What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Project Shield is a melange of too many ideas and gimmicks.” — Dan Pearson, GamesIndustry International journalist, talking with others about the flood of new gaming hardware being introduced and why few will likely succeed.
QUOTE | “It was just miserable. I don’t blame indies for not jumping on WiiWare.” — Mike Roush of Gaijin Games, talking about their experience with Nintendo’s online offering before the new eShop.
QUOTE | “That’s hugely, hugely encouraging, because this is our sweet-spot.” — Nick Earl, SVP and general manager of EA’s All Play label, talking about how dollars are going towards core games on mobile platforms.
STAT | 22 per cent — Amount that video game hardware, software and accessories sales dropped from 2011 to 2012 at retail; hardware sales were down 27 per cent, the fourth straight year of declines.
QUOTE | “2013 will see more launches for dedicated games consoles than any previous year on record.” — Rob Fahey, former editor of GamesIndustry.biz, talking about why consoles aren’t dead, but the business won’t be the same.
QUOTE | “We’re in the world of Metacritic, and we do know there’s compensation that is being withheld from developers based on these reviews. It really starts to corrupt that process.” — Adam Sessler, former host of the X-Play TV show, talking about where game journalism is heading.
STAT | $US500 million — Amount that Skylanders has earned for Activision in the US market through 2012; that includes the software and the toys/figures, and $US195 million of that is from Skylanders Giants.
QUOTE | “The tipping point for cloud gaming is definitely going to be this year.” — Makarand Dharmapurikar, CTO and Co-Founder of CiiNOW, talking about how cloud gaming is finally going to become broadly available.
STAT | 15 million — Number of copies of Minecraft that sold through the end of 2012; the most popular version was on the Xbox 360, selling over 5 million units.
STAT | 890,000 — Number of Wii Us sold in the US in 2012, resulting in $US300 million in revenue compared to the Wii’s $US270 million in its first months; but the Wii was only $US249 compared to $US299 or $US349 for the Wii U.
STAT | $US9.7 billion — Amount of revenue for games in China for 2012; 90 per cent of that revenue came from online games.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International.
Image from Shutterstock
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