Pixel P&L: NODWIN Brings Back its ex-CEO Sidharth Kedia

Welcome to another Pixel P&L edition. This issue takes 5 minutes to read. If you only have one, here are the 5 most important things:

• NODWIN Gaming brings back former CEO Sidharth Kedia ahead of potential IPO.

• Nintendo's broad summoning patent gets revoked by the USPTO, with all 26 claims rejected.

• Crimson Desert hits 4 million copies sold in 12 days, breaking even by day four.

• Stellar Blade developer Shift Up acquires Shinji Mikami's studio Unbound, a new original IP is in the works.

• French esports broadcaster OTP crosses €3.4M in revenue, profitable every year since 2020.

Let's get into it.

NODWIN Gaming Taps Former CEO Sidharth Kedia Ahead of Potential IPO

NODWIN Gaming brought back Sidharth Kedia, reuniting with the executive who ran the company as CEO from 2019 to 2023. Kedia will lead fundraising and M&A as the Indian esports and youth entertainment firm prepares for a potential public listing.

During his earlier stint as CEO, Kedia oversaw a tenfold revenue increase and raised over $50 million, including a Sony Group-led round that valued NODWIN at $350 million pre-money. Before rejoining, he held roles at Reliance Industries and Viacom18 focused on media strategy and restructuring.

NODWIN posted INR 524 crore (~$62 million) in FY25 revenue, growing at a 50%+ CAGR since 2018. The company said it crossed that figure within the first three quarters of FY26, reaching INR 530.3 crore while staying EBITDA-positive. The appointment follows the recent addition of Arnd Benninghoff to NODWIN's board.

🎮 On Our Radar: Nintendo's Summoning Patent Gets Revoked

The United States Patent and Trade Office just revoked Nintendo's controversial patent on summoning characters to battle, a mechanic broad enough to cover games from Pokémon to Persona.

The USPTO granted the patent last September, covering the action of summoning another character to fight on the player's behalf. Two months later, director John A Squires personally ordered a re-examination (the first since 2012 without a formal company challenge) and the office has now rejected all 26 claims.

The rejection cites four previous patents that already covered similar mechanics: Konami's 2002 Yabe patent, Nintendo's own 2020 Taura patent, Nintendo's 2022 Motokura patent, and Bandai Namco's 2020 Shimomoto patent. Combined, these existing patents invalidated Nintendo's broader claims.

The decision is non-final. Nintendo has two months to respond and can appeal to the Federal Circuit. If even one claim survives, the company could still pursue selective litigation.

We're watching to see if Nintendo appeals. Will this signal stricter scrutiny of overly broad gaming patents, or just a temporary correction? The answer could determine whether fundamental gameplay mechanics remain open territory or become fragmented legal battlegrounds.

⚡️Quick Bytes

Crimson Desert Hits 4 Million Copies Sold in 12 Days

Pearl Abyss said its open-world action title Crimson Desert surpassed 4 million copies sold worldwide, reaching the milestone 12 days after launch. The game cleared its break-even point by day four. On Steam, it now holds a "Very Positive" overall rating and has recorded a peak of 270,000 concurrent players.

Shift Up Acquires Shinji Mikami's Studio Unbound

Stellar Blade developer Shift Up has acquired Unbound, the Tokyo-based studio founded by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami in 2023. Shift Up will publish and fund all of Unbound's future titles. The roughly 50-person studio is working on an original IP, with a teaser showing what appears to be a large-scale action game set in a destroyed city.

French Esports Broadcaster OTP Posts €3.4 Million in 2024 Revenue

One Trick Production, a French esports production company, reported €3.4 million ($3.94 million) in revenue for 2024, up 13.6% year-on-year. The eight-person firm, which leads French-language coverage of League of Legends, spent €2 million on external services and has posted operating profit every year since its 2020 founding.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Watch: CD PROJEKT RED's UX research leads break down what it actually means to watch people play games for a living, and why that's harder than it sounds on the AnsweRED podcast. "It's not about making sure that the action is performed within a certain amount of time. It's about the feeling and the experience that comes from performing the action. You can't really have a good video game without that soul."

🎮 Play: After enough hours in GRIME II to say this with confidence: mechanically complex combat, extensive enemy variety, great boss fights, and some of the coolest art direction in the genre right now. The mold system is what sets it apart from the rest of the metroidvania pile. You absorb defeated enemies and summon their forms mid-combat, which means your toolkit evolves as you explore rather than staying fixed. A few rough edges, but this is an amazing metroidvania.

📚 Read: GamesIndustry.biz's piece on The Division at ten is a useful corrective to the assumption that live-service games either blow up immediately or die quietly. The Division 2 was supposed to wrap up in 2020, the team dispersed to work on Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar, and then the Warlords of New York expansion performed well enough that Ubisoft rebuilt the team and kept going. Six years later it hit a Steam concurrent players record. Worth reading alongside the Heartland cancellation details, which the team is diplomatic about but don't quite hide.

💡Did You Know

Hideki Naganuma once sampled a Malcolm X speech in a Sonic the Hedgehog game, and almost nobody noticed. In the 2005 Nintendo DS title Sonic Rush, the final boss track "Wrapped in Black" opens with operatic strings before a looping vocal cut breaks through: "Too black, too strong." The audio comes from Malcolm X's 1963 "Message to the Grassroots" speech, where he used coffee and cream as a metaphor for the dilution of the Civil Rights Movement. Naganuma's only public comment on it? "'Wrapped in Black' is a song about coffee. lol." Technically correct.

📜 Quote of the Day

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