QUOTE | “I believe that it is very difficult to immediately build up a big IP.... you need at least three games before you can tell whether an IP is going to be really successful or not.” - Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda, explaining his Law of Third Titles for AAA games.
Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week...
QUOTE | “As a first step, we want to help put victims back in control of their images and their privacy.” - Microsoft chief online safety officer Jacqueline Beauchere, explaining how the company will remove revenge porn content on Xbox Live when contacted by a victim.
QUOTE | “Once we start to think about gamers as performers, it seems pretty obvious that there are different ways to build a business out of that.” - Outpost Games creative director Wright Bagwell, talking about how they want to make core games with spectator appeal.
QUOTE | “I am pretty sure that the candidate will come from within the business... The obvious two choices are Takeda-san or Miyamoto-san” - Nick Parker of Parker Consulting, talking along with other analysts about who will be Nintendo’s next leader, and the consensus seems to be Takeda, head of Nintendo’s hardware.
QUOTE | “That’s a difference between our culture and your culture. We don’t have garage developers, working alone.” - Wixel Studios co-founder Reine Abbas, talking about the difficulties of creating game studios in the Middle East.
QUOTE | “He doesn’t need more designers, he needs a smarter approach to making games.” - Design consultant Graham McAllister, talking about why Peter Molyneux seems dangerously misinformed about game design.
QUOTE | “The companies that are most likely to benefit from the growth of the Chinese market are Chinese.” - CEO Joost van Dreunen of analyst firm SuperData, talking about why the game market in China isn’t as good an opportunity as many Western game companies think.
STAT | 30% – Amount of its San Francisco workforce Japanese mobile game publisher GREE just laid off; the company closed its Vancouver studio in May and declared a rare quarterly loss in February.
STAT | 27% – Amount that Xbox division revenues grew last quarter, according to Microsoft’s latest earnings report; the company sold 1.4 million consoles compared to 1.1 million in the same period a year earlier.
STAT | 10 million – Number of players free-to-play PC game SMITE now has, according to the company; the game launched in March 2014, and a version is heading to the Xbox One.