“You look at the relatively thin field at the top and we’ve sort of died and gone to heaven in terms of the opportunity.” — Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, explaining that they see themselves as #3 out of only four companies making AAA games.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…
QUOTE | “And suddenly every monster game is like all the other one[s], and cost a lot to make… The AAA industry definitely has to pause and question the current recipe.” — Former Ubisoft exec Jade Raymond, talking about why we need more innovation in AAA games and how to encourage it.
QUOTE | “Our first-party line-up is a little sparse this year, so I think this places even greater emphasis on getting good third-party support.” — Sony Computer Entertainment head Andrew House, talking about Sony’s plans for the coming year.
QUOTE | “We believe greed, fear, and the potential to change the world are going to drive VR/AR.” — Analysts at Macquarie Securities, talking about how games will be the launchpad for VR and AR, though the timing is uncertain.
QUOTE | “We are looking at an all-in price, if you have to go out and actually need to buy a new computer and you’re going to buy the Rift… at most you should be in that $US1500 range.” — Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, explaining what it will cost to experience VR with his company’s hardware.
QUOTE | “Our first thought was, ‘It’s been fun. We can now go and deliver pizzas for the rest of our lives.’” — Tiny Bull Studios CEO Matteo Lana, talking about how they felt when they learned former Irrational Games devs launched a Kickstarter for a game that sounded exactly like the one they’d been working on for a year.
QUOTE | “If you want a free-to-play game to be successful, it has to be genuinely free — people have to be able to play forever without purchase. That’s just a general design rule, but it’s also completely contradictory. How can you make money from a game designed to be free?” — Veteran designer Pascal Luban, talking about how the design process is so different for F2P games.
QUOTE | “There will be some very big clients on both the brand side and the gaming side who will be spending alone in one year $US500 million — even up to $US1 billion — just on mobile video ads.” – LoopMe’s Stephen Upstone, talking about how mobile game companies are spending huge amounts on marketing.
QUOTE | “It’s a hard and demanding task, you’re always on top of your game, you’re always creatively thinking, but that’s actually the only thing that’s worth it in this business, being a game developer.” — Croteam’s Damjan Mravunac, talking about working as an indie developer.
STAT | 8.5 per cent — Amount that GameStop’s net income rose (to $US73.8 million) for the quarter ended 2 May, while revenue rose 3.2 per cent to $US2.06 billion; the company said it was due to a 9.6 per cent rise in new software sales, and that GameStop captured a 45 per cent share of the new software market.
STAT | 50 per cent — Amount that revenue from games on Google Play has increased since last year, according to Google; Japan is the leading company in mobile game revenue for Google Play, followed by the USA.
QUOTE | “For me, as a game developer for a long time and also an entrepreneur, it’s just such an amazing opportunity. I call this the renaissance of gaming.” — Veteran developer Jon Van Caneghem, talking about his new studio VC Mobile Entertainment, making games for gamers on mobile devices.
Comments
3 responses to “This Week In The Business: Three Out Of Four Ain’t Bad”
The AAA industry definitely has to pause and question the current recipe.” — Former Ubisoft exec Jade Raymond.
I like to think that the former part of that statement is in relation to ubisoft not liking that she had original thoughts
Is this guy suggesting his company is bigger than Ubisoft? And why only four companies making AAA, what about Zenimax, Deep Silver, Warner Bros, Square Enix, Capcom
The second the GTA money dries up they’ll be back to being a takeover target for the bigger fish which was their predicament for the three years leading up to GTA V
Not to mention Nintendo, Naughty Dog, Valve etc.
Though, I think his definition of AAA now has to be some bland shooter with a $500+ million budget. Maybe they should be referred to AAAA games…