London mayor Boris Johnson has been digitised to promote the capital’s video games industry.
Some £1.2mln is being invested to support the Games London scheme which will involve the ‘London Games Festival’, due to take place in early April.
The programme is backed by the London Enterprise Panel (LEP) and trade body The Association for United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment (UKie), and it was launched today by Boris Johnson via animation in the hit build-em-up game Minecraft.
London Games Festival is planned to be a showcase for the sector, and the broader programme will also include business-to-business networking events and trade missions, according to UKie.
It perhaps bodes well for London listed video game firms such as Keywords Studios (LON:KWS), Frontier Developments (LON:FDEV) and eSports group Gfinity (LON:GFIN).
“London is already a star player when it comes to games and interactive entertainment, but international competition is fierce and we need to ensure our city can compete with our global gaming rivals,” Johnson said in a statement.
In other, vaguely BoJo related news, Transport for London has dropped proposals that had posed a threat to minicab hailing app Uber.
The intended crackdown, which would have put extra demands on minicab drivers, had not found widespread support so won’t go ahead.
Uber described TfL’s decision as “a victory for common sense”.
Elsewhere, there was some apparent good news for British households as utility firm E.ON announced a 5.1% drop in its standard gas prices.
E.ON says it will be a saving of around £32 off the average household’s bill.
Down the pub, JD Wetherspoons warned that paying better wages to its staff - in order to compete with restaurants and retailers – had put a dent in its profits for 2015, which are now expected to be at the low end of market expectations.