What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "Project Shield is a melange of too many ideas and gimmicks."—Dan Pearson, GamesIndustry International journalist, talking with others about the flood of new gaming hardware being introduced and why few will likely succeed.
QUOTE | "It was just miserable. I don't blame indies for not jumping on WiiWare."—Mike Roush of Gaijin Games, talking about their experience with Nintendo's online offering before the new eShop.
QUOTE | "That's hugely, hugely encouraging, because this is our sweet-spot."—Nick Earl, SVP and general manager of EA's All Play label, talking about how dollars are going towards core games on mobile platforms.
STAT | 22%—Amount that video game hardware, software and accessories sales dropped from 2011 to 2012 at retail; hardware sales were down 27%, the fourth straight year of declines.
QUOTE | "2013 will see more launches for dedicated games consoles than any previous year on record."— Rob Fahey, former editor of GamesIndustry.biz, talking about why consoles aren't dead, but the business won't be the same.
QUOTE | "We're in the world of Metacritic, and we do know there's compensation that is being withheld from developers based on these reviews. It really starts to corrupt that process."—Adam Sessler, former host of the X-Play TV show, talking about where game journalism is heading.
STAT | $500 million—Amount that Skylanders has earned for Activision in the US market through 2012; that includes the software and the toys/figures, and $195 million of that is from Skylanders Giants.
QUOTE | "The tipping point for cloud gaming is definitely going to be this year."—Makarand Dharmapurikar, CTO and Co-Founder of CiiNOW, talking about how cloud gaming is finally going to become broadly available.
STAT | 15 million—Number of copies of Minecraft that sold through the end of 2012; the most popular version was on the Xbox 360, selling over 5 million units.
STAT | 890,000—Number of Wii Us sold in the US in 2012, resulting in $300 million in revenue compared to the Wii's $270 million in its first months; but the Wii was only $249 compared to $299 or $349 for the Wii U.
STAT | $9.7 billion—Amount of revenue for games in China for 2012; 90% of that revenue came from online games.
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
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