QUOTE | “There are a lot of ways you can mess up VR really easily.” – nDreams’ Patrick O’Luanaigh, talking about his studio’s switch to virtual reality and how difficult it is to design good VR games
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Japan is still stuck in the old brick-and-mortar business in a digital age. We hope to change the game by giving designers a different option.” – Kevin Lim, founder of newly formed Inflexion Point Capital, talking about why they aim to invest $15 million in Japanese mobile games
QUOTE | “We do not believe authenticity and compensation are mutually exclusive.” – A company representative for 3BlackDot, responding to questions about paying YouTube stars for promoting games and other products.”
QUOTE | “It was basically clear pretty quickly that the game was not going to make its money back as a premium game.” – Get Set Games’ co-founder Derek van Vliet, talking about how the company tried to switch from casual free-to-play games to premium
QUOTE | “The difference is that the hits in free-to-play are making crazy amounts of money, and the premium hits in mobile aren’t making crazy amounts.” – Grand Cru CEO Markus Pasula, talking about why their Supernauts game is free-to-play.
STAT | 9.9 billion yen – Amount Nintendo lost last quarter ($96 million) compared to a profit last year of 8.6 billion yen ($83.8 million); the company also saw 3DS sales drop to 820,000 units from 1.4 million last year in the same quarter
STAT | 96% – Amount that game revenue rose for Sony last quarter due mostly to strong PS4 sales; Sony’s Games & Network Services division also posted a profit of $43 million versus last year’s loss of $164 million in the same quarter
STAT | 351 million – Number of page views that the top YouTuber, PewDiePie, got for his gaming channel last month; he now has 29 million subscribers, and made an estimated $4 million last year
QUOTE | “We’ve literally had conversations with every publisher. So the fact that every publisher has an eye on eSports… says something.” – ESL VP and former pro player Craig Levine, talking about how publishers are now building games with an eye for eSports
QUOTE | “Console sales in Canada have never been stronger.” – NPD Canada’s David Ryce, talking about how PS4 and Xbox One have outsold their predecessors in Canada over their first eight months by 127%, with software sales up 102%
