This Week in the Business: The Hardware is the Hard Part

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week ….

QUOTE | “I think people might not grasp how hard that is, to develop a game at the same time as the hardware.”—Patrick Bach of EA DICE, on developing Battlefield 4 to launch with next-gen consoles

QUOTE | “The right way to be successful is do something original … not to chase revenues that already worked for somebody else.”—Torsten Reil, CEO of Natural Motion, on why “fast following” isn’t a good mobile publishing strategy

STAT | 52%—Rise in game sales at US retail stores this September compared to last September, due mostly to GTA V; console hardware sales dropped 13%, and the PS3 broke Microsoft’s 32-month streak as the No. 1 console

QUOTE | “Over time we’ll see more and more offloading of intensive CPU processing to the cloud.”—Microsoft’s John Bruno, on how developers are using the Xbox One’s cloud computing capacity to make games better

QUOTE | “We’re not in your face about monetization. We want you to play, and if you like it, you can give something back to the developers.”—Nikola Cavic of Nordeus, on their free-to-play Facebook game Top Eleven

STAT | 1 million—Number of Disney Infinity toy box downloads in 2 weeks; Disney said previously the game sold 294,000 copies in its first two weeks on sale

QUOTE | “The Middle East/North Africa region is growing like crazy.”—Rina Onur, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Peak Games, on the 300% annual growth rate for the company’s Facebook and mobile games

STAT | $970 million—Amount of revenue digital sales of games brought in this September; this total includes mobile, social, DLC and full game downloads, and is higher than the $754.3 million in retail software sales

QUOTE | “There is absolutely an indie renaissance—a permanent renaissance.”—Albert Reed, CEO and Co-founder of Demiurge Studios, on the terrific opportunities for indie developers nowadays

STAT | $1.5 billion—Amount that SoftBank and GungHo Entertainment paid for 51% of Finnish developer Supercell; the company intends to become “the first truly global games company” according to CEO Ilkka Paananen

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

Image by Elnur | Shutterstock