QUOTE | “You’ve decided that some breasts deserve a prime spot.” — Rachel Weber, GamesIndustry International journalist, commenting about Future’s CVG site posting a gallery of E3 booth babes and sadly asking readers to “get their scorecards out”.
QUOTE | “There are people who love the stuff I’ve worked on … but there are probably an equal number of people who just think I’m an arsehole.” — David Jaffe, veteran game designer, talking about his next project and why he’s not sure Kickstarter would work for him.
STAT | 45,700 — Number of attendees at E3 2012, which may move away from Los Angeles next year.
QUOTE | “Wow, these guys are really terrified of an Apple TV.” — Rob Fahey, veteran game journalist, commenting on Microsoft’s SmartGlass presentation at E3.
QUOTE | “Its ideas are too scattered, its selling point too hard to grasp. Perhaps that’s also true of Wii U itself.” — Eurogamer journalist Oli Welch talking about NintendoLand, along with other journalists dissing Nintendo’s E3 showing.
QUOTE | “It’s the right time to come with a new machine, the industry is waiting for new machines, new types of games.” — Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, talking about the Wii U and why Ubisoft is developing eight games for it.
QUOTE | “I personally don’t care what the next gen of consoles are because I’m not excited about consoles anymore.” — John Romero, co-founder of id Software and designer of Doom, talking about the future of game development.
STAT | $US70 billion — Amount of revenue the game industry will take in globally in 2017, according to the latest prediction from research firm DFC Intelligence, with 39 per cent from PC games.
QUOTE | “We’re building a PC-targeted game right now and I love that.” — Mike Capps, head of Epic Games, talking about Unreal Engine 4 and the resurgence of the PC as a gaming machine.
QUOTE | “You can buy an expensive cup of coffee for more than what it would take for you to access a library of 12 games.” — Jack Buser, head of digital products for Sony, talking about the new games that PlayStation Plus provides starting now.
QUOTE | “I just think it cheapens your intellectual property.” — David DeMartini, head of EA’s Origin digital distribution service, talking about Steam’s practice of deep-discounting games for brief periods of time.
QUOTE | “Think about the message it sends out about your confidence in the talent of a development team when … you farm out the trailer to a separate CGI studio.” — Johnny Minkley, veteran gaming journalist, talking about game trailers being made without using in-game material.
STAT | 49 per cent — Amount of US households that have at least one game console, according to the Entertainment Software Association; the average is two per household.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International.
Image: Richard Cabrera
The comment about farming out pre-rendered trailers to animation studios is pretty ignorant IMO. There is a vast gulf in knowledge between animation companies and games companies. The gap has been closing somewhat since game content has gotten higher detail but the rendering processes, software, hardware etc. required for an animation job is quite different. It's an outlay of at least 50k just to get the software and unless you happen to have a few guys who've worked in key roles in animation (which often pays better) then you're going to need to hire some very expensive personnel to show your normal artists how it's done.
I think the point he was trying to make was that game trailers should be using in game footage, not prerendered CGI, regardless of whether that CGI is rendered in-house or externally.
+1 Exactly
I don't agree with his statement. Not all games could render CGI scene from game footage. How the hell could you render cutscenes with RTS gameplay for Starcraft 2 or Dawn of War?
I for one have never been disappointed that a cutscene is not gameplay footage or even the same engine or studio and mostly, its horses for courses.
I'm a little disappointed that the first link did not take me to the gallery in question.
"“I just think it cheapens your intellectual property.” — David DeMartini, head of EA’s Origin digital distribution service, talking about Steam’s practice of deep-discounting games for brief periods of time."
I take it this guy has never read the PA report or posed as a publisher asking Steam marketing types to provide some figures on what Steam's legendary sales do to overall income for a game.
This is why Origin isn't making money hand over fist like Steam does. They're too tight-fisted. They have these ridiculous 'sales' which are 10% off 3-5yr old games. No-one is impressed, but EA don't seem to know why.
Of course, having read the article in full... It's worse than that. It looks like he does understand. And deliberately is trying something ELSE which 'he can't talk about yet', but attempts to add value to old properties so that we still pay full price?
(Also, not reference d in the Kotaku soundbite, but he spends time discussing how they're going to add pretty much completed indie game that applies to be distributed on Origin. Hello itunes game apps store.)
The one thing I remember about Origin, was seeing kingdoms of amalur on there for $20 more than steam had it. Also note, there were absolutely no sales on the game at Steam.
Another digital distribution service is a good idea of course. Now that I have seen that it's pretty clear EA have no idea what they're doing and do not give a shit about ripping off their customers, because they don't want to appear "cheap".
Ahh Origin. A terrible copy of an idea that already existed, was crammed into BF3 even though it was a beta, and they had done a HUGE amount of work on getting the web portal game access. Not to mention that it was malware at the start, and had to be patched. All of this just so I can see how overpriced EA considers their back catalogue, which I can get cheaper almost everywhere else. Would love to meet the genius that pitched that idea.
I think there is something to be said that a discount of 90% makes it look like the regular price is a 10x markup. 50% off sales are still really amazing and don't have the same impact on the market expectation. GoG has made the same argument and they regularly have 50% sales, although not across their entire store like Steam does.
Boobs are a great marketing tool. nuff said
I love how the boobs quote was used as an excuse to post that picture as the header for this article. It's kind of just a smack in the face to that journalist
Meh, nothing interesting happened at e3 this year why not post boobs. Why go after journalist for making articles about booth babes when it's the game companies that employ them.