“It did remind me of [Kinect]. You kind of want to scream ‘don’t over promise these things.’” — Designer Peter Molyneux of 22cans, talking about Microsoft HoloLens from his perspective as an early Kinect developer.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “There have been a lot of crappy games with crappy free-to-play pricing models.” — Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson, talking about why there’s a “free-to-play stigma” among developers.
QUOTE | “Consumers have begun to ask ‘What’s the catch?’ when downloading a free-to-play game.” — Game publisher Tilting Point’s VP of product strategy Jesse Divnich, talking about why their game Leo’s Friend is premium priced rather than free-to-play.
QUOTE | “I think a lot of games have unrealistic forecasts. Everyone knows that they’re unrealistic, but they have to have these unrealistic forecasts to justify the investment that’s going into development.” — Ninja Theory’s Dominic Matthews, talking about why getting big games funded is difficult.
STAT | $US100 million — Amount Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts expects the crowd-funded game will gather by its full public release in 2016; the total is close to $US70 million now, with two of the six major segments released.
QUOTE | “The Disney Infinity platform is now the clear market leader.” — Disney Interactive president James Pitaro said in a statement; “Skylanders continues its leadership position as the #1 kids video game franchise globally as well as in the US by wide margins,” said Activision Publishing president Eric Hirshberg in a contradicting statement.
QUOTE | “The squeezed mid-tier now has a choice: become great and get bought, or slim down to become nimble like an indie and survive. Just being good is no longer good enough.” — Tim Merel of analyst firm Digi-Capital, talking about the difficulties ahead for game companies.
QUOTE | “The year is 2020. Kickstarter is now the standard funding model for video games.” — Tanya X. Short, CEO of Kitfox Games, making the case that crowd-funding is the right way to start game development for developers small and large.
QUOTE | “@PalmerLuckey: Super excited about @Microsoft @HoloLens!” Ditto! The more innovation and resources invested into AR and VR the better.” — Brendan Iribe and Palmer Luckey of Oculus, among other developers giving their reactions to Microsoft’s HoloLens announcement.
QUOTE | “We see tremendous growth and opportunity in the eSports space and we’re excited to bring this expertise in-house.” — William Morris Endeavour Entertainment head Jason Lublin, talking about why the world-famous talent agency acquired professional gamer talent agency Global eSports Management.
image via Shutterstock
Comments
8 responses to “This Week In The Business: An (Over) Promising Future”
Well, if there’s anyone who would know, it’s Molyneux.
I just imagine the journo he was talking to raising an eyebrow and saying “Can I quote you Peter? Seriously now, I’m going to print this”
I literally laughed out loud reading that. I also imagined a kettle looking at a pot saying ‘Really dude, you know what colour I am right?’
Heh. I read the full interview looking for some kind of self-aware, “No seriously, take it from me…” kinda vibe. Didn’t get one. Sad.
On the plus side, it DID seem like he was just talking like someone who was inside the early kinect discussions and had some insight to impart on what’s probably happening and what should be happening behind the scenes, with the benefit of some distance.
And serious bonus points for him being a personality whose interview isn’t chock full of, “This is what I think is wrong with the industry, and that’s why we’re tackling things from a different angle with our exciting new project, check us out on twitter and facebook and fund our new kickstarter” hack bullshit that you’ll see in damn near every other article on the site (and which he used to do whenever finding an excuse to talk about Godus). 😛
Weird article picture ….
Fear my white turtleneck, safety goggles and man nipples.!!…
Are we counting the new Skylanders vs Disney Infinity 2.0 or are we comparing all of Skylanders vs all of Infinity? Are we talking money the franchise made in the year 2014? What’s the scale?
Having read the article Disney claim to have outsold skylander by 72%. So 172 sales to Disney for every 100 sales to Activision? Still seems quite unclear to me.
Wow even if Disney only beat them in 2014 – that’s still impressive – I didn’t want a second toy-based franchise to fund and I thought most parents might feel the same – I guess not!
Kickstarter the standard platform for funding a game? Ergh. Christ no…
Geez, that Tim Merel quote about the mid tier game is worrying… though I can’t help wondering if it’s a little late.