QUOTE | “This change will be enough to push the Xbox One installed base higher than PS4 in the US and Canada in 2015.” — IDC analyst Lewis Ward, commenting on Microsoft’s decision to release a Kinect-less Xbox One for $US399.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “We expect it to become a major heavyweight of the industry.” — Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, confirming that the company expects Watch Dogs to be one of the top-selling games of 2014.
QUOTE | “We were doing Ferraris, very proud of the high quality product, and you get embedded in that type of thinking.” — Stephane D’Astous, former general manager of Eidos Montreal, talking about his shift to making tablet games as COO of Hibernum.
STAT | 33 million — Number of copies of Grand Theft Auto V Take-Two sold-in to date; the publisher had record sales of $US2.35 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, with profits of $US361.7 million.
STAT | 74 per cent — Percentage of gamers who prefer disc versions of games to digital downloads, according to NPD; their survey also said there are 34 million core gamers in the US who spend an average of 22 hours a week playing games.
QUOTE | “Taken as a whole the games industry is making mobile games that nobody cares about available to millions of players for nothing.” — Fireproof Games’ Barry Meade weighing in on the problem with the free-to-play and the mobile games industry.
STAT | $US9.5 billion — Amount of revenue Sony’s Game division made in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014; revenue was up 38 per cent, but the division lost $US78 million due to PS4 launch costs.
QUOTE | “If there’s an opportunity to grow inorganically with a company that’s consistent with our disciplined approach, then we would absolutely do so.” — Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, essentially saying he’s looking to buy a company or two.
STAT | $US11.89 — Amount per user that mobile game Puzzle & Dragons makes, according to SuperData; this crushes the amounts earned by the #2 game Big Fish Casino ($2.07) and the #3 game, Clash of Clans ($1.31).
STAT | 17 per cent — Amount US retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories increased in April, up to $US580.3 million, according to NPD; hardware sales rose 76 per cent while software sales dropped 10 per cent.
QUOTE | “There’s such a variety of devices… that we can now imagine experiences for consumers throughout their day.” — Phil Rogers, CEO of Square Enix in the Americas and Europe, talking about their strategy for making games.
STAT | 20 per cent — Amount Ubisoft sales dropped for its fiscal year ended March 31, down to $US1.38 billion; the company expects to turn things around with sales of $US1.92 billion this year and a profit of $US205.7 million.
STAT | $US1.03 billion — Profit that Chinese online giant Tencent made in the first three months of this year, up 58 per cent; this was on sales of $US2.95 billion (an impressive 35 per cent net margin), with the growth attributed to mobile games.
Comments
6 responses to “This Week In The Business: The Xbox One Unleashed”
I feel like I need to single out this…
GI.biz, for the last two years, has basically talked about Mobile like it was an endlessly profitable frontier; this is first thing I’ve seen from them that looks at it for what it is – an Atari 2600/Colecovision/Intellivision level clusterfuck
30fps with 720p doesn’t appeal to me and doesn’t sound very unleashed.
The fan boy in it’s natural habitat.
Actually i am not a “fanboy”. I just find it silly that most things are 1080p and this “next gen” machine won’t.
“This change will be enough to push the Xbox One installed base higher than PS4 in the US and Canada in 2015.” — IDC analyst Lewis Ward, commenting on Microsoft’s decision to release a Kinect-less Xbox One for $US399.
Lol that is funny stuff, there are sweet FA preorders happening for the system, this move isnt going to shift as many consoles as this guy seems to think it will.
Also known as
“We will force everyone to own Kinect, at a premium, in order to see our vision of the product.”
…
“Oh, that went poorly… I can’t imagine why. Better give them what they actually want.”