‘PlayStation Orbis Has The Jump On Next Xbox’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …

QUOTE | “PlayStation Orbis has the jump on next Xbox.” — Industry sources talking about how Sony, unlike this generation, will actually launch its next PlayStation ahead of the next Xbox.

QUOTE | “In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!” — Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, drumming up thousands of letters to Electronic Arts protesting same-sex content in EA games.

QUOTE | “The next generation of freemium PC games will be indistinguishable from AAA games.” — Ben Cousins, head of ngmoco studios in Sweden, talking about how free-to-play games will dominate console gaming.

QUOTE | “The era of exotic, vision-driven hardware from Sony … is over.” — Richard Leadbetter, hardware expert at Eurogamer, talking about Sony’s Playstation 4 “Orbis” and its switch to a new CPU/GPU architecture.

QUOTE | “EA [has] messed up studios, marketing campaigns and beloved franchises (sometimes all at once).” — PopCap co-founder John Vechey, addressing EA’s winning the Worst Company in America award by saying the company’s not perfect, but no company is.

QUOTE | “It might be time to flip the console business upside down and take a ‘nothing’s sacred, anything goes’ approach.” — Dan “Shoe” Hsu, Editor-in-Chief of GamesBeat, talking about what new Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Europe head Phil Harrison should do with his new role.

QUOTE | “Are you spelling the end of retail? I don’t think so and I don’t want that actually.” — Chris Early, VP of Digital Publishing at Ubisoft, explaining why he thinks retail stores still have an important role in the games business.

STAT | 65 per cent — Percentage of all game hardware sales in Japan achieved by the Nintendo 3DS, according to the latest sales figures from Japan.

QUOTE | “It’d be ironic if the oft predicted death of consoles were actually precipitated by the manufacturers themselves.” — David Radd, veteran game journalist, writing about the possibility of next-generation consoles making it impossible to play used games.

STAT | 50 million — Number of times Draw Something has been downloaded, taking the #1 slot in the App Store back from Angry Birds Space.

QUOTE | “Overall the Wii U just can’t quite keep up.” — Game developers talking about how the Wii U is less powerful than the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

STAT | One trillion dollars — The potential value of Apple if the stock hits $US1000 by 2014, as predicted by Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray.

QUOTE | “New titles will have even greater odds against their success.” — Steve Peterson, West Coast Editor for GamesIndustry International, reporting that developers think next-gen console game budgets will double.

QUOTE | “Most first parties see Nyko as a threat to their business.” — Nyko’s founder and CEO, Herschel Naghi, talking about how console manufacturers look at unlicensed peripheral maker Nyko.

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

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