This Week In The Business: Give In To Your Hate

“We’ve seen this in the franchise before — the reveal trailer for Black Ops II, which took the franchise into the future for the first time had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time and that of course went on to become our most successful game ever.” — Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg explains why a wave of hostility aimed at Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare‘s reveal trailer is no cause for concern.

Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…

STAT | Seven per cent — The amount of Activision Blizzard’s non-GAAP net revenue in the first quarter of 2016 that came from retail channels.

STAT | $US100 ($136) million — The projected development cost of Gears of War 4 if Epic Games had continued making the series, according to CEO Tim Sweeney. The original game cost $US12 ($16) million to develop.

QUOTE | “On stage Phil Spencer said that Xbox is an open platform, which surprises me because you have to get your game concept approved before you can start developing it and then you have to get every update approved and Microsoft has absolute control.” — Sweeney again, this time saying that Microsoft is in propaganda mode when it comes to the Universal Windows Platform initiative.

QUOTE | “In the past it was very Microsoft-ish to lock down everything, to make sure they had full control. But Satya Nadella is saying, ‘put all of our apps on all systems.’ I think people should think about that, because if they did [what Sweeney suggests], in my personal opinion it will really backfire big time.” — CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwinski comes to Microsoft’s defence on the Universal Windows Platform initiative.

QUOTE | “When Wii U was launched, the yen was very strong. I am assuming that situation will not repeat itself. Selling at a loss at launch would not support the business, so we are keeping that mind in developing NX.” — Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima, implying the company will at least break even on every NX unit sold.

QUOTE | “One thing that VR people will be able to bank on, if not games, there’s a lot of enterprise applications and engineering and NASA stuff. So I think there will be opportunities. I’m just not sure it’s a consumer opportunity.” — Indie biz marketing contractor Dan Adelman, explaining why he’s bearish on VR as a mass market device.

QUOTE | “So if the experience is spend a lot of money, look goofy, have 15 cool moments and not have anything after that it’s going to be a cool hot fad and things won’t go anywhere.” — Former chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach predicts that it will be several years before VR gets a foothold with anyone but hardcore gamers.

QUOTE | “Venture capital for gaming startups has dried up, leaving a handful of larger operating companies including Glu as increasingly the only capital providers. As a result of this phenomenon, and we’ve been cautious about consummating large M&A opportunities in the short-term, as we believe the prices may come down further.” — Glu CEO Niccolo de Masi explains why his company hasn’t been buying up rivals. He might also not want to bring on additional headcount considering Glu’s recent campaign of cost-cutting layoffs.

QUOTE | “It’s more about operating leverage than it is about layoffs or risks or anything like that. It’s how you run the business and the yields you get from the resources and the talent you have. And I think by any measure, Zynga has not delivered against that in the past.” — Recently appointed Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau throws past Zynga under the bus to convince people present Zynga has a bright future.

QUOTE | “There is a risk that the more core Clash Royale gameplay will provide an exit ramp for Clash of Clans players out of the Supercell ecosystem.” — EEDAR VP of Insights Patrick Walker suggests that Clash Royale‘s initial success could work against Supercell in the long-term.