This Week In The Business: Microsoft Tries To Crackdown On A Bad Habit

This Week In The Business: Microsoft Tries To Crackdown On A Bad Habit

“I think in the past we have made the mistake of announcing some exclusives a little bit too early. We’re trying to learn from that mistake and do better, so we have a bit that’s in development now that we’re not talking about.” That’s Microsoft Studios Publishing GM Shannon Loftis, pointing to the Crackdown 3 delay as part of a pattern the company needs to break.

QUOTE | “I’ve learned never to make promises on the internet, because [the players] will remember. That comes from my own naivety as a game dev; you promise something and two months later you can’t deliver it – because, y’know, game development is fucking hard.” – Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene shares one big takeaway from his time working on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

QUOTE | “We created this situation ourselves as game developers. 100,000 developers each deciding to accept those terms, we’ve created this monster that we’re now trapped with – and it’s taking 30% of revenue.” – Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney says developers need to consider the long-term implications of actions like releasing games on closed stores like Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

QUOTE | “Frankly, I don’t think Steam sees [discoverability] as a problem. The community sees it as a problem and Steam says they will fix it, but all they really do is rehash it.” – Bulkhead Interactive producer Joe Brammer says Valve would love to have Steam have the same discoverability situation as Apple’s App Store.

QUOTE | “You can do AAA games [for much less] nowadays. If I were making a first-person shooter… $US5m to $US6m and I can compete with Call of Duty. If you add $US50m for marketing, of course.” – Warhorse Studios co-founder Daniel Vavra wonders why more indies don’t aim for the AAA market.

QUOTE | “Being a company famous for a football management game and saying you want to lead AAA on mobile – that’s a big statement.” – Nordeus CEO Branko Milutinović believes mobile developers unable to produce AAA experiences will soon find themselves behind, explaining his studio’s shift to card-battling action-strategy with the upcoming Spellsouls.

QUOTE | “Pricing is like doing a weather forecast, but there’s no satellites and no computers, you’re locked indoors, and all you have as data is what the people who were outside a few days ago tell you.” – Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail describes the challenge indie devs face when in deciding how much to charge for their games.

QUOTE | “Over school holidays it’s not unusual for families to be in and out our doors finding new games to play. Swap ‘n’ Play allows for a hassle-free and more affordable shop.” – EB Games talks up its new subscription trade-in program in Australia, where gamers pay $US19.95 ($25) AUD a month to check out a pre-owned game and swap it for other pre-owned games as many times as they wish.

QUOTE | “When you look at the vault we have, I can sit down and browse through the IP and show you two games out of three where we could say in two years, that could be a TV series. That could be a movie… We have games like Pharoah Run, Dark Chambers. Everyone remembers Pong and Missile Command, but we have Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede. Look at Pixels. We were in the movie.” – Atari CEO Fred Chesnais assesses the strength of the company’s IP.

QUOTE | “Crunch is my chase, and it leads me to a high that’s like Vegas, Amsterdam and Bangkok rolled into one.” – Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams says he’s addicted to game development crunch.

QUOTE | “We want to be the South Park of video games.” – RedLynx creative director Justin Swan sets a thoroughly achievable goal for his new South Park video game.


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