“I think this Oculus VR/Facebook deal will appear cheap five years from now, akin to Google’s purchase of YouTube in 2006.” — Investor Asif Khan, CFO of Virtue LLC, talking along with other analysts about the pros and cons of Facebook’s Oculus acquisition.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “If I really want people to play this for months… I cannot smack them in the face with monetisation and demand through their addiction of the game that they pay me money.” — Peter Molyneux, veteran game designer, talking about how Godus may be 22Cans’ last game.
QUOTE | “At first it’s always an indie happy-land, and then the suits like me come in and start fucking it up for everybody.” — Eric Goossens, CEO of Spil Games, talking aboutthe problems and opportunities in casual games.
QUOTE | “A lot of games feel more like work, or some sort of skill-based mechanical thing that doesn’t have that playfulness.” — John Murphy, designer of Octodad: Dadliest Catch, talking about why play matters more than video games.
QUOTE | “While cloud-based delivery of video games is innovative and potentially revolutionary, the gaming consumer has not yet demonstrated that it is ready to adopt this type of service.” — GameStop VP of investor relations Matt Hodges, explaining why GameStop is shutting down streaming service Spawn Labs.
STAT | $US5.4 billion — Amount of money that smartphone games in Japan earned in 2013; this is 50 per cent of the total games revenue in Japan, up from 30 per cent in 2012.
QUOTE | “It’s more about people making a rash decision to switch over and chase a quick buck.” — Naoki Yoshida, producer on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, talking about why he thinks many MMOs switch to free-to-play from subscriptions.
QUOTE | “We got a cold call from HBO because they thought that there was going to be a great overlap between our players and their demographic.” — Dustin Beck, VP of eSports for Riot Games, explaining why League of Legends will be doing a Game of Thrones promotion.
STAT | 24,000+ — Number of attendees at this year’s Game Developers Conference; that’s a new record, up from last year’s 23,000 attendees.
QUOTE | “To be truthful, it honestly saved our company.” — Jeremy Blum of New World Interactive, explaining how Steam’s Early Access program helped their game Insurgency generate revenue.
STAT | $US352 million — Annual amount of microtransactions for in-game items on consoles in 2013; these transactions were made by over 23 million consumers.
Image by Shutterstock
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