What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Wii U feedback from retailers is extremely strong.”—Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, talking about pricing the Wii U at $299 and $349, higher than some analysts expected
QUOTE | “It’s about gameplay, stupid.”—Seamus Blackley, co-creator of the Xbox and founder of Innovative Leisure, talking about what makes a game great and why a small team can do things a big team can’t
QUOTE | “Once we get past March, I think that the price point will appear high to many.”—Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, commenting with other analysts about what they think of the Wii U price and launch details
STAT | 2 million—Number of copies of Guild Wars 2 sold in two weeks, according to NCsoft; the number of concurrent players regularly peaks at over 400,000
QUOTE | “This is still ultimately a business that’s about selling games. Nintendo still does that better than almost anyone else.”—Rob Fahey, former editor of GamesIndustry.biz, talking about the lineup of games at launch for the Wii U
QUOTE | “The performance of the A6 looks on par with Xbox 360.”—William Volk, CCO of PlayScreen, talking along with other developers about the new A6 CPU in Apple’s iPhone 5 and what it means to games
QUOTE | “This places tremendous pressure both on game makers and hardware manufacturers to raise the bar.”—Scott Steinberg, analyst with TechSavvy Global, talking along with other analysts about the impact Apple’s iPhone 5 will have on game publishers
QUOTE | “This might be a case of different vibes for different tribes.”—Meelad Sadat, PR director for [a]list games, talking about whether Nintendo holding their press event the day after Apple will reduce its media coverage
QUOTE | “Games were centre stage for Apple’s announcement.”—Rob Fahey, veteran game journalist, talking about why Apple’s iPhone 5 is important to game developers and gamers
QUOTE | “If players pay something you can provide ad-free gaming, and if they don’t pay why should you care if they stick around?”—Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, talking about why he thinks the free-to-play business model for games is ultimately doomed
STAT | 172,000—Number of copies of Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs that sold at retail in the US last month; the PC version was a download only, so its sales are not included in that total
STAT | 11,074—Number of Guild Wars 2 accounts that have been hacked or blocked; hackers are using stolen email addresses and passwords from other sites to try and access accounts
This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
(Image from Shutterstock)
