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thirty cents. That is a gain of six tenths of one percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a Bloomberg business flash. You're listening to taking stock with Pimpbox and Kathleen Hayes on Bluebird Radio. Nintendo, Yes, Nintendo, the maker of the popular Pokemon Go mobile game. The shares of Nintendo are up nearly ninety percent in the eight days since the
game's launched. Indeed, Pokemon Go has been responsible for, in some cases, grown men falling off of cliffs in California and angry residents even hurling eggs at crowds of monster hunters in Australia. What does this mean that you should buy the stock of Nintendo and what's the future of video gaming? We've got Gus Tie. He is a general partner at Trinity Ventures. To tell us more. It joins us from men Low Park, California, and he can be
followed at Trinity Ventures on Twitter. Gust Tie, thanks for being with us as a general partner at Trinity Ventures. Do you wish that you invested in the company that made Pokemon Go? Him? It's great to reconnect with you. Uh. Indeed, I would very much would have loved to have been an investor in that company. That company has a spin out of out of Google, So I wonder what Google is thinking about that spin out. Tell us about Pokemon Go and some of the details for people that have
not attempted to play it. Yes, poke, Pokemon Go is a real phenomenon. It's a game that's a mobile game that was launched last week and as of today, according to serving monkey, there are twenty five million people who play this every single day. And that's for context, is five million more people than all the people in New York State. It's the combined total of population of ten
largest cities, so it's quite amazing. And the nature of the game is that when you open it up and you walk around and you use it like a mapping software like a Google Maps or Apple Maps or ways,
these objects will appear and their Pokemon animals. Now, Pokemon is a type of card game and video games and for those of you don't know it, it's around collecting pets that you grow, and it has a really neat known I p uh intellectual property around the item and uh it harkens back memories of childhoods for people who are older and for younger people watch cartoons. They can
really relate to the characters. Now, the shares of of of Nintendo, they really only receive a portion of Pokemon Goes total revenues, right, because they've got like a third steak in the Pokemon company and then what an estimated maybe five to ten percent steak in the actual game developer Niantic. Yes, yes, and and so so the the there's a good question for how much Nintendo's stock should rise. Uh and and if you were to argue it was unfairly and lowly priced before, this may be awakening of
the market if you felt it was properly priced. Adding ten billion dollars of value for the cash flow stream that they would be receiving from this title might be a bit of a stretch. I think the analogy for how to think about cash flow would be the company called super Cell, which has the top selling game prior to Pokemon Go, called Clash of Plans on both the Android and on the iOS. That title probably produces over a billion dollars of revenue a year and huge amount
of profits. Last year. In fact, the company super Sell, which only makes three titles, reported two point three billion in revenue off of three titles, with nine million dollars of profits. If for sure, if Nintendo were able to have one or two titles that would have this type of retention and have the type of cash flow stream flowing to them, it'd be easy to understand that that
that increase in share price. On the other hand, if they're not getting the full cut of prop fits, then you may have some questions about the press revenue price earning multiples of the stock. Now, August, I know that you've been doing this as a venture capitalist for more than two decades. I'm not trying to to date you here, but uh, is your phone and your email box getting clogged with offers for copycat like games? I am getting
phone calls and has also reached out to developers developed that. Indeed, that's the case. The the this is so striking and the game is very well designed in many ways that this is just a new type of gameplay. This this is a new genre that will lead to many, many blockbuster titles over the next five years. So anyone who's a game developer should be paying attention to this, and indeed they are. You describe it as geo cashing. How do you describe it in English? Yes? Yes, I uh
that was the nerd in me. The easy way to describe it in English is that the core premise of Pokemon Go is to go on a treasure hunt. So you you're walking around and you've clue is for where to look. In this case, it's a clue of some item that appears on your map, and you go there and you find it, and then in addition, you collect things and then you level things that as you grow items,
and those are very common game mechanics. Gavenger hunts or treasure hunts are very popular, but not very common or active because they're too hard to set up. Millions of people do play them every year, but not collectively, and Pokemon Go unlock that. Do you believe that Pokemon Go could increase its revenue by organizing joint ventures with advertising and sponsors who are part of the location based game,
Yeah for sure. So what's fascinating is that the game right now is a number one grossing title in iOS and I believe in Android, which if it's on par with Clash of Plans, it might be doing three to four million dollars of revenue a day in a very profitable way, and so that creates the incentive for other people to try to tap in into those monetary flows, so you can have advertisers on hearing of companies of
of businesses. This is the game and allows a business to create, over a period of time a new Pokemon that you you can collect and put up a signal a flare to go to their business to go collect on it. And and so their bustinances are actually using this as a business function. And the last note I would mention is yelps. I think yesterday released a check box to say, is this restaurant near a Pokemon stop.
Pokemon video games and restaurants all coming together, Thanks very much, Gus Tide, General partner, Trinity Ventures in Menlo Park, California. This is taking Stock and this is Bloomberg. Coming up on taking Stock, will be speaking with the former Undersecretary of Commerce for the Clinton administration. Will find out how the US presidential election will affect technology policy. That's coming up next