QUOTE | “It’s outright embarrassing how totally unrepresented many of the industry’s biggest players are in the mobile arena.” – Jeferson Valadares, Bandai Namco’s head of mobile, talking about how traditional game publishers need to get busy making mobile games
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “It’s when you start to cut the corners and try to take advantage of your audience… The morality of that is questionable, and I think parents and kids can see it.” – Nerd Corps president Ken Faier, talking about transmedia properties like Slugterra that have games, TV shows, and toys, all aimed at kids
QUOTE | “Xbox One sold more games throughout November and December in the U.S. than any other current-generation platform.” – Statement from Microsoft, lauding the fact that the Xbox One was the best-selling console in the US for November and December, and not coincidentally announcing the Xbox One will again be $349 as it was during the last two months
STAT | 11% – Growth in US digital game sales in December over last December, according to SuperData; mobile game revenues jumped 17% while digital console game sales rose 10%
STAT | 13% – Drop in US retail game software sales in December compared to last December, according to NPD; hardware sales rose 20%, and overall the month was down 1% compared to December 2013
QUOTE | “The reported numbers are incorrect, exaggerated, and we did not get rid of entire engineering teams.” – Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, responding to reports of 25% staff cuts at the company
STAT | 94.4% – Amount that sales of PS4 and Xbox One software increased in the nine-week holiday period at GameStop over last year, according to the company; despite that, the company reported a 6.7% drop in global sales due to exchange rate changes
QUOTE | “I think it’s pretty easy to imagine that in the future we will have something that we can wear.” – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, talking about VR and acknowledging that current hardware (like the Oculus VR) is “very, very rough.”
STAT | 30 million – Number of downloads so far for Minecraft: Pocket Edition, which sells for $6.99, according to Mojang; the PC/Mac edition has sold more than 18 million copies, and last Saturday the game had 1.4 million concurrent players
STAT | 29% – Amount of game developers who made the bulk of their sales directly from consumers, according to the latest State of the Industry survey by GDC; only 13% saw the majority of sales from retail, and 21% said micro-transactions were their major revenue source
STAT | $5.8 million – Amount premium mobile game Monument Valley has earned through sales with development costs of $1.3 million, according to developer Ustwo Games; the game is installed on over 10 million devices
