This Week in the Business: Fortune Also Favors the Cautious

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

QUOTE | “Being too ambitious, as we have seen with THQ for example, is not always a good thing.”—Koch Media co-founder Dr. Klemes Kundratitz, on rapid growth at Koch Media and its publishing arm Deep Silver

QUOTE | “GameStop has at least 10 years of runway left in its core business.”—Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, saying predictions of GameStop’s demise are very premature

QUOTE | “I think retail’s a strong part of our industry and it will continue to be so.”—Chris Early, Ubisoft’s VP of digital publishing, saying digital will grow and retail might change, but they will co-exist

QUOTE | “I want to show that you can make an unbelievable game without a publisher.”—Brian Fargo, CEO of InXile Entertainment, on the challenges of creating a crowd-funded game

QUOTE | “The thing I’m most excited about is the ubiquity of second screen.”—Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, on the features of next-gen consoles that seem most compelling to him

STAT | 19%—Amount that total retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories dropped in July compared to July 2012; hardware dropped 34% as consumers waited for next-gen, but 3DS sales rose 14%

QUOTE | “They’ve always been hard to sell.”—Dishonored co-creative director Raphael Colantonio, on why Arkane is very happy that its new IP Dishonored sold well enough to become a franchise for Bethesda

STAT | 1 billion—Number of page views per month that eSports behemoth Team Curse is pulling in; Team Curse expects to clear more than $20 million in revenue this year

STAT | $1.5 billion—Amount that Skylanders games and toys have brought in at retail since the debut of the franchise; so far Skylanders toys have been the top action figure brand in the U.S. and Europe in 2013

QUOTE | “When you’re investing millions of dollars, you really want to make a safe bet … but it’s still ultimately just guesswork.”—Craig Hubbard, co-founder of startup Blackpowder Games, on the game creation process

QUOTE | “The more choice you give players the more difficult giving them a seamless audio environment is.”—Marty O’Donnell, veteran composer at Bungie, talking with other top composers about the evolution of game music

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

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