“We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4.” — Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida, head of worldwide studios, talking about why DriveClub didn’t have enough resources because Sony didn’t expect as many players as they got.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…
QUOTE | “Disc-based games will be around forever.” — GameStop CEO Paul Raines, talking about why he’s not concerned about future retail sales, particularly since the company is growing its digital business and looking forward to AR and VR sales.
QUOTE | “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than that.” — Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, responding to a question about whether the Oculus Rift VR headset would cost about the same as its $US350 developer kits.
QUOTE | “The idea that VR must get you sick is [bullshit].” — Valve’s Chet Faliszek, explaining why he thinks the developer, not Valve’s VR hardware, would be responsible for any feelings of nausea users might experience.
QUOTE | “Even as the console user base expands, sales of each new addition to the franchise has seen faster post-launch-month drops and digital earnings keep dropping faster.” — Joost van Dreunen, CEO of analyst firm SuperData, explaining why he thinks Star Wars Battlefront will not generate huge profits for EA.
QUOTE | “We’re basically reinventing the company. We feel like a startup.” — Harmonix CEO Steve Janiak, talking about how the company has raised $US15 million to invest in new projects, including VR projects.
QUOTE | “If you look at many of the most successful consumer hardware products of all time, most of them sold in the very low millions of units in their first year… they sold in the hundreds of thousands in their first generation.” — Oculus VP of product Nate Mitchell, talking about why it will take a while to develop a substantial VR market.
QUOTE | “I think a lot of people were expecting me to charge everybody and get rid of the free access.” — John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, talking about how he wants to continue Unity’s drive to make it more powerful and more accessible.
STAT | $US4.04 — The cost to acquire a loyal user for a mobile game, according to analytics firm Fiksu; this is a 117 per cent jump over the cost last year, as costs continue to rise for mobile game installs.
QUOTE | “There’s always things going really well and other things you have to adjust. In general, we’re definitely on the right track.” — Jurgen Post, COO of Sega Europe, explaining why overall Sega is doing well with its diverse array of games for a variety of platforms.
STAT | $US2.40 — Amount of revenue eSports generates per enthusiast right now, resulting in $US275 million this year, according to Newzoo; the firm expects that to hit $US4.63 per fan by 2018, which still leaves eSports well behind traditional sports like basketball that generate $US14 per fan.
Comments
4 responses to “This Week In The Business: Too Successful To Succeed ”
Disc games will be around forever said guy whose business relies on disc games.
At any time Disc games could be completely phased out, Companies could make disc games single use codes practically and people would whinge but if a big enough game did it, than the floodgates would open.
I don’t think this generation will go purely digital, I even think the next generation will be closer to an all digital distribution method. But physical media forever, I don’t like predicting the future but I don’t see this happening.
I agree that if one major game was digital only, it could open the floodgates. I hope that doesn’t happen, for now I can consistently buy new hard copy releases for $20 less than the digital store. When the digital price is right, I may change. But for now I get 5 new games (at jb) for the price of 4 new games (digital store).
Oh I know it’s going to cut down the amount of games I buy massively and I see it being worse for us the consumers with only one outlet and one price to purchase games.
The article about Battlefront is bordering on ridiculous – saying that EA is looking for Battlefront to ‘save’ its ailing Battlefield franchise!
The only reason Battlefield could be ailing is because the morons at EA keep on insisting on including a single player and charging the multiplayer focused core players through the nose for DLC (seriously BF4 premium – DLC for a two year old game is eye wateringly dear)
Battlefront – by amazing contrast actually does something right and gives single player the shaft – seriously we don’t need another bland single player FPS – leave single player FPS’ to the Metro’s and Half Life’s of the world