This Week In The Business: What Exactly Is A Console, Anyway?

This Week In The Business: What Exactly Is A Console, Anyway?

“Just as the line between gamer and non-gamer has been destroyed, I think the distinction between console and mobile will become less distinct over time.” — Scopely’s Walter Driver thinks Apple TV is just one more step toward an ultimate convergence in gaming.

Elsewhere in the business of games this week…

QUOTE | “The console installed base is as big as it’s ever going to get.” — Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter also chimed in after the Apple TV reveal, saying this may be the last console generation because people soon won’t need consoles to play console-quality games.

QUOTE | “If movies had the same market dynamics as games, they would have a lot less cultural power and a lot less economic power.” — Hand Eye Society executive director Jim Munroe, explaining how advocating for artistic, non-commercial games benefits the commercial industry as well.

QUOTE | “For every time I found a great piece online about how a Pewdiepie generated X hundreds of thousands of dollars there was another developer saying that they actually didn’t see a single spike at all.” — Capy Games head Nathan Vella on the unpredictable benefits of being featured by YouTubers; he added that Capy once had a game featured by Total Biscuit, and said it didn’t result in a single extra sale.

QUOTE | “Gamers want so desperately for games to function as art, to witness games about the depth of human experience — and here is Twitch, a crucial platform in games culture that had 44 per cent live-streaming market share in 2014, insisting ‘NO’ — games should only ever snicker about sex and nudity, like some stoned tweens clutching smuggled Hot Pockets in the back of a movie theatre.” — Robert Yang, taking issue with Twitch banning his latest game, Rinse and Repeat, from broadcast.

QUOTE | “I leave knowing that Maxis is in great hands with a leader and teams who are full of respect for our players, passion for our games, and new ideas to bring to the world of Maxis gamers.” — Former Maxis senior VP Lucy Bradshaw, as she departs EA after 23 years.

STAT | $US1000 — The entry-level cost of low-end Oculus Ready PCs; the program was announced this week as a way to let gamers know whether or not new rigs could handle the Oculus Rift’s technical demands.

QUOTE | “What’s really scaring me is the prospect of what people could do with ads. I mean, ads aren’t evil, but the combination of the immersion… You could be a little trapped when you’re in VR.” — Temple Gates Games co-founder Theresa Duringer shares her concerns about a potential downside to VR.

STAT | 174,000 — The number of unique games and apps made in Unity from April through July of this year. Collectively, they were installed 2.5 billion times across 1.1 billion devices.

QUOTE | “We don’t believe in wand-based input for the future of VR. We really believe in hand presence, in hand input, so we let everybody else go.” — Oculus’ Brendan Iribe explains the strategy in waiting so long to reveal the Oculus Touch controllers.

STAT | 93 per cent — The percentage of game audio professionals responding to the 2015 Game Audio Industry Survey who are male; that’s actually down from 96 per cent in last year’s survey.

QUOTE | “These proposals are completely without precedent in the entertainment industry and we believe they are reckless and ill-advised” — The SAG-AFTRA union, in response to game publishers’ initial proposals as they renegotiate the terms governing union voice acting for games.

Top image via Shutterstock Photo


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