QUOTE | “[I]ncredibly disappointing” – Mad Catz CEO Karen McGinnis sums up the company’s involvement with Rock Band 4.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week…
QUOTE | “[W]e’ve said publicly that some of our more recent games haven’t met our expectations, and yet we’re still here making games, so we obviously still believe in the potential.” – Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg explains why Skylanders will continue even as concerns over toys-to-life convinced Disney to abandon the market.
STAT | 41 million – The number of Americans over the age of 50 who play games, according to a new survey conducted on behalf of the ESA and the AARP.
STAT | $US110 ($149) million – Revenue generated to date by Psyonix’s Rocket League. The developer attributes its continued to success to the practice of giving away substantial DLC, and only charging for cosmetic items that won’t split the player base.
QUOTE | “People still have this idea that Facebook’s place in the global games industry and business is somehow limited to games that you play on the web.” Facebook director of global games partnerships Leo Olebe makes the not-at-all paranoia-inducing assertion that Facebook is “everywhere that gamers are.”
QUOTE | “[W]hen we acquired EMI Recorded Music in 2012, the vast majority of artists had no hesitation in coming with us.” – A Vivendi letter to employees of recent acquisition Gameloft touts its reputation for supporting creative talent. It made no mention of former subsidiary Activision Blizzard.
QUOTE | “To further commemorate this eventful day, we are freeing up the Black Market. Starting with the next update for Payday 2, any old generation safe will [stop dropping]. Any new generation safe will drop completely for free.” – Payday 2 producer Almir Listo, announcing that with Starbreeze’s acquisition of the Payday IP, controversial microtransactions that were added to the game last year are being removed.
QUOTE | “[M]ost virtual reality experiences can’t mix real people, objects, and environments into the virtual world, making creation and collaboration difficult. This is because they lack the human, environmental and object understanding that is already built into Windows 10.” – In promoting the decision to open up Windows Holographic to non-HoloLens VR and AR hardware, Windows and Devices Group executive VP Terry Myerson identifies the lack of Windows 10 as the sole factor holding back development of VR/AR hybrids when neither tech has figured out the basics on its own first.
QUOTE | “Ultimately, we could all wait years until there’s an installed base and be like, ‘Hey, finally, let’s make something cool for the players to play,’ and by then, people will have lost faith in the fact that something cool will come out on those platforms.” – Ready at Dawn’s Ru Weerasuriya lays out the long-term reasons for developers to take a risk on VR.
QUOTE | “We’ve lost a great one, and our hearts go out to his family, friends and everyone that had the great fortune to know him. DeMar will be truly missed.” – An Electronic Arts statement about the death of former executive David DeMartini at 56. As head of EA Partners, DeMartini was key in signing up Harmonix’s Rock Band and Valve’s The Orange Box to the program. More recently, he joined Oculus VR as head of worldwide publishing.
Comments
3 responses to “This Week In The Business: Incredibly Disappointing”
MadCatz say it was disappointing, but Harmonix say that Rock Band 4 performed within the realm of their expectations. Seems MadCatz were depending on RB4 a bit too much. Plus, the way they distributed the game’s instruments wasn’t exactly great; not only were the drums really shoddy, but instruments weren’t sold seperately until some time later. Plus, they were almost literally just RB3 instruments with a chip stuck in them to work with new consoles. And then, of course, there was the insane asking price – $500 for us Aussies was out of the question.
I’m not gonna pretend like Harmonix are 100% innocent – after all RB4 was pretty rushed – but they did not have a good launch. Here’s hoping both companies get back on their feet – Rock Band 4 has some nice updates coming soon while MadCatz, with the exclusion of the RB4 drums, have some pretty decent controllers and fighting sticks.
Weren’t MadCatz the publishers for Rock Band?
Rock Band may have met the milestones for Harmonix to call it sucessful, but if you’re the publisher then you’ve also got to cover marketing costs too… perhaps that’s it. Or, perhaps they had even more unrealistic expectations about sales…
They were, yes, but they since severed ties and Harmonix have since partnered up with PDP and are planning a re-release or something. Either way, I think it’s as you say; MadCatz were being somewhat unrealistic in their sales predictions. I dunno what marketing would have cost them as I swear I never saw that bloody game advertised anywhere, heh.