A look at the entertainmet sector and it's future

It’s
vacation time and to what kind of entertainment are you going for? I keep looking
at this whole Netflix price/earnings craziness and get to remember the context
from where Netflix emerged as a major player. It wasn’t for turn itself into a
major content producer, and yet in those days, the whole Netflix analysis gets
somewhat lost when deciding if it is a technology or an entertainment company.
As you can get better multiples being the first one, that ends up being the
choice.

But the fact that is that Netflix has grown being a better technological option to
torrent, most of its competitors besides the content offer, will struggle trying
to get at the same level as Netflix when we talk about servers. So NFLX, maybe
would have been in a way better position, if it had focused on supply it’s technology
and relation with small ISP around the world to the newcomers into the streaming
battle. If we think how NFLX can offer huge data package deliveries with low
cost and low latency, thanks to its relation with small ISP’s on a global scale
that could even be the solution to new services like Google Stadia, even though I’m
not sure if the real difficulty in this segment is exactly about having a bunch
serves, maybe here the right type of servers is the real problem.

So as I’ve made
clear, that I would prefer to buy NFLX more as a tech company, than as a content producer
(which apparently has been their focus), guess we can proceed to Disney, and besides
DIS being already a consolidated giant, I kinda think in the long run Sony could
be a way better option. Disney is too much of an old-style company, with too
much tradition to hold. Sony, on the other hand, has tradition (with the whole Japanese
thing) and is slowing turning itself into an entertainment company.

Source at page 15 here 

The company
is yet carrying some legacy sectors as a hardware maker, but even though this part
of the business is not that sexy, the company has been making some money in the
semiconductor segment.

But the
main point on Sony is that they have been strongly growing in a sector that giants
like Disney are stupidly ignoring (even though Warner [under ATT] has been able
to produce some hits).

When we
talk about the videogame industry, we are usually talking about companies with
strong communities around themselves, and some lack of good management. And as
one good product, with good sales, can hide all the troubles a company may have, it’s
hard to do the usual stock picking at this segment. If we go around, we can
find companies with good Intellectual Properties, such as Rockstar, but as it
comes with the whole TTWO package It becomes way less interesting. EA has a
good management, but lacks on the creation of new IP’s, and even though the old
ones are strong enough to support the company, I yet do feel EA somewhat disconnected
from it’s community which may justify the low P/E the stock has been trading
lately.

Besides, that
I haven’t offered much of conclusion until now, my point is that amazing IPs are
emerging in the videogame industry, so it’s not out of reality to think on a a theme park based on Uncharted, and under that scenario Sony could be a good bet.
I don’t think that the future of the industry is on expensive consoles, but the
Playstation brand and it’s IP’s could easily go far Beyond that.

Don't worry dear Greta

The highest
moment in 2019, was Greta Thunberg, and I’m not the kind of person that goes
around hugging trees, but you have to admit that she was fully passionate on
his believes. Probably had read, talked... basically studied a lot about that theme
before that specific moment and then she gets there, in front of the most
important persons of the world, and notices that nobody really cares about what
she has to say. She is there just to fill some kind of quota, something like “make
the world a better place for future generations”, not only for the next generations
of a specific region but for the whole, of people that are yet to be born.

Most of
world leaders probably don’t spend not even twenty percent of their time
thinking in the world as a whole. Most of those people’s thoughts are dedicated to
their inner circles, some time is spent pretending to care with their
populations. Even when they think about international topics, those are mainly
local questions. Can you imagine someone in Pakistan giving the same level of attention
to Thailand as they do India? This does not even make sense.

Global matters,
and mainly those that are far away don’t have any weight. When Greta brings to the
table a point that is seen as being far away both in time and space, is expected
that nobody will care. But she has put it in a way that was at once far from reasonable,
messed up and perfect for the moment. She brings that theme and gets some
global attention. Don’t think she was ready for what she achieved, but the
world needs more people like her.

It's reasonable
to say she’s is as bit of a time agent, as twitter has proven, at least for me
I guess that she will be in my mind when in the future I get back to think about
this decade, in the same way, I remember Zidane but don’t remember who won that
world cup.

Having
lived some time in Mato Grosso, I can’t say that I think we should save the
world. From what I have seen there, humanity as a whole is just following its
path. Being there, and traveling through the region on buses or airplanes, I don’t
remember much of the local native forest, and there are yet some nice things there
like Pantanal. But I do remember huge soybean fields.  An amazing way to summarize the matter is by
saying that the Rondonopolis airfield was surrounded by some plantations, not sure
if it was soybean or Cotton. And when landing in Cuiabá in the airport hall you
would find some pictures of soybean fields.

For us humans,
it’s too pretentious to think about ourselves as world saviors, nature will take care
of us no matter what we do. In our short modern history, it’s not that hard to
find numerous moments where we had been close of extinction… sometimes it was
through wars, on other times it was because of diseases spreading too fast, and
it was way before we had such a global society.

At the same
time, I remember a discussion between Jack Ma and Elon Musk. While the Tesla
guy seems to be worried about the machines revolution, I keep thinking on the Tacoma
plot, an amazing French game (such an underrated industry) where a crew of a
mining spaceship is waiting to be rescued, but under the guidance of the spaceship AI, which
according to its programming weren’t supposed to do that,  find out that they have fallen between a fight
were the mining company and the government are the contests.  Basically, the company wants to stop using
human crews, but the government won’t allow, so under a marketing strategy the company
is going to let the spaceship crew die, as they hope that under this context government
must allow no human crews.

An amazing
simple game, but the main point is that we do indeed have more things to solve
before we can start worrying about AI’s taking control of the world.

Today the
main mess is the whole Iran thing. As a GE holder, I can’t really say that I’m
not waiting for a war but besides a proxy war, I don’t see Iran as a real threat
to Trump. The main point is that Iran is an isolated nation, even in the muslin
world, with very few resources to support a war, even if we consider the oil
laundry scheme that Russia runs today. Maybe China could indirectly finance
this to develop and put under stress test it’s military-industrial complex, but
it’s hard to know what’s inside Beijing leaders’ minds. Even though sooner or
later the heat will get there, but China has been betting on some financial
soft power.

So don’t worry
Greta, we will probably destroy ourselves before nature have a chance to do that,
either way, we are following the extinction path.