singapore. The company was founded in Fujian, China, in 2006. IGG (0799) was previously interpreted as Internet Gaming Gate. IGG is mostly famous for its mobile gaming innovations.
Their best creations are Lord Mobile and Castle Clash. Both of these games are Massively Multiplayer Online Games. It also deals with the MMORPG category, including GodsWar Online, Voyage Century Online, Tales of Pirate, and other games. The IGG went public in 2013 on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
IGG is experiencing quite a success with its mobile games. Lords Mobile has ranked 2 on America’s Top F2P IOS list. The game is a trendy Arcade Strategy game. The company also follows the same Free-to-Play model for other games. IGG allows the players to access most of their gaming content for free and provides an option for micro-transactions within the game. Last, to last year, IGG’s revenue was around $667 million. The company’s Stocks are quite high due to the extensive rise of mobile gaming recently.
Huya Live
Huya Live is a Chinese video game company that specializes in providing live video streaming services. The company maintains its operation as Nimo TV on a global scale. It has one of the largest websites in China. The main content of streaming is video games. Huya live focuses on Video game streams as well as some real-life streams. Huya Live shares extensive rights to broadcast the League of Legends in China. The largest shareholder of Huya is Tencent. From 2020 Tencent enjoys a 50.1 percent stake in the company. The company is performing quite well recently, having a substantial amount of daily active users. The channel is mostly famous for the official broadcasting of various esports tournaments and video gaming streaming.
Bilibili
Bilibili is a famous gaming video-sharing website that also deals with animation and comics. The company is based in Shanghai and is famous for its gaming content and comics, and animation.
Bilibili is nicknamed as B Site in China. The website allows its user to add, modify and view the content provided and upload new videos. Bilibili uses Adobe Flash Player and HTML 5 for playing the videos on their website. The company has gained extensive popularity in China as a top-demand video gaming and Video playing website. In 2020, Bilibili launched its first Bilibili Video Satellite.
Sony Corporation has a 4.98 percent stake in Bilibili, having invested around $400 million. As a result, Bilibili partnered with Sony animation platform Funimation. After the collaboration with Sony, BIlibili’s market value reached $8 billion. After going public in NASDAQ, Bilibili is now looking for a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Bilibili has announced to raise $2.6 billion by going public in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Therefore stock prices of Bilibili are going high at this moment.
Nexon
Nexon is a top-rated video game publishing company founded in 1994 in Seoul, South Korea. The company is one of the top South Korean Video game publishers and specializes in PC games and mobile games. Nexon enjoys both South Korean and Japanese fan following as it has moved its headquarters to Tokyo, Japan. Nexon is the largest video gaming company in South Korea.
It is also the third-largest video gaming company in Asia, falling behind Tencent and NetEase. Nexon is ahead of both Netmarble and NCSoft in terms of revenue and market capitalization. The company develops dungeon and Fighter, one of the most popular PC games.
Nexon went public in 2011 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, recording the largest IPO for Japan that year. The company and Bandai Namco Entertainment have a 10 year signed agreement to continue developing and publishing more video games. Nexon has also invested in Konami, Hasbro, and Sega Sammy. Maple Story, Kingdom of Darkness are some of its famous PC games. Among the mobile games, the most popular ones are FIFA Mobile for Korea and Japan, DomiNations, and V4. The stocks of Nexon are pretty high given the success ratio of Nexon and the daily active user count.
Tencent
Tencent is a multinational Chinese holding company. It is a conglomerate company that is the world’s largest video game vendor. Tencent enjoys substantial shares in major video game companies of the world. It has many top titles to its name. Besides mobile games and gaming services, Tencent also specializes in internet services, e-commerce services, payment systems, etc.
Tencent also runs the WeChat messenger services in China. The company is headquartered in Shenzhen, China. Tencent is rapidly growing and extending its reaches outside the conventional boundaries across the globe. The company enjoys stakes in more than 600 companies in the world. Tencent has long surpassed the market valuation of $500 billion.
Tencent has participated in several acquisitions and invested in countless firms and companies over the years. The company has a majority stake in Riot Games, the founder of League of Legends. Tencent also owns part of Epic games which is the developer of Fortnite. From e-commerce to social networking to gaming, Tencent had invested in several domains and successfully transformed the businesses it had participated in.
The video game publishing division is known as Tencent Games. Tencent is also known for hosting online multiplayer games like Call of Duty Online and League of Legends. The gaming company also owns part of popular games like PUBG and Fortnite. Tencent had created WeGame, a direct competitor to Valve’s Steam, as a games distributor and platform. Tencent’s PUBG Mobile topped the charts in terms of user counts and revenue during the pandemic period.
