This Week in the Business: 'Wii U Feedback from Retailers is Extremely Strong'

What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...

QUOTE | "Wii U feedback from retailers is extremely strong."—Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, talking about pricing the Wii U at $299 and $349, higher than some analysts expected.

QUOTE | "It's about gameplay, stupid."—Seamus Blackley, co-creator of the Xbox and founder of Innovative Leisure, talking about what makes a game great and why a small team can do things a big team can't.

QUOTE | "Once we get past March, I think that the price point will appear high to many."—Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, commenting with other analysts about what they think of the Wii U price and launch details.

STAT | 2 million—Number of copies of Guild Wars 2 sold in two weeks, according to NCsoft; the number of concurrent players regularly peaks at over 400,000.

QUOTE | "This is still ultimately a business that's about selling games. Nintendo still does that better than almost anyone else."—Rob Fahey, former editor of, talking about the lineup of games at launch for the Wii U.

QUOTE | "The performance of the A6 looks on par with Xbox 360."—William Volk, CCO of PlayScreen, talking along with other developers about the new A6 CPU in Apple's iPhone 5 and what it means to games.

QUOTE | "This places tremendous pressure both on game makers and hardware manufacturers to raise the bar."—Scott Steinberg, analyst with TechSavvy Global, talking along with other analysts about the impact Apple's iPhone 5 will have on game publishers.

QUOTE | "This might be a case of different vibes for different tribes."—Meelad Sadat, PR director for [a]list games, talking about whether Nintendo holding their press event the day after Apple will reduce its media coverage.

QUOTE | "Games were centre stage for Apple's announcement."—Rob Fahey, veteran game journalist, talking about why Apple's iPhone 5 is important to game developers and gamers.

QUOTE | "If players pay something you can provide ad-free gaming, and if they don't pay why should you care if they stick around?"—Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, talking about why he thinks the free-to-play business model for games is ultimately doomed.

STAT | 172,000—Number of copies of Square Enix's Sleeping Dogs that sold at retail in the US last month; the PC version was a download only, so its sales are not included in that total.

STAT | 11,074—Number of Guild Wars 2 accounts that have been hacked or blocked; hackers are using stolen email addresses and passwords from other sites to try and access accounts.

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
(Image from Shutterstock)