QUOTE | “I was so fed up of people telling us we should do free-to-f**king-play, in-app-f**king purchases, whatever the f**k that is, and that consoles were dead. So f**k all of those people and their f**king shitty stance.” — Graeme Struthers of Devolver, talking about why he’s happy to see next-gen consoles doing well.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Consumers love the device; they love the experience. They will buy it” — Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer, talking about the Kinect and why it will continue to be important even though it’s not included in the $US399 Xbox One package.
QUOTE | “These are multinational, enormous corporations and if they get their way, they could stifle this indie community in the media.” — Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning, talking about why net neutrality is the biggest issue facing games today.
QUOTE | “There are just toys everywhere and everyone’s talking about games non-stop. You’re not having people showing you spreadsheets and talking about business plans.” — Sony Worldwide Studios’ Scott Rohde, talking about how the atmosphere has changed at Sony’s offices to be more game-centric and indie-friendly.
QUOTE | “Freemium effectively focuses on a niche — they just happen to be whales who spend unlimited amounts of money.” — Ustwo director of games Neil McFarland, talking about why they priced Monument Valley as a premium game.
QUOTE | “We wanted to tell a story over ten years.” — Bungie COO Pete Parsons, talking about the company’s plan for Destiny and why it’s requiring a $US500 million investment from Activision.
QUOTE | “Our vision is to provide what we call a gamer lifestyle.” — Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester, explaining the company’s vision and why Magicka 2 is coming to the PS4.
STAT | $US100 billion — Amount of revenue that game software of all types is predicted to generate globally by 2018, according to analyst firm DFC Intelligence; this compares to the $US64 billion globally expected for this year.
QUOTE | “How, as a smaller independent developer, can you make sports games in a more accessible way?” — Peter Garcin, executive producer at HB Studios, talking about the difficulties of doing sports games without a licence.
QUOTE | “As more and more projects may fail to deliver on their promises due to lack of planning or oversight, crowd funding for games will become increasingly difficult.” — Cloud Imperium Games co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth, suggesting that lessons from independent film financing could help crowd funded games.
STAT | 54 million — Number of copies of Minecraft sold across all platforms, according to Mojang; the console editions combined have now sold more than the PC/Mac versions.
Image via Shutterstock
Comments
6 responses to “This Week In The Business: Putting The ‘F-U’ In Free-To-Play?”
Graeme Struthers of Devolver, I heart you so much.
He says what we’re all thinking
Devolver Digital in general is a pretty lovable company. Fork Parker’s tweets are entertaining, I think he even made a competition on twitter where people got free video game copies of Serious Sam 3 for ripping on EA and Warfighter.
Also, the trailer he made himself for that game was great too.
Bungie: $500 million over ten years; still can’t be fucked releasing on PC. Screw that for a joke.
Watch a bunch of Destiny Alpha Let’s Plays and play a drinking game where you take a shot every time you see a player miss a shot they’d have made if they’d had a keyboard & mouse. Surefire recipe for ending up in hospital.
I doubt anyone can drink that fast, let alone that much.