interactive-entertainment
(7)
The Guillemot Brothers Sell You the Ferrari Wheel and the DJ Deck
Five brothers from a Brittany village of a few thousand people built the joystick empire behind Microsoft Flight Simulator and the decks that teach the world to DJ. The famous siblings run Ubisoft. This is what the quieter ones do.
Sony Sells the Console at a Loss. The Real Money Starts When You Turn It On.
Inside Sony Interactive Entertainment - the PlayStation maker that turned a spurned Nintendo partnership into 93 million consoles sold, 125 million monthly players, and a $31 billion games business built on selling hardware cheap and everything after it dear.
HiDef, Inc.
HiDef, Inc. is a San Diego-based mobile game studio building social, creative-first games aimed at players of all backgrounds. Founded in 2019 by interactive-entertainment veterans - including game designer Jace Hall, industry operator Anthony Castoro, three-time NBA champion Rick Fox, and former Obama aide Dr. David Washington - the company launched publicly in 2021 with $9M in funding and a mission to make games with meaningful social impact. HiDef partnered with Unity to power its titles and with Snap Inc. to build a Bitmoji-based dance-and-music social game.
Windup Minds
Windup Minds is a Seattle-based, remote-first independent game studio building the next generation of virtual pets for virtual and mixed reality. Founded in 2023 by a crew of veterans from Oculus, EA, Microsoft and Bungie, the studio's debut, Stay: Forever Home, drops a magical companion named Ember into your living room via Meta Quest passthrough - a pet you feed, play with, and grow attached to. The bet: VR and MR are the only mediums that can make a digital creature feel genuinely, instinctively real.
BEAT THE BOMB
BEAT THE BOMB is an immersive social entertainment company that turns teamwork into a real-life video game. Squads of four to six players suit up in hazmat gear and battle through a series of high-tech, motion- and touch-driven game rooms - dodging lasers, cracking codes, and racing a Bomb Clock. Fail the final mission and you get blasted with paint, foam, or slime. Founded in Brooklyn in 2017 by former Tough Mudder executive Alex Patterson, the company has grown into a national chain backed by $22M in venture funding, hosting corporate outings, school groups, and birthday parties across multiple U.S. cities.
Genvid Holdings Inc.
Genvid Holdings Inc. is a New York media-technology company that invented the Massively Interactive Live Event (MILE) - part TV show, part video game, where thousands of viewers vote on what happens next in real time. Founded in 2016 by Square Enix cloud-gaming veterans, Genvid has produced the Emmy-winning SILENT HILL: Ascension, the Webby-winning The Walking Dead: Last Mile, Rival Peak, and DC Heroes United. Backed by $166M in funding, the company is now extending its production infrastructure into studio-grade generative AI tooling for professional creators.
Twitch
Twitch is the world's largest live-streaming platform, where creators broadcast video games, IRL content, music, and talk shows to a real-time audience that talks back in chat. Founded as a gaming-focused spin-off of Justin.tv in 2011 and acquired by Amazon in 2014, Twitch turned watching someone play a game into a social, participatory medium, building a creator economy powered by subscriptions, Bits, ads, and a culture of emotes and live community.