This Week In The Business: Making Sense Is Boring

QUOTE | “What the other companies are doing makes business sense, but it’s boring” – Legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto, talking about Nintendo’s philosophy of creating gaming experiences

Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …

QUOTE | “We are concerned that you’ll play our games for a long period of time. We don’t want people getting nauseated.” – Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, explaining why his company isn’t ready to support VR headsets yet

QUOTE | “Clearly, Sony has jumped out to a lead with a great console and I think a great pricing strategy. But Microsoft is catching up quickly.” – Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgenson, talking about how the sales gap between the Xbox One and the PS4 is rapidly closing

QUOTE | “It’s difficult to stop the hype machine at some point. When the hype starts rolling, it’s like a snowball effect. I know sometimes I would love to put the brakes on.” – Ubisoft Montreal brand director Luc Duchaine, talking about how marketing and product development should work together closely

QUOTE | “What we want to see in the next year or two is a bigger mass market play… in order to broaden and perhaps fill the void that’s being left latent by, say, the Wii – which is a shadow of its former self.” – PlayStation UK managing director Fergal Gara, talking about how Sony is trying to attract a more casual consumer

STAT | $10 billion – Amount that lifetime revenue for the Call of Duty franchise has exceeded, according to Activision; unusually, the company did not yet release sales figures for the the latest installment, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

QUOTE | “In the next few years… we’re going to see more and more AAA-quality games on mobile and a change in core gamer opinions on mobile games.” – Paul Simon, executive producer at One Thumb Mobile, talking about how he sees attitudes changing about free-to-play mobile games

QUOTE | “It was kind of this sinking feeling a little bit, like this tidal wave I’d tried to run away from had eventually got me.” – Square Enix Montreal’s Ollie Sykes, talking about moving from AAA console games to making mobile games

QUOTE | “The portrayal of Barbie in this specific story doesn’t reflect the brand’s vision for what Barbie stands for.” – Official statement from Mattel, responding to the criticism of a 2010 Barbie book where Barbie needs boys to actually program the game she takes the credit for creating

QUOTE | “You have the free-to-play audience, and I think that’s reached its limits, to some degree.” – SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen, talking about what he sees as a backlash against the freemium model for games

STAT | 14% – Amount GameStop shares dropped in price Friday after the company’s earnings report on Thursday; GameStop’s sales for last quarter were $2.09 billion, down 0.7% from the previous year