"Again, sorry for this as we kindly ask for your further patience and hopefully it won't be a deal breaker for any of you. In return, we promise we'll push this extra three weeks in 90+ hours per week so it will be very-very useful for Martyr." - NeoCoreGames producer Zoltán Pozsonyim in an update apologising for a three-week delay to the official release of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, which has been playable on Early Access since last August. The studio later claimed it was joking.

$US295 ($376) million - That's the estimated revenue generated by Nintendo's mobile free-to-play game Fire Emblem Heroes in its first year, almost five times the amount made by Super Mario Run.

"When you're spending a lot of money, you have to justify your project by saying it's going to appeal to a lot of people, which essentially means it cannot be a strong flavour. I think by definition you just have to be more mainstream." That's Alex Hutchinson (lead designer on the Sims 2 and Spore, creative director on Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 4) saying his new indie studio Typhoon will compete with AAA titles by keeping a narrow focus and offering a more distinct flavour.

QUOTE | "My highlight of 2017 was Breath of the Wild - what an incredible experience! The feeling of absolute freedom in BotW is beyond any other game I've seen, and the design of the world is so well done. I'm very happy to see my belief in Nintendo, and great game design, is once again proven to be a huge success." - Original Doom designer John Romero joins a number of industry luminaries in sharing his highlights of the past year.

"Change will be a constant in Star Wars: Battlefront II" That's the title of a blog post by DICE executive producer John Wasilczyk that went up last week, explaining that EA was reducing the cost of unlocking heroes in the game in response to feedback from upset fans.

47 million - Nintendo's high-end forecast for Switch shipments by April of 2019. That would put the Switch's first two years (and one month) of sales above the lifetime totals for the Wii U (14 million), GameCube (22 million), Nintendo 64 (33 million), and Super Nintendo (49 million).

"Perfect World as a public company has a profitability goal and they decided to cut parts of the company that were not profitable. In short, Gigantic was not making enough revenue." That's Motiga founder and CEO Chris Chung says the closure of his studio was a corporate decision.

"As a company we love single-player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely - for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don't rival single-player games."

That's Rockstar Games director of design Imran Sarwar insists the success of Grand Theft Auto Online and lack of narrative-driven GTA V add-ons doesn't mean the company has lots interest in single-player DLC.

"In Wolfenstein's case, it's pure coincidence that Nazis are marching in the streets of America this year. And it's disturbing that the game can be considered a controversial political statement at all." That's Bethesda's VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines says the company wasn't trying to make a political game with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, but isn't shying away from condemning Nazis, either.

"When you deal with them at a close distance, you understand why they are who they are. I'm not going to lie to you; they are extremely demanding. They require the very best constantly, all the time, and beyond. But it's been a great experience." That's MercurySteam studio head Enric Alvarez describing what it was like working with Nintendo on Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS.

QUOTE | "Winning is the exception, and losing can be fun, and anything in between is an adventure, which sets PUBG apart entirely -- and in a meaningful way -- from almost any other competitive multiplayer game I've encountered." - Tacoma and Gone Home developer Steve Gaynor loves PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

"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.

#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.

"We should be out there, and we want to be out there. But I'll draw the line, also beyond a certain point, I don't think I owe people to be a punching bag for them when they're feeling upset." That's Hinterland Studio's Raphael van Lierop talking about dealing with the toxic atmosphere on Reddit and social networks when guiding The Long Dark from Early Access to finished product.

"The Halo 2 crunch almost killed Bungie as a company. It is the most I've ever seen humans work in a year and a half. It was brutal. It almost killed us, and those of us that were left basically vowed, 'never again.' Never again can we put ourselves through that." That's Bungie head of engineering Luke Timmins detailing the studio's long struggle to purge crunch from its internal culture.

"A while later, I was in the bathroom - and this is embarrassing - I was trying to pull down George Andreas' trousers for a joke."

"We will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition." That's Nintendo doing its best to reassure pre-preemptively angry fans that its latest retro console offering will be easier to find than its last one.

"This outlaw epic set across the vast and unforgiving American heartland will be the first Rockstar game created from the ground up for the latest generation of console hardware, and some extra time is necessary to ensure that we can deliver the best experience possible for our fans." That's Rockstar announcing that Red Dead Redemption 2 won't be out until April 2018 at the earliest.

"We want to get our hands on Destiny 2 as soon as possible like everybody else, so we offered to share our PC platform with our sister companies for this release." That's Blizzard explaining why the PC version of Destiny 2 will be exclusive to Battle.net, conveniently neglecting to mention that doing so means Activision Blizzard won't need to give Steam almost one-third of the game's revenue.