Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman picks up a 5% stake in Nintendo

Saudi Arabia is continuous to department out into gaming markets in its investments, with the latest addition of one of many greatest names in gaming to its portfolio. The Public Investment Fund, chaired by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, right this moment picked up a 5.01% stake in Nintendo, following different latest investments in firms like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, in response to Reuters.

The PIF manages greater than $600 billion altogether and has been a considerable arm of Saudi Arabia’s investments in gaming and leisure firms over the previous few years. Earlier this yr, for instance, the Electronic Gaming Development Company, one other Saudi subsidiary fund run by Salman, upped their stake in preventing game firm SNK to a whopping 96.18%, successfully claiming majority possession of the corporate. The PIF additionally introduced that it had created a gaming and esports group named Savvy Gaming again in January.

Saudi Arabia has claimed that many of those investments are merely makes an attempt to diversify the nation’s holdings. But a number of commentators, reminiscent of Kotaku’s Ian Walker, suspect that such heavy funding in gaming and leisure is a smokescreen to distract from, or try to rehabilitate, the Saudi monarchy’s monitor file on human rights. Mohammed bin Salman himself is the de facto ruler of the nation and the person allegedly accountable for the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, amongst different controversies.

Though Nintendo is coping with some controversy of its personal in the mean time, Salman could also be hoping that its status for family-friendly video games and “fun-focused” growth might go some strategy to softening the notion of Saudi Arabia. Nintendo itself declined to remark and seemingly didn’t even discover out concerning the funding till it hit the information, in response to Bloomberg.