What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "PlayStation Orbis has the jump on next Xbox."—Industry sources talking about how Sony, unlike this generation, will actually launch its next PlayStation ahead of the next Xbox.
QUOTE | "In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!"—Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, drumming up thousands of letters to Electronic Arts protesting same-sex content in EA games.
QUOTE | "The next generation of freemium PC games will be indistinguishable from AAA games."—Ben Cousins, head of ngmoco studios in Sweden, talking about how ree-to-play games will dominate console gaming.
QUOTE | "The era of exotic, vision-driven hardware from Sony ... is over."—Richard Leadbetter, hardware expert at Eurogamer, talking about Sony's Playstation 4 'Orbis' and its switch to a new CPU/GPU architecture.
QUOTE | "EA [has] messed up studios, marketing campaigns and beloved franchises (sometimes all at once)."—PopCap co-founder John Vechey, addressing EA's winning the Worst Company in America award by saying the company's not perfect, but no company is.
QUOTE | "It might be time to flip the console business upside down and take a 'nothing's sacred, anything goes' approach."—Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Editor-in-Chief of GamesBeat, talking about what new Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Europe head Phil Harrison should do with his new role.
QUOTE | "Are you spelling the end of retail? I don't think so, and I don't want that actually."—Chris Early, VP of Digital Publishing at Ubisoft, explaining why he thinks retail stores still have an important role in the games business.
STAT | 65%—Percentage of all game hardware sales in Japan achieved by the Nintendo 3DS, according to the latest sales figures from Japan.
QUOTE | "It'd be ironic if the oft predicted death of consoles were actually precipitated by the manufacturers themselves."—David Radd, veteran game journalist, writing about the possibility of next-generation consoles making it impossible to play used games.
STAT | 50 million—Number of times Draw Something has been downloaded, taking the #1 slot in the App Store back from Angry Birds Space.
QUOTE | "Overall the Wii U just can't quite keep up."—Game developers talking about how the Wii U is less powerful than the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
STAT | One trillion dollars—The potential value of Apple if the stock hits $1,000 by 2014, as predicted by Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray.
QUOTE | "New titles will have even greater odds against their success."—Steve Peterson, West Coast Editor for GamesIndustry International, reporting that developers think next-gen console game budgets will double.
QUOTE | "Most first parties see Nyko as a threat to their business."—Nyko's founder and CEO, Herschel Naghi, talking about how console manufacturers look at unlicensed peripheral maker Nyko.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
(Image from Shutterstock)