QUOTE | "Making games is hard and tedious work, so you should be sure you enjoy it before devoting the time and money to school." - John Murphy, designer for Young Horses (Octodad), along with other developers on the value of education in the game industry.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "Within the next 3-5 years, the biggest names in Chinese publishing will play an increasingly larger role in what we've come to believe is 'our' games industry." - Eutechnyx CEO Darren Jobling, giving advice to developers about bringing games to China.
QUOTE | "I would like to see more emphasis on pure design, particularly how to think in an innovative way that generates new ideas that are powerful." - John Romero, veteran game designer and Creative Director at UC Santa Cruz, along with other game educators talking about what's needed in game education.
STAT | 48% – Percentage of US gamers that are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association; this is a big jump from 2007, when women were 38% of the US gamer population.
STAT | 1.2 million – Number of Xbox One units sold to retailers in the first quarter of this year, from Microsoft's latest earnings report; Microsoft says Xbox One owners have been averaging 5 hours per day on their consoles.
QUOTE | "For the first time in two years, our teams delivered sequential growth across our key performance metrics." - Zynga CEO Don Mattrick, commenting on the company's first quarter earnings, putting the best spin on the company losing $61 million last quarter.
STAT | $470 million – Amount of revenue expected in 2014 from the free-to-play PC game market in Brazil, according to research firm Interpret; last year some 17.2 million Brazilian gamers enjoyed F2P games.
QUOTE | "We've all become accustomed to these fantastic things that we do every day." - Eutechnyx's Jason Collins, talking about the race car sim developer's efforts to sell their virtual showroom technology outside of the game industry.
STAT | 73 million – Number of copies of all Assassin's Creed games sold to date since the franchise debuted in 2007, according to Ubisoft; their second most successful game franchise is Just Dance, with 48 million copies sold.