This Week in the Business_ They Are the 0.15 Percent

STAT | 0.15%—Percentage of mobile gamers that provide 50% of the revenue for free-to-play games, according to analytics firm Swrve; this was taken from data for January from tens of millions of mobile game users Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Every year there are fewer and fewer titles and they are less and less innovative.”—Xbox co-creator Ed Fries, on the console industry and what the pressures of AAA game publishing are doing to it(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); QUOTE | “It’s probably not two years away before a mobile device is giving you the game experience of the equivalent console.”—Nvidia’s Tom Peterson, on the relentless improvement in PC and mobile graphics QUOTE | “The hate mail we got made Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs look like Sesame Street.”—Dan Pinchbeck, creative director at The Chinese Room, on the response to their horror game QUOTE | “When are we going to see that gay protagonist in a AAA game? Not for a while, I suspect, because of fears that it’ll impact sales.”—Lucien Soulban, Ubisoft Montreal writer, on gay characters appearing more frequently in games STAT | 100 million—Number of registered users in Minecraft, as revealed by Notch; the game currently has a 14.3% conversion rate to paid accounts QUOTE | “Currently a lot of Japanese developers can’t actually tell Y1 apk what the North American audience wants.”—Mighty No. 9 developer Keiji Inafune, on why more Japanese developers aren’t crowdfunding games QUOTE | “There’s a very tiny subset of games and publishers and developers who have cracked the code on eSports.”—MLG president Mike Speso, on how eSports is an important part of game development QUOTE | “The very fact that something is trendy is often a bad sign … because it means you’re following the crowd.”—David Braben, head of Frontier Developments, on why they are sticking with publishers instead of self-publishing QUOTE | “The use of the word ‘free’ as such, y1 game and without any appropriate qualifications, should only be allowed for games which are indeed free in their entirety.”—Statement from the European Commission taking the position that games offering in-app purchases should not be labeled ‘free,’ after complaints from consumers STAT | 322,083—Number of Y1 com Game PlayStation 4 consoles sold in Japan over two days, according to Famitsu; this beat out the launch of the Wii U which sold 308,570 units in the same period STAT | 2 million—Number of players that joined the Titanfall beta, according to Respawn; the game suffered problems for about seven hours, but Respawn said the test will help them perform well when the game launches This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International Image by Giulio_Fornasar | Shutterstock