What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Games like Call of Duty need new console hardware.”—RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian on one of the reasons that Call of Duty: Black Ops II may not set any new sales records for Activision this holiday
QUOTE | “The hardcore gamer now is the niche market.”—Stew Kosoy, financier at Swiss firm Digital Capital, talking about the game industry and what they’re looking to finance
QUOTE | “They’re unique in that they have a 100 percent hit rate.”—Shanti Bergel, SVP of Business Development for Gree International, talking about why Gree acquired Funzio this week for $210 million
STAT | 436.8%—Gain in buzz on social networks for Call of Duty after Call of Duty: Black Ops II was announced, according to Nielsen Media tracking
QUOTE | “Kids are going to destroy the internet.”—Fight My Monster chairman Dylan Collins talking about the tricky under-13 market and how their expectations for games are very different
QUOTE | “We could end up with an industry … acting blindly in short-term self-interest.”—Veteran journalist Rob Fahey, talking about the danger of publishers abusing buyers of digital products
STAT | 5 million—The number of daily users of Draw Something that Zynga has lost in the past month, dropping from 15 million to 10 million according to AppData
QUOTE | “We embrace the law of unintended consequences.”—Jon Lander, EVE Online’s senior producer, talking about how CCP dealt with a very tumultuous year for the MMO, including a massive fan revolt
QUOTE | “We are concerned that the company’s accelerated release strategy is simply resulting in more churn of existing users.”—Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz, talking about Zynga’s loss of share in the social gaming market
QUOTE | “Some people say paid is dead and that’s wrong.”—Phil Larsen, chief marketing officer for Halfbrick Studios, talking about their success with Fruit Ninja and other mobile games
STAT | 500,000 –Number of downloads for the free version of Pocket Ninjas in just 5 days, according to developer Cocky Culture
QUOTE | “It’s odd to see it in a third-person game, and especially odd because it’s not a shooter.”—Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, talking about God of War: Ascension and its new multiplayer mode
STAT | 292 million—Monthly active users of Zynga games, according to Zynga’s report on their first quarter 2012, with 182 million monthly unique users
QUOTE | “Services like this are going to become a necessity for real franchises.”—Jamie Berger, VP of Digital at Activision, talking about the growth of Call of Duty Elite and its impact on the game industry
QUOTE | “Facebook is nothing more than a distribution platform for other businesses like Zynga.”—Dave Anderson, former Activision biz dev veteran, talking about business deals and the rise of social/mobile games
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
(Image from Shutterstock)
