STAT | $3.7 million – Amount of revenue Mixi’s mobile game Monster Strike made per day last quarter, according to the company’s earnings report; that’s an increase of 829% in revenue over the previous year’s quarter.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week...
QUOTE | “Smartwatch is going to be a meaningful sector for games; it will create new business that reach unicorn-like valuations.” Developer Paul Virapen, talking about why he thinks the Apple Watch is going to have more units in the market than PS4 by the end of this year.
QUOTE | “I felt strongly that from now on, mobile will be at the heart of game platforms, and that we need a business strategy which creates games in accordance with observations of consumer usage trends.” Konami’s new leader Hideki Hayakawa, explaining why the company is moving away from selling physical retail games.
QUOTE | “As we at Nintendo aim to reach all consumers around the world, we have no intention to analyze and follow successful examples in the Japanese smart device market.” Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, talking about why Nintendo’s mobile games will be trying to get a small amount of money from a very large number of consumers.
QUOTE | “As the best-selling console in the U.S. in April, fans set record April sales and engagement for Xbox One last month.” Microsoft’s VP of Xbox marketing Mike Nichols, talkingabout how Xbox One sales increased 63% this April over last year.
QUOTE | “Twitch is an enormous opportunity for developers right now, especially smaller indies without a massive marketing budget.” PR specialist Natalie Griffith, talking along with others about how devs can use social media effectively for promoting their games.
STAT | 55% – Drop in sales of last-gen consoles in the US for April compared to last year; new console sales were about the same as last year, while overall console software sales grew 20%.
QUOTE | “It’s not just about creating deeper engagement with games though, it’s also about creating new genres of games entirely.” Developer Graham McAllister, talking about what he feels is the big potential for the Apple Watch and other wearables as a gaming platform.
QUOTE | “I know the CEO consistently says over and over, ‘By God, we’re going to do this right.’We live and breathe that.” Atari’s Todd Shallbetter, talking about how the company wants to become important in the games business again.
STAT | $1.1 billion – Amount of US digital game revenue in April, according to SuperData; that’s up 15% over last April, with the 441,000 downloads of GTA V leading the pack for PC games.
STAT | 8.2 million – Number of hours watched on Twitch from the 2 million PC versions of GTA V in its launch week; this was over three times the number of hours watched for the 10 million Xbox One/PS4 versions in their launch week.