Game On: Apple opens App Store to competitors in EU

“Game On” is The Fly’s weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.

APP STORE EU: Apple (AAPL) (TTWO), Electronic Arts (EA), Nintendo (NTDOY), Capcom (CCOEY), Square Enix (SQNXF), Ubisoft (UBSFY), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Roblox (RBLX), Tencent (TCEHY), and NetEase (NTES) have games on the App Store.

ROBLOX CREATORS: Roblox said on Wednesday that it is on track to pay out $1B to creators in 2025, as it revamps its rewards program to encourage creators to bring more players onto the platform. “Creator Rewards was designed to boost earning opportunities for all creators, and better recognize the contributions of emerging creators than the legacy EBP program. On average, we expect that smaller experiences (outside the top 10,000) will see an even larger percentage increase in earnings from Creator Rewards.”

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo raised the firm’s price target on Roblox to $116 from $78 and kept an Overweight rating on the shares. Developer and agency checks suggest the platform poised for ad acceleration in late 2025, with the hit game Grow a Garden adding 10 points to FY25 bookings, the analyst tells investors in a research note.

JPMorgan also raised the firm’s price target on Roblox to $120 from $100 and maintained an Overweight rating on the shares, noting that Grow A Garden has reached about 20M concurrent players each of the past two weekends, calling this a “historic level of player engagement” as well as “a scale that Roblox and the broader gaming industry have never seen before.” The rise of Grow A Garden has coincided with shares trading up over 100% since early April, notes the analyst, who has “meaningfully” increased the firm’s estimates for Roblox.

Additionally, BTIG increased the firm’s price target on Roblox to $124 from $73 and reiterated a Buy rating on the shares. The firm is citing the beneficial near and medium-term impacts of the company’s Grow a Garden game, stating that it sees upside to FY25/FY26 estimates and potentially faster run-rate Bookings growth thanks to rising creator-side investment in the platform and a growing on-platform earnings opportunity, the analyst tells investors in a research note.

Click here to check out recent Media Buzz Sentiment on Roblox as measured by TipRanks.

PS PLUS: Nick Maguire, vice president of global services at Sony‘s (SONY) PlayStation, told (MSFT) does for Xbox Game Pass.

NINTENDO/AMAZON: Nintendo has pulled its products from Amazon’s (AMZN) U.S. site following a disagreement over unauthorized sales, meaning the platform missed out on the recent debut of Nintendo’s Switch 2, the largest game console launch, Matt Day of Bloomberg reported. Nintendo stopped selling on Amazon after third-party merchants were offering games for sale in the US at prices that undercut Nintendo’s rates, a person familiar with the matter said.

EA COLLEGE BASKETBALL: In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Electronic Arts teased that it is working on a college basketball game, which would be the first from the company since 2009’s “NCAA Basketball 10.” “Bring the Madness,” the company said. “Let’s run it back.” The Fly notes that the company brought back its college football video game series last year with the release of “EA Sports College Football 25.”