This Week in the Business: Doomed to Repeat History?

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …

QUOTE | “Industry veterans will remember the crash of 1983 … Today, the industry runs a similar risk.”—Analyst report from Superdata, on the data indicating consumers are resistant to adding more hardware to their living rooms

QUOTE | “I know at least a few women who prefer working in the indie space because they find it less isolating or threatening.”—Game designer Whitney Hills, on her insights on gender inequality in the game industry

STAT | $437 million—Amount that Take-Two is projected to make from DLC and microtransactions from GTA V in the next five years; research firm Superdata expects Take-Two to get $206 million of that in the next year

QUOTE | “It’s always great to have two companies fighting each other. People like it; it creates a news story.”—Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, on why the competition with Microsoft is a good thing

STAT | $4.03 million—Amount the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter collected overall for the game by Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune; by beating all the stretch goals the game will now appear on 10 different platforms

QUOTE | “More and more the fact that independent games are interesting to a broader public is becoming apparent to the larger publishers.”—IndieCade founder Stephanie Barish, on the event that’s drawing over 5,000 people

QUOTE | “It’s a very bumpy road to get from completely relying on someone to else to give us money to we’re going to do it ourselves.”—Double Fine lead programmer Oliver Franzke, on the “Dark Ages” of Double Fine

QUOTE | “Ultimately, without that must-buy product driving us all towards this stuff, I expect that the industry at large will watch curiously, but remain largely unaffected.”—Gearbox head Randy Pitchford, on Valve’s announcement of SteamOS and Steam machines

STAT | 64%— Percentage of consumers surveyed by Reuters and Ipsos who have no interest in buying new game hardware; 26% were interested in buying a PS4 and 15% were interested in buying an Xbox One

STAT | 45 million—Number of unique visitors Twitch has each month for its game streaming; the company has just raised $20 million from investors including Take-Two

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

Image by Carlos Yudica | Shutterstock