Some big technology companies are ramping up their investment in the video gaming industry as younger generations pour into the space, said the head of a Canadian gaming content firm.

Adrian Montgomery, chief executive officer at Enthusiast Gaming Holdings Inc., told BNN Bloomberg that major tech companies like Microsoft Corp. are following so-called Generation Z consumer habits and are finding a demographic that’s quickly flocking to gaming. Generation Z is typically defined as the cohort of people born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s. 

“[Microsoft is] focused on video games, video game content, and the communities for video game fans,” Montgomery said. The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant has expressed interest in gaming community platform Discord and reported US$5 billion in revenue from its video game division in the first quarter this year.

“The CEO of Microsoft talks about how the future is going to be about content, it’s going to be about the communities that surround that content, the creation of that content and he always talks about reaching three billion gamers in the world.”

Montgomery added that other companies in the so-called FAANG group - which includes Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent company Alphabet Inc. - are also competing for market dominance. Amazon is the parent company of video game broadcaster Twitch. 

“They recognize that there are so many Gen Z’ers in the world. They don’t watch television anymore, they’re hard to reach and engage with, but they play video games and 70 per cent of them say video games are a core part of their identity,” Montgomery said.

“This notion of communities where Gen Z’s flock to, to socialize, to share content, create content, that is where the world is going.”

As a digital media company that specializes in gaming communities, Montgomery said that Enthusiast Gaming is well-positioned to ride this trend and filed a prospectus on Tuesday to soon list its shares on the Nasdaq exchange. However, when it comes to whether Big Tech's interest in gaming could make Enthusiast a takeover target, Montgomery said now is not the time.

“We’re so focused on building the company and we see so much runway ahead of us that those sorts of conversations, I believe, are premature.”