QUOTE | “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’ll be very-very useful for Martyr.” - NeoCoreGames producer Zoltán Pozsonyim in an update apologizing…
QUOTE | “I think wherever the Western market gravitates toward is what everyone will try to gravitate towards and create, and that will become the next red ocean. So I want to do something that’s not in there” - Nier: Automata director Yoko Taro tried appealing to Western audiences before. It didn’t work, so he…
STAT | $295 million - 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.
QUOTE | “The prevalence of in-game microtransactions, often referred to as ‘loot boxes,’ raises several concerns surrounding the use of psychological principles and enticing mechanics that closely mirror those often found in casinos and games of chance.” - Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) has asked the ESRB to detail when…
QUOTE | “We remain deeply committed to developing immersive experiences for consumers through groundbreaking augmented and virtual reality.” - A Viacom statement regarding the company shutting down its AR and VR development studio, Viacom Next.
QUOTE | “Essentially, it’s made [our Xbox business] worthless overnight… Effectively overnight they’ve wiped massive value off our company and made it not worth doing. Why should we support them and sell their consoles and accessories if we’re going to get very little out of it? We don’t make anything off their…
QUOTE | “This plan to bring new games timed with their global release into Xbox Game Pass not only includes announced titles like Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, and Crackdown 3 but future unannounced games from Microsoft Studios including new iterations of our biggest Xbox One exclusive franchises such as Halo, …
STAT | 4.2% - The one-day jump in Nintendo’s share price after the announcement of Nintendo Labo, a line of cardboard construction kits that work with the Switch.
QUOTE | “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 flavor. I think by definition you just have to be more mainstream.” - Alex Hutchinson (lead designer on the Sims 2 and Spore, creative director…
QUOTE | “The World Health Organization knows that common sense and objective research prove video games are not addictive. And, putting that official label on them recklessly trivializes real mental health issues like depression and social anxiety disorder, which deserve treatment and the full attention of the medical…
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.”…
QUOTE | “If a game like You Must be 18 or Older to Enter is considered porn by a platform, then players lose a non-violent alternative to horror. If anyone trying to expand the palate of experiences is being treated poorly on account of untempered yet taught player behavior, that developer is liable to leave the…
QUOTE | “Taking more time with Assassin’s Creed Origins enabled our talented development team to fully express their creative vision. As expected, this had a very positive impact on the game’s quality and largely participated to its commercial success. Taking a similar approach, we have decided to invest additional…
QUOTE | “As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a style of gaming, a much more linear game, that people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago.” - EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, explaining why the publisher canceled Visceral Games’ Star Wars project and shut the studio down.
QUOTE | “We really don’t like making money off players who are in denial of their addiction. And that’s what a large part of free-to-play gaming is all about.” - Clicker Heroes developer Playsaurus explains why it’s abandoning the free-to-play model for Clicker Heroes 2.
QUOTE | “Change will be a constant in Star Wars: Battlefront II” - The title of a blog post by DICE executive producer John Wasilczyk that went up on Monday, explaining that EA was reducing the cost of unlocking heroes in the game in response to feedback from upset fans.
STAT | 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).
QUOTE | “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.” - Motiga founder and CEO Chris Chung says the closure of his studio was a corporate decision.
QUOTE | “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.” - Rockstar Games director of design Imran Sarwar insists the success of Grand Theft Auto Online and lack of…
QUOTE | “For example, if the player purchased a particular weapon, the microtransaction engine may match the player in a gameplay session in which the particular weapon is highly effective, giving the player an impression that the particular weapon was a good purchase. This may encourage the player to make future…
