This Week In The Business: Miyamot…Oh No

“A while later, I was in the bathroom – and this is embarrassing – I was trying to pull down [Donkey Kong 64 designer] George Andreas’ trousers for a joke.”

“I was on my knees and I looked up to see Miyamoto staring down at me. That was the last time I spoke to him.” – Legendary Rare composer Grant Kirkhope recounts the first time he met Shigeru Miyamoto. Perhaps surprisingly, he was still allowed to work on Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle.

STAT | 3 – The number of fighting games in the top five of the NPD Group’s list of best-selling games in the US for June. Tekken 7 was the top-seller of the month, with Injustice 2 in second place and ARMS (physical copies only) slotting in fifth.

QUOTE | “If you look at the last few conferences, notably from Sony and Microsoft, when you start the it’s like, ‘How many seconds will elapse before the first throat-stab?’ Or, ‘How many seconds will elapse before the first arrow goes into an eye?’” – Former Sony and Microsoft executive Phil Harrison is concerned that the console market has been alienating the mass market.

QUOTE | “Now that we have a little breathing room, we can get down to business and start making seriously weird stuff.” – What Remains of Edith Finch creative director Ian Dallas says the industry has accepted enough variety in games over the last decade that devs no longer need to waste their time defending choices like making a first-person game without guns.

QUOTE | “No one will travel to Estonia because everyone thinks the Russians will come, that Narva [the city on the Estonian-Russian border] will be next and there will be nuclear war in Estonia.” – Kaur Kender, executive producer at ZA/UM, explains why the Estonian studio’s new London office should help it attract and retain talent.

QUOTE | “The reason, in my opinion, why GTA V has sold 80m units, and GTA Online had another record year 3-and-a-half years since its release, is because it stands alone in the generation. In every prior generation, there have been other titles that have clustered around GTA from a quality point-of-view. That’s clearly not the case now.” – Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explains why he isn’t using Rockstar’s last game as a measuring stick for its next one, Red Dead Redemption 2.

QUOTE | “I was staring at the screen, at this $US60 ($76) game that was just $US25 ($32) a few hours earlier, and I thought, ‘This is just the dumbest thing in the world.’ I’m a consumer that’s willing to pay probably $US35 ($44) to get this game. It’s in everyone’s best interests to let that transaction occur.” – LBO CEO Alex Childs shares how a Witcher 3 flash sale inspired the new Priceline-like game store.

QUOTE | “With the recent reveal of our Ataribox project and now with Speakerhats, we envision a full range of connected personal devices that live at society’s intersection of entertainment, technology and social connectivity that legendary film worlds like Blade Runner 2049 foretell.” – In his rush to sell baseball hats with Bluetooth speakers, Atari Connect COO Michael Arzt apparently suggests the dystopian future of Blade Runner is something to aspire to rather than a cautionary tale to be avoided.

QUOTE | “This is the forever company. We’re not interested in selling the company, or changing anything. This is what we want to do as long as we possibly can – at least for 20 more years.” – Brenda Romero says that despite receiving the equivalent of lifetime achievement awards, she and husband John have no intention of retiring or leaving Romero Games any time soon.

QUOTE | “I needed some time off, needed a bit of change, and wanted to get involved in the new wave of disruptive technologies that were emerging,” – BioWare GM Casey Hudson explained why he left the studio years ago to work on HoloLens. He announced his return to BioWare this week as well as the departure of his predecessor Aaryn Flynn.

QUOTE | “We have a high bar for our new releases and didn’t believe the game had the potential to be a successful forever franchise for us.” – Zynga explains why it canned the Mafia Wars reboot after just three months in soft launch.