The Side Quest

The Side Quest

Ubisoft and Tencent: What is the share price assuming, and who gets the crown jewels?
How Ubisoft's biggest franchises ended up inside a company Tencent part-owns, what that leaves the listed parent holding against a bill due in November…
 • Chirag Vadhia
Luke Dicken (Former Head of AI at Take-Two) on LLMs: "Not a trillion dollar business that's going to revolutionise everything."
Dicken expects the cost of these tools to go up dramatically, and thinks anything working as well as claimed would be hidden rather than sold to you…
 • Chirag Vadhia
Video Games: The tax credits behind the results
We read 79 listed companies against 34 government schemes, and asked what a games credit is worth to the company that draws it.
 • Chirag Vadhia
Sony: When do you switch off physical distribution?
Sony is ending PlayStation disc production in January 2028. A platform switches physical off when demand for the object falls below the cost of the…
 • Chirag Vadhia

July 2026

Jason Della Rocca (Griffin, Execution Labs, ex-IGDA): “Zero-to-evidence is where the market failure is”
Most funds now wait for proof that players want a game, and reaching that proof often runs on savings, a grant if your country has one, or an incubator…
 • Chirag Vadhia
Microsoft and Xbox: Separable, but still staying
Microsoft has done everything you would do before selling Xbox. We priced seven ways of doing it, and every one it can execute itself is worth less than…
 • Chirag Vadhia
AppLovin vs Unity: are two of the market's favourite ad engines worth it?
We read the job postings on both sides of this market, the ad networks and the studios that buy from them, to test whether AppLovin's and Unity's…
 • Chirag Vadhia
Microsoft and Xbox: Unwinding the Game Pass bet
Xbox is focusing on its platforms, Minecraft and King, now reporting to the CEO, and its biggest AAA franchises.
 • Chirag Vadhia
Jen MacLean (CEO, Dragon Snacks Games): "You cannot allocate your way to a hit"
Why games over-builds every cycle, why the money renamed itself AI, and why the winners stayed small.
 • Chirag Vadhia
Epic Games: what is it worth, and what did the generosity cost?
Fortnite pays for four free layers. The cash Epic captures is worth about $7.5bn; the tools it under-monetises lift fair value toward $14bn, and the…
 • Chirag Vadhia

June 2026

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