This Week In The Business: Splatoon 2 Hits Number One Without A Single Bullet

#1 – That’s Splatoon 2‘s rank on the NPD Group’s list of July’s best-selling games in the US. The accomplishment is more impressive when you consider that Nintendo is one of the few major publishers that doesn’t share digital sales figures with NPD, so its ranking only reflects physical retail sales.

QUOTE | “Paradox has made a great business out of sometimes sticking to our guns while other people go elsewhere.” – Paradox Interactive chief product officer Johan Sjöberg explains why the company has only just recently made the jump to consoles, and why it has no immediate plan for Nintendo Switch support.

QUOTE | “It’s a pitiful story, but to say that Yoko-san saved Platinum would not be an exaggeration. I cannot thank him enough.” – PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya credits Yoko Taro and NieR: Automata with bringing the studio back from the brink.

QUOTE | “Crackdown 3: Campaign, co-op, & Wrecking Zone is moving to spring ’18 so we can make sure we deliver all the awesome that Crackdown fans want.” – Microsoft Studios publishing GM Shannon Loftis explains why the long-awaited Xbox One game has been delayed again. Announced at E3 2014, the game was originally slated for a launch in 2016.

QUOTE | “Please, stop undermining your game because somehow you think it’s not worth the asking price.” – SteamSpy’s Sergey Galyonkin suggests indie games “are too damn cheap,” and asks developers to start charging more for their work.

QUOTE | “Honestly my biggest concern with indies is that they learn how to take care of themselves. Even with some of the most successful teams we’ve worked with, isolation and depression are running rampant among indie creators, with ever-increasing competition for attention and the unprecedented access to the artists that their critics (who is now everyone with an internet connection) now have.” – Devolver co-founder Mike Wilson talks about challenges indies face as he relaunches Gambitious as Good Shepherd Entertainment.

QUOTE | “It’s an industry that on the whole, I don’t feel wants to change. Or it doesn’t feel the need to change.” – The Chinese Room co-founder Jessica Curry, on how little progress gaming has made in the way it treats women in recent years.

QUOTE | “The industry often underestimates its power. Games influence their players whether we like it or not, and far too many games are developed purely ‘for fun’. But fun is subjective and very hard to define, especially if you factor in the diversity of the global audience. That audience can respond to much more than just fun.” – Jovian Industries’ Laura Bularca advises developers to consider their game’s meaning first, and use that to guide other decisions about new features.

QUOTE | “Today, we’ve shut down the altright.com server and a number of accounts associated with the events in Charlottesville. We will continue to take action against white supremacy, Nazi ideology, and all forms of hate.” – Gaming chat app Discord takes a stand against a toxic subset of its user base.

QUOTE | “We’re not interested in supporting trading card farming or bot networks at the expense of being able to provide value and service for players.” – A Valve representative explaining why the company has been denying developer requests for large numbers of Steam keys for games with low sales and poor reviews.

QUOTE | “The ambition is to continue doing games – not just about Zlatan. The team has different ambitions, more ideas and more projects.” – Swedish football star Zlatan Ibrahimović says his ambitions for the studio he co-owns, Isbit Games, go a lot further than the just-announced sci-fi sports title Zlatan Legends.