What’s happened in the business of video games this past week ….
QUOTE | “I think people might not grasp how hard that is, to develop a game at the same time as the hardware.” — Patrick Bach of EA DICE, on developing Battlefield 4 to launch with next-gen consoles.
QUOTE | “The right way to be successful is do something original … not to chase revenues that already worked for somebody else.” — Torsten Reil, CEO of Natural Motion, on why “fast following” isn’t a good mobile publishing strategy.
STAT | 52 per cent — Rise in game sales at US retail stores this September compared to last September, due mostly to GTA V; console hardware sales dropped 13 per cent, and the PS3 broke Microsoft’s 32-month streak as the #1 console.
QUOTE | “Over time we’ll see more and more offloading of intensive CPU processing to the cloud.” — Microsoft’s John Bruno, on how developers are using the Xbox One’s cloud computing capacity to make games better.
QUOTE | “We’re not in your face about monetization. We want you to play, and if you like it, you can give something back to the developers.” — Nikola Cavic of Nordeus, on their free-to-play Facebook game Top Eleven.
STAT | One million — Number of Disney Infinity toy box downloads in two weeks; Disney said previously the game sold 294,000 copies in its first two weeks on sale.
QUOTE | “The Middle East/North Africa region is growing like crazy.” — Rina Onur, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Peak Games, on the 300 per cent annual growth rate for the company’s Facebook and mobile games.
STAT | $US970 million — Amount of revenue digital sales of games brought in this September; this total includes mobile, social, DLC and full game downloads, and is higher than the $US754.3 million in retail software sales.
QUOTE | “There is absolutely an indie renaissance — a permanent renaissance.” — Albert Reed, CEO and Co-founder of Demiurge Studios, on the terrific opportunities for indie developers nowadays.
STAT | $US1.5 billion — Amount that SoftBank and GungHo Entertainment paid for 51 per cent of Finnish developer Supercell; the company intends to become “the first truly global games company” according to CEO Ilkka Paananen.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
Image by Elnur [Shutterstock]
Comments
7 responses to “This Week In The Business: The Hardware Is The Hard Part”
Interesting that the PS3 broke Microsoft’s 32-month streak as the #1 console when GTA came out, i thought it would have happened during the last of us or something?
I never would have imagined The Last of Us as a real system seller to be perfectly honest. GTA though, yes, definitely would have moved consoles.
But gta would have mooved both consoles i would imagine, wonder what gave ps the edge?
Preference, pretty much.
360 has outsold PS3 in the USA by a fair bit, so it’s probably closer to saturation point ie everybody who wants one already has one.
Everything Softbank touches turns to shit. Sorry Finland.
I call BS on the 360 cloud for intensive CPU calcs. I just can’t see how sending data out to the internets, having a server pick it up, process it and return it via the internets and then have the console integrate the computations into the game can work in a realtime gaming situation. I think it is an excuse to force online connectivity while playing.