This Week In The Business: Virtual Shots Fired

This Week In The Business: Virtual Shots Fired

“In reality I see [virtual reality] as a very expensive Wii.” — Day Z developer Dean Hall, sharing his concerns about the new tech given how little is known about what games will sell and how big the market for it will be.

Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…

QUOTE | “So when I look at VR I think about the fear issues and especially in a hot politics season. It scares me to death to think about the baby shaker games on the phone and then somebody builds that in VR with your hands drawn.” — Former Epic exec and ESA board member Mike Capps, cautioning that VR could produce another wave of anti-game hysteria.

STAT | 15 per cent — The percentage of surveyed gamers who said they planned on purchasing a VR headset in 2016.

QUOTE | “I think once you get to bigger teams, ‘auteur’ almost always means ‘I’m not disciplined enough to plan ahead, so I just have to react to everything and tell you I don’t like it.’ And a lot of those games end up going way over-budget and way under-delivering or just being a kind of a disorganised mess…” — Former Bungie and Sucker Punch developer Jaime Griesemer, shedding light on why he left AAA development to found Highwire Games.

QUOTE | “[I]f someone finishes the entire game and is like, ‘I don’t know if I want my money back,’ that’s a thing that only a person who plays video games would ask, right?” — Campo Santo developer Nels Anderson, regarding players who finish Firewatch and then request refunds from Steam.

QUOTE | “Having a unified vision inside the company of who you are and what you’re trying to do really helps you get out of the wilderness.” — Incoming Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau, explaining how his time at EA during that company’s turnaround will help his current employer finally turn the corner.

STAT | $US650 ($875) million — The combined annual revenues of EA’s Ultimate Team modes in the Madden, FIFA, and NHL franchises.

QUOTE | “That is the health metric of any service that you want to talk about. What’s your monthly active users in the space? It’s not how many consoles I sell. If I sold a console two years ago and now it’s in the closet collecting dust, that’s not good for the gamers.” — Xbox box Phil Spencer, explaining why the company focuses not on hardware sales figures but on user engagement metrics.

STAT | Two — The maximum number of $US3000 ($4039) HoloLens dev kits a developer can request from Microsoft in each application to work with the augmented reality hardware.

QUOTE | “It’s validating to really kill yourself for something and bleed for it and have it find an audience and people who are enthusiastic for it and enjoying it… I can’t say I would do it again, but if I were back in time, I would do it again. I just can’t do it again, like, next week.” — Red Hook Studios developer Chris Bourassa, saying the crunch and stress of finishing Darkest Dungeon were ultimately worth it.

QUOTE | “Every kid loved video games, and having the opportunity to make games has changed my life.” — Probe co-founder Fergus McGovern, in 2008. McGovern died last week at the age of 50.

Photo credit: Getty Images


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