What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Retail’s worst nightmare is coming true.”—Former GamesIndustry.biz editor Rob Fahey, talking about the horrible year game retailing had in 2012 and what the future holds as digital takes over
QUOTE | “We’ll be able to compete with any AAA game out there.”—Chris Roberts, designer of the famed Wing Commander series, talking about the graphics of his partly crowd-funded game Star Citizen
QUOTE | “I would rather not compare it to Guitar Hero… I’d rather compare it to a sports franchise.”—Tony Key, senior VP of sales and marketing at Ubisoft, talking about why they will release a new version of Just Dance every year
QUOTE | “All the preconceived notions and console paradigms a lot of us brought in trying to do core for mobile is now sloughing away.”—Industrial Toys president Tim Harris, talking about how their new shooter Morning Star for iOS will re-invent mobile shooters
QUOTE | “The other thing that’s really important, besides big spenders, is commitment really matters.”—Emily Greer, COO and co-founder of Kongregate, talking about where the money is in free-to-play games
QUOTE | “The industry needs to continue to create new IP, because it will get stale and old fast, and consumers will go to a different industry.”—Tim Willits, studio director at id Software, talking about the need for new IP even before a new console cycle
QUOTE | “It is doing an order of magnitude greater revenue daily than any of our other titles.”—John Smedley, president of SOE, talking about the success of the Planetside 2 free-to-play game on PS3
STAT | 10—Number of the Top 10 highest-grossing iPhone apps that are games, according to Apple; 7 of the Top 10 highest-grossing iPad apps are games
STAT | 450,000—Number of subscribers to EVE Online on its tenth anniversary; the game has grown every year since its launch, according to publisher CCP
QUOTE | “Claymation is quite a ridiculous idea to do if you’re not geared up to do it.”—Animator Chris Roe of Fat Pebble, talking about their new iOS game ClayJam, entirely done in claymation
STAT | 48%—Percentage of gamers that play online games in the US; this compares to the 42% who play console games
QUOTE | “If you go to some of the Android stores it’s extraordinary, it’s incredible, it’s like the Wild West.”—Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion, talking about why the industry’s negative over-reaction to Windows 8 isn’t justified when compared to an open platform like Android
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
(Image from Shutterstock)
