This Week In The Business: Flipping The Switch

10 million — The number of Nintendo Switch systems expected to ship this year, according to Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad. Other industry watchers have been less optimistic, with Superdata projecting 5 million systems this year, and IHS expecting 4.4 million.

QUOTE | “The opposite of hate is not like, but indifference.” — Seaman creator Yoot Saito shares the revelation that convinced him the game could succeed with an obnoxious main character.

QUOTE | “No matter how careful, how respectful we tried to be in our economy design, what we really didn’t foresee is that our player base was absolutely not ready for this.” — Fleur Marty, producer of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘s supplemental development team, offers her view on why players rejected the game’s microtransaction-driven Breach mode.

QUOTE | “Immediately after a discussion about racism in tech, the only other black person on the team is killed. His death doesn’t matter. His life didn’t matter. He is a one-dimensional character, basically there to be Deus Ex Blackina’d.” — Treachery in Beatdown City developer Shawn Alexander Allen appreciated Watch Dogs 2‘s black protagonist Marcus, but said its treatment of the other black DedSec member had shortcomings common to marginalised people in games.

STAT | $US800 ($1053) million — Electronic Arts’ total annual revenue from its Ultimate Team modes in franchises like FIFA, Madden NFL, and NHL, up 20 per cent year-over-year.

QUOTE | “It’s with great excitement that we congratulate Peter on following his dream to become the next CEO of his beloved Liverpool Football Club.” — Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson gives EA eSports head Peter Moore an enthusiastic send-off as the marketing expert who also held key executive roles at Sega and Microsoft leaves the games industry.

QUOTE | “People don’t leave companies. People don’t leave projects. People leave their leads.” — Iron Galaxy founder Dave Lang shares his approach to keeping talented young programmers from bolting for other companies.

QUOTE | “Eve is like Facebook. It doesn’t make sense to make Facebook 2. Eve is Eve.” — CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson explains why the company has never tried a direct follow-up to its long-running MMO Eve Online.

QUOTE | “We expect the installed base to continue to grow, we look at each new quarter as a launch phase for the hundreds of thousands of people buying headsets during that time.” — Ubisoft’s Chris Early acknowledges the publisher’s VR efforts have not broken even yet.

QUOTE | “Everyone in this room thinks our number one priority is to make a great game, but it’s actually your number three priority. Your number one priority, unfortunately, is to not die.” — Kitfox Games’ Tanya Short puts developers’ priorities in perspective.

QUOTE | “We’ve all been living in a world where all the digital content we’ve experienced has been trapped behind 2D screens for most of our lives. It’s time we start breaking free of that.” — Microsoft’s Brandon Bray pitches the Windows Mixed Reality program to developers at GDC.