QUOTE | "As we look to the future, we believe a very big part of our player base will expect a free-to-start experience." - EA CEO Andrew Wilson, talking about how EA is considering ways to let people try games for free with a variety of business models.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "Don't mortgage your house on the promise of making a great game and Apple featuring it and you making a lot of money, because you'll more than likely fail." - Matthew Wiggins, formerly with Zynga UK and now with Jiggery Pokery, talking about the difficulties of being a mobile game developer.
QUOTE | "I think it's now impossible for anybody, anywhere to have an overnight success." - Andrew Stalbow, CEO of Seriously mobile games company, talking about how they plan to build globally recognized IP in mobile games like Best Fiends.
QUOTE | "While time spent gaming on mobile devices is increasing, traditional gaming devices haven't been abandoned. In fact, console and computer gamers are playing just as much as they were one year ago." - NPD's Liam Callahan, commenting on their survey that showed time spent play mobile games is up 57% since 2012.
STAT | ¥30 billion – Nintendo's projected profit for its fiscal year ending March 31, its first profitable year since 2012; this is largely due to foreign currency shifts, since Nintendo missed nearly all its sales targets.
QUOTE | "Tencent has already bought control of arguably the largest online MMO company in the West - Riot Games - and also bought a stake in Activision. It owns minority stakes in a wide range of Chinese and international game companies. Over time it is likely to convert some of its minority stakes into majority ones - expanding cautiously but relentlessly in all major gaming markets." - Niccolo de Masi, CEO of Glu Mobile, explaining why he thinks Western game publishers are threatened by Eastern giants.
QUOTE | "To be honest, I think hardcore is a lot easier... [but] the potential of midcore games is probably larger in general than true hardcore games." - ZeptoLab CEO Misha Lyalin, explaining why the studio's new game King of Thieves is a "midcore" game.
STAT | $57 million – Amount that Steam Workshop's community creators have been paid out since late in 2011, according to Valve; this money was earned by more than 1500 contributors across 75 countries, from over 700 million downloads.
STAT | $1.13 billion – Amount of revenue Electronic Arts took in last quarter, with net income of $142 million, beating estimates handily; the company expects full-year revenue of $4.25 billion, making it the #1 console game publisher.
QUOTE | "We're seeing more and more games become freemium, and that is much tougher to work with... the challenges are bigger in 2015 than they were in 2011 for sure." - Former King games guru Tommy Palm, talking about why he co-founded the Stugan accelerator to help game developers.
STAT | 100 million – Number of monthly viewers that Twitch has reached, more than doubling in a year; the streaming service saw 1.5 million unique broadcasters per month, with 16 billion minutes watched per month.
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