By Paul Rasmussen


Games distributor plots US launch
with operators

Streaming games specialist Blacknut is targeting a launch in North America, after achieving notable success in major European markets during 2018.

The company said it will use its existing partners, Amazon and Samsung, but key to this venture is the close relationship Blacknut is building with a number of tier one telecoms operators in the region.


“This will be a big milestone for us in 2019,” said Olivier Avaro, CEO of Blacknut. “Operators are key partners and distributors for our cloud gaming service. We are basically offering to transform their existing hardware, for example, set top boxes, into gaming consoles. We’re currently available on all Android TV set top boxes as well as on Android mobile devices.”


Avaro claims that one attraction of Blacknut is the simplicity of its business model. “We deliver a plug and play interactive entertainment service, either under the Blacknut brand or as a white-label solution depending on an operator’s content strategy. In most cases, we work on a revenue share basis, without requiring massive capex investment on cloud infrastructure as our servers are operated by a public cloud partner.”


The CEO added: “In some cases, we also leverage the existing cloud infrastructure of the operators. This has the effect of optimising the end user experience as well as the operator’s ARPU.”


The France-based company also confirmed it was discussing a partnership with Ericsson to better leverage the company’s investment in 5G & edge computing and bring the ultimate gaming experience while on the go.