What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “The single player mechanic is a gimmick.” — Jonas Antonsson, Gogogic CEO, talking about why games are moving toward a sort of multiplayer singularity.
QUOTE | “PlayStation Plus is a nice weapon in our arsenal.” — Sony executive John Koller talking about the impact of the PlayStation Plus program on PSN and how it’s going to be a big part of Sony’s marketing plans moving forward.
STAT | 5.5 million — Number of Wii U units Nintendo expects to sell through March 2013, below what analysts expected; Nintendo also expects over four games to sell for each Wii U, which one analyst says is “highly unrealistic”.
QUOTE | “We are not satisfied with our recent performance, and we’re taking immediate action with a cost-reduction plan.” — Zynga CFO Dave Wehner, detailing Zynga’s problems and the layoff of 150 people as Zynga tries to rebound.
QUOTE | “I think the new iPad Mini will be a massive success — our only disappointment is its $US329 entry price.” — Chris Ulm, CEO of Appy Entertainment, talking along with other game developers about the iPad Mini as a game machine.
STAT | 200 million — Number of iOS devices Apple sold in the last year; 125 million were iPhones and 58 million were iPads.
QUOTE | “Today’s market, flooded with smartphones, tablets and other perfectly game-capable devices, simply won’t support a profit-making, high cost console.” — Rob Fahey, former GamesIndustry.biz editor, talking about why Nintendo is enduring the pain of selling the Wii U at a loss.
QUOTE | “Managing any large team remotely is an exercise in herding cats, by default.” — Chris Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, talking about their new site and the all-star team of editors he’s managing.
STAT | 40 million — Number of copies of Assassin’s Creed franchise games sold to date; pre-orders for Assassin’s Creed III are more than double last year’s Assassin’s Creed Revelations.
QUOTE | “The marketplace is already incredibly hot, and the adoption [of tablets] is going to continue to climb at never-seen-before rates.” — Nick Earl, head of mobile and social for EA, talking about how the company is looking to the red-hot tablet market for growth.
QUOTE | “The next thing I think is this core mobile market and this MOGA controller is going to unlock it.” — JJ Richards, VP at MOGA, talking about their new game controller that works with any Android smartphone.
STAT | 100,000 — Number of gamers attending the fifth annual Brazil Game Show; the show started with only 4000 attendees and is now one of the biggest consumer game shows worldwide.
QUOTE | “Developing games in the US is not really the most efficient way for us at the moment.” — Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz, explaining why the online game developer is closing its San Francisco office and he is resigning as CEO to become chairman of the board.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
Image from Shutterstock
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