Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has officially acquired a 5.01% stake in Nintendo, according to a filing made with Japan’s Finance Ministry.
As spotted by Bloomberg, the Public Investment Fund’s latest investment in gaming joins similar ventures that saw it spend billions on shares in Capcom, EA, Activision, and Take-Two. The Capcom and Nexon deal alone cost the PIF $1 billion for a 5% stake in those companies, while the acquisition of 7.4 million shares in Electronic Arts was reported to come with a price tag of $1.06 billion.
The fund also owns 96% of Japanese developer SNK, the studio responsible for fighting game hits such as Samurai Shodown and King of Fighters. This deal makes the Public Investment Fund the fifth-largest shareholder of Nintendo stock according to Bloomberg.
The PIF is primarily focused on making the Saudi economy less reliant on profits from oil, although concerns have been raised over Saudi Arabia’s history of human rights abuses and claims that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Nintendo is doing good business lately, as the Switch console is now the fourth best-selling video game console of all time in the US and lifetime global Switch sales have now reached 107.65 million units as of March 31.
Nintendo expects to sell 21 million Switch consoles through the current fiscal year, less than what it originally forecast due to the ongoing global semiconductor shortage which Nintendo believes won’t end anytime soon.
Source: Gamespot
