“It’s outright embarrassing how totally unrepresented many of the industry’s biggest players are in the mobile arena.” — Jeferson Valadares, Bandai Namco’s head of mobile, talking about how traditional game publishers need to get busy making mobile games.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “It’s when you start to cut the corners and try to take advantage of your audience… The morality of that is questionable, and I think parents and kids can see it.” — Nerd Corps president Ken Faier, talking about transmedia properties like Slugterra that have games, TV shows and toys, all aimed at kids.
QUOTE | “Xbox One sold more games throughout November and December in the US than any other current-generation platform.” — Statement from Microsoft, lauding the fact that the Xbox One was the best-selling console in the US for November and December, and not coincidentally announcing the Xbox One will again be $US349 as it was during the last two months.
STAT | 11 per cent — Growth in US digital game sales in December over last December, according to SuperData; mobile game revenues jumped 17 per cent while digital console game sales rose 10 per cent.
STAT | 13 per cent — Drop in US retail game software sales in December compared to last December, according to NPD; hardware sales rose 20 per cent and overall the month was down one per cent compared to December 2013.
QUOTE | “The reported numbers are incorrect, exaggerated and we did not get rid of entire engineering teams.” — Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, responding to reports of 25 per cent staff cuts at the company.
STAT | 94.4 per cent — Amount that sales of PS4 and Xbox One software increased in the nine-week holiday period at GameStop over last year, according to the company; despite that, the company reported a 6.7 per cent drop in global sales due to exchange rate changes.
QUOTE | “I think it’s pretty easy to imagine that in the future we will have something that we can wear.” — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, talking about VR and acknowledging that current hardware (like the Oculus VR) is “very, very rough“.
STAT | 30 million — Number of downloads so far for Minecraft: Pocket Edition, which sells for $US6.99, according to Mojang; the PC/Mac edition has sold more than 18 million copies and last Saturday the game had 1.4 million concurrent players.
STAT | 29 per cent — Amount of game developers who made the bulk of their sales directly from consumers, according to the latest State of the Industry survey by GDC; only 13 per cent saw the majority of sales from retail, and 21 per cent said microtransactions were their major revenue source.
STAT | $US5.8 million — Amount premium mobile game Monument Valley has earned through sales with development costs of $US1.3 million, according to developer ustwogames; the game is installed on over 10 million devices.
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