This Week In The Business: $11.76 million

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“Nintendo has to upgrade this Christmas.”

The flurry of Wii 2 rumors this week have prompted analysts to comment and Sterne Agee’s Arvind Bhatia believes Nintendo must launch a new console this year, or else lose significant share to Microsoft and Sony.

“Smartphones to become the next frontier for social gaming.”

That’s the view of Michael Cai of research firm Interpret, who commented on a new social study by MocoSpace. The report noted that social gamers actually are more social in real life.

“The middle class game is dead.”

Trion’s Scott Hartsman, in a post-launch interview about WoW competitor Rift, echoes the sentiments of Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski about the unfortunate state of games development.

“Uncharted 3 could do for 3D gaming what Avatar did for 3D movies.”

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich came away from a PlayStation analyst event with glowing impressions of Naughty Dog’s third installment in the blockbuster Uncharted franchise.

“Halo probably has a bigger marketing pizzazz than Bungie does, but we’re working to change that.”

Bungie’s longtime composer Marty O’Donnell reflects in an interview on his studio’s ambition to be recognized for its games just like Blizzard and Valve. He wants Bungie to be known for more than Halo.

“You punch up. You don’t punch down.”

Stardock boss Brad Wardell responds to harsh criticism by Theo Bergquist of GamersGate, who bashed the recent sale of Impulse to GameStop. Wardell said GamersGate is basically attacking from a position of weakness.

$11.76 million

That’s the amount that the ESA’s E3 Expo generated in 2009, when they finally came to their sense a once again did ‘Big E3’ after scaling back the size and scope of the show for a few years. Their revenues tripled.

“From 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales have spiked significantly, resulting in nearly a doubling of their market share,” says Flurry Analytics

“[Steam’s] had an effect on [Valve’s] development schedule.”

While making parallels to his former Impulse digital distribution business, Stardock’s Brad Wardell implied that Valve is pumping so many resources into Steam that it’s held back development of big titles, like a new Half-Life.

225,000 units sold

That’s the number of copies of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters sold in the game’s first week, which EA Sports said is the largest launch week in the series’ 14-year history. Perhaps the Tiger Woods scandal hasn’t hurt the franchise after all?

60,000 units

Unfortunately for the Nintendo 3DS, that represents the sales gap between DS and 3DS (460,000 vs. 400,000) for the month of March. A handheld from 2004 beat a newfangled 3D machine. Is the massive success of Pokemon Black and White to blame?

“A first step in the direction of video games getting their own category”

Bill Freimuth, Vice President, Awards, The Recording Academy, talks about video games gaining respect at The Grammy Awards, as the Academy added video games to the descriptors of four awards, giving them equal billing with film and television.

“On social games it’s a game designer’s paradise.”

The somewhat hyperbolic words of Zynga Chief Games Designer Brian Reynolds, who believes that “a game designer is actually more important on a social game than on a triple-A game.”