“When we see people innovate in an interesting and impactful way, we are very quick to figure out how to capture inspiration from innovation. When we see things that appeal to our audiences, we are very good at being inspired by those.” — Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick uses his verbal judo black belt to turn fast following the latest trends into an inspired creative endeavour.
Image: Ninja Theory
QUOTE | “25 per cent is still better than zero per cent.” — inXile Entertainment owner and CEO Brian Fargo, on why he believes customers will still use his new blockchain-powered digital games storefront Robot Cache to sell their games, even though they will only keep a quarter of whatever a game sells for.
QUOTE | “Publishers are not bad people, they’re not bad organisations but sometimes legal departments can take on a life of their own. You can go down really silly rabbit holes.” — Ninja Theory co-founder and development director Nina Kristensen offers tips for studios on dealing with big publishers.
QUOTE | “If you’re going to do triple-I, it has to be different to triple-A. You can’t just do a small version of triple-A. You have to be bold, and tackle subjects that everyone else is ignoring, and aim for a niche.” — Ninja Theory design head Tameem Antoniades explains the thinking behind the creation of Hellblade.
QUOTE | “After Mr. Yamauchi’s presidency, there was a change in the environment surrounding Nintendo, where no longer could any single person decide matters on their own.” — Retiring Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima explains how the company has gradually changed to a more collaborative style of leadership since long-time president Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down in 2002. That began with Satoru Iwata’s tenure as president, continued through Kimishima’s, and will further evolve in that direction when Shuntaro Furukawa takes over next month.
QUOTE | “So the question I ask is: Here’s a game that didn’t reach your goals — would you, yourself, commit to this for the next five years? All of a sudden you get this better perspective on things.” — Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen says launching a free-to-play game is a long-term commitment, which makes it easier to get devs to kill their soft-launched projects when they aren’t hitting their target metrics.
STAT | 1.81 million — Estimated 2018 shipments for the Oculus Go stand-alone VR headset, according to market intelligence firm Superdata, which the firm believes will make it the most popular VR headset of the year (apart from the $US20 ($27) Google Cardboard). PlayStation VR is the only other headset expected to break 1 million units shipped, with 1.47 million for the year.
QUOTE | “Not very accurate.” — Sergey Galyonkin provides a blunt assessment of the performance of his SteamSpy after he modified it to account for recent Steam changes that hobbled the service’s ability to estimate sales on the platform.
QUOTE | “The story allows children to listen, understand words, improve speech, how to solve puzzles, help others, protecting friends and the environment alongside making moral decisions that must be achieved to earn Power pellets.” — Bandai Namco PR and marketing director Lee Kirton touts the educational benefits of the company’s new Pac-Man Stories choose-your-own-adventure-style game for Amazon Alexa.
QUOTE | “Created by Santa Monica Studios of SIE Worldwide Studios (SIE WWS), God of War comes after an eight-year franchise hiatus.” — Sony’s press release for God of War selling 3.1 million copies in three days is confirmation that everyone’s agreed to pretend 2013’s God of War: Ascension never happened.
STAT | 29 per cent — Percentage of top grossing mobile games in China that feature a quiz mechanic where players are rewarded for knowledge of a game’s many systems. That mechanic is entirely absent from the top grossing mobile games in the US.
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