{"id":462764,"date":"2026-03-07T15:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/462764\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T15:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:18:08","slug":"palmer-luckeys-1bn-pitch-to-reboot-1990s-video-game-consoles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/462764\/","title":{"rendered":"Palmer Luckey\u2019s $1bn pitch to reboot 1990s video game consoles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

The billionaire war drone maker Palmer Luckey has a new pitch for investors: a $1bn bet he can revive interest in the Game Boy.<\/p>\n

The founder of Anduril Industries<\/a>, which builds AI-powered weapons for the Pentagon, is raising funds for his venture, ModRetro, which plans to develop and sell updated versions of classic 1990s consoles.<\/p>\n

According to people familiar with the matter, Luckey is in talks with investors about backing the business at a $1bn valuation as it prepares to launch devices including a machine that recreates the Nintendo 64.<\/p>\n

ModRetro in 2024 launched its first device called the Chromatic, which is in the style of Nintendo\u2019s Game Boy and comes bundled with the popular puzzle video game Tetris.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been working on making the ultimate Game Boy inspired device off and on as a hobby for almost seventeen years now,\u201d Luckey wrote in a 2025 blog post.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is, put simply, my ultimate tribute to the beautiful form, technical excellence, and cultural impact of the Nintendo Game Boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckey co-founded Anduril in 2017 after he left Facebook, which had bought his virtual reality headset business, Oculus, for $2bn in 2014 when he was 21.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The success of Anduril, backed by prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel and named after a sword in JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings, has made him one of Silicon Valley\u2019s best-known entrepreneurs; a uniform of Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops and a mullet means Luckey is also among the most recognisable. <\/p>\n

Anduril sells drones and other autonomous weapons to the US military<\/a> and its allies, taking on an oligopoly of contractors including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for a share of an industry worth trillions of dollars.<\/p>\n

The company has capitalised on surging investment in defence technology and is in talks with investors about a major new funding round which could value it above $60bn, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. <\/p>\n

ModRetro was the name of Luckey\u2019s first business, an internet forum he started as a teenager popular with \u201chardware hackers combining vintage game consoles with modern technology,\u201d he wrote in the blog post. <\/p>\n

The company will also produce games including remasters of classics and new titles. ModRetro did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-462764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}