“Getting people sick isn’t a choice.” — Valve’s Chet Faliszek, talking about how the future of VR depends on finding a solution to motion sickness in its users.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…
QUOTE | “Console desperately needs re-invention in terms of some of the game mechanics… there’s not enough innovation.” — Unity CEO (and former CEO of EA) John Riccitiello, talking about the general lack of innovation in gaming.
QUOTE | “You have to be a certain kind of crazy to be developing a VR-only game in 2015.” — Owlchemy Labs’ Alex Schwartz, talking about why the developer is focusing completely on VR games now.
QUOTE | “If I’m making a $US50 million AAA game, I’m probably not building a VR version of that for any reason other than press. That entire market is such a risk.” — Ex-Epic Games president Mike Capps, talking about why VR is a risky platform to develop for right now.
QUOTE | “I’ve always believed that mod makers should be able to make money from their creations.” — John Romero, director of Quake, reacting to Valve’s short-lived program to compensate mod makers.
QUOTE | “When we first started on the game we didn’t have plans to do a phone version, for that matter we didn’t plan to do a tablet version.” — Blizzard’s Hearthstone production director Jason Chayes, talking about how Hearthstone eventually made it onto tablets and smartphones.
STAT | 12 billion — Amount of hours that Activision games were played in the last 12 months, according to the publisher; that was from 150 million active users (Hearthstone alone has 30 million registered players).
QUOTE | “We knew that if we tried to go head-to-head with Star Citizen, you can’t right? We need to find our own niche. We need to be different or die.” — Impeller Studios executive producer Coray Seifert, talking about their upcoming space-fighting game.
STAT | $US110 billion — Projected size of the global game software market in 2018, according to Digi-Capital. That’s up from the $US88 billion projected for this year. In 2018, mobile games will be the largest single segment of the industry at $US45 billion.
QUOTE | “The exposure of a game announcement shouldn’t be limited to its core audience.” — Andre Vu, global executive brand director for Deus Ex, talking about the brand’s successful promotional campaign on Twitch for the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
STAT | $US4.52 billion — Total amount of sales Electronic Arts raked in during their fiscal year 2015 (which ended March 31); net income was $US875 million, with more than half the company’s revenue coming from digital sales.
STAT | $US612 million — Amount of money that eSports generates globally, according to SuperData; the audience is around 134 million people, and Asia is the dominant market with $US374 million of the global revenue.
Comments
3 responses to “This Week In The Business: Gonna Be Sick”
The Former CEO of EA saying Consoles need to develop new mechanics, yet EA basically churned out the same game every year with a minor tweak to keep all their Franchises going.
To be fair to Riccitiello earlier in his tenure the company did put out some riskier stuff by their own standards (Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space). However the market realities turned against them and it was back to generic sequelville after that.
Chet Faliszek: also very funny on Twitter.