QUOTE | “We’re trying, as an industry, we’re trying so fucking hard to just be fine. We talk about our successes and our achievements, but we shun mentioning our failures.” – Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail, talking about what’s right and wrong with the game industry in a recent blog post
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “If we look at our industry today, there’s reason to believe that we are fucked…If we look at casual games in 2015, what’s out there is mostly crap.” – The Binary Family’s Thorsten Rauser, talking about the ruinous influence of free-to-play on the casual gaming sector of the market
QUOTE | “Some people in the franchise leadership were totally opposed to zombies and a zombies mode, and they thought it would be a disgrace to the franchise.” – Treyarch head Mark Lamia, talking about Call of Duty: World at War’s zombies that almost didn’t make it into the game
QUOTE | “Players are so promiscuous they’ll try everything and they’re looking for reasons to put money in, not looking for value to get out. So it’s a very different model for us.” – Alex Seropian, CEO of Industrial Toys, explaining how different their mobile game Midnight Star is from the games he created as head of Bungie
QUOTE | “Can’t wait to make Xbox One games!” – John Smedley, president of Daybreak Game Company, that was formerly Sony Online Entertainment, now acquired by investment firm Columbus Nova, tweeting about how they will expand to new platforms
STAT | 6.4 million – Number of PS4 consoles shipped to stores in the fourth quarter of 2014, Sony reported during its earnings call; this is up from 4.5 million shipped in the same quarter of 2013
STAT | 45 million – Total number of copies of Grand Theft Auto V sold through the end of 2014, according to TakeTwo’s latest earnings report; ten million of those were sold on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One since November 18, and the company expects the number to grow substantially when the PC version ships
QUOTE | “At Blizzard we view eSports as a community builder.” – Blizzard executive producer Chris Sigaty, talking about things the studio is still learning from its players
STAT | 20 million – Number of matches played in the Halo 5 beta, according to Microsoft; over 181 million kills were made during a collective 290 years of gameplay logged
QUOTE | “We anticipate that Katy’s significant global audience, including more than 170 million fans on social media, will make her a strong gaming partner for Glu.” – Niccolo De Masi, CEO of Glu Mobile, talking about their 5-year deal with pop star Katy Perry to make mobile games
STAT | $850 million – Amount of revenue that Activision Blizzard received from Destiny and Hearthstone combined in 2014; according to Activision’s earnings report; the company had $4.81 billion in total revenues for 2014
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