What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “There’s one mistake that they all make, and that mistake is listening to their customers.” — Jesse Schell, noted game designer, on why Microsoft and other big companies can have a hard time introducing new technology.
QUOTE | “Who knows if there’ll be big publishers in the future? There don’t have to be.” — Ed Fries, co-founder of the Xbox, in a discussion of the greatest things in the last era of gaming.
QUOTE | “The indie community does not want the Xbox One to fail.” — Lorne Lanning, president of Oddworld Inhabitants, noting that noting Microsoft’s console audience of 100 million.
QUOTE | “We want to feel like it’s a struggle every time. We want to feel that almost ‘Rocky moment.’” — Mark Rubin, executive producer at Infinity Ward, describing how the team challenges itself to do better with each game.
STAT | 600 per cent — Increase in average daily revenue for Gree’s Modern War mobile game during a live event weekend; one live event weekend saw the company make $US2.3 million in revenue from the game.
QUOTE | “The biggest challenge comes down to the fact that the industry evolves just so rapidly.” — Lee Perry, co-founder of BitMonster Games, explaining the difficult transition from console to mobile games.
STAT | 233 per cent — Amount that Nexon’s Japanese revenue rose in the last quarter; overall the company saw revenues rise 60 per cent in the last quarter, with most of the revenue from China.
QUOTE | “In Argentina it’s pretty hard to tell your parents you’re going into the video game industry.” — Martina Santoro, Okam Studio co-founder, on the difficulties of game development in Latin America.
STAT | $US5 million — Amount of money Square Enix lost in the last quarter, compared to $US21 million in the same quarter last year; the company is estimating it will show a profit of over $US50 million for the full year.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
Image by Jagodka [Shutterstock]
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5 responses to “This Week In The Business: The Customer Isn’t Always Right”
The other mistake, is have a superior attitude to your customer base, believing you know better than them at all stages. There was, most definitely, some overreaction at the Xboxone but there was also a *LOT* of reasonable, very reasonable, outrage at its policies. A good middleground has now been reached and MS can, and has, come out swinging to enter the next gen console market in a big way. A misstep has been had but they’re now trying to rectify it.
“Sir, if we listen to consumers, the response is going to be bad.”
“Yeah? If we listened to consumers, I’d have a penis in my ear. How bad are we talking?”
“Less than 3% market share bad, sir.”
“Holy mother of Kinect that’s bad. Alright, well… talk is cheap. Let’s see what the dollars do. We can’t backpedal too fast, or I’ll have been washing the taste of cable network ass out of my mouth for nothing.”
*preorders open*
“Fuck me that’s horrific! My balls just shrivelled so fast the vacuum from it gave me a colonic. Get something in the works to fix this NOW.”
MS still never listened to their customers. They listened to the extremely lackluster presale figures.
Which was customers speaking with their wallets.
The customer IS always right, but the customer doesn’t know what they want.