David Helgason, co-founder of Unity 3D, pushes back against industry predictions claiming that console gaming is nearing its end.
Insight
Helgason: Software pricing tiers are effectively under $1,000 or over $100,000
“There's two prices. There's up to a thousand bucks, and then there's over a 100,000 dollars. If you go past a thousand bucks, then you have to kind of go and do a dog and pony show, and you're just going to support them and hang out with them. And by the time …”
Prediction Partly held up
Helgason: Augmented reality will be massive and almost entirely business-focused
“It's going to be massive. It's going to be massive in a very different way. Whereas VR, I think, is all entertainment. Business users that are sort of entertainment-like, you know, kind of looking at products and things like that. Whereas AR, AR is going to be…”
Insight
Helgason: Premier VCs like Sequoia endure extended underperformance without fundraising issues
“A firm like Sequoia, they will, you know, they have to do pretty badly for pretty long before they have a problem raising a new fund, for instance. So, so they're just, I think they're just less worried about the individual deal.”
Insight
Founders lacking confidence in scaling their team should consider selling
“So if you don't feel confident that you can evolve through your team, then definitely consider selling.”
Insight
Helgason: User-friendly platforms win through high volume at low price
“If you have a user-friendly platform, and everything else in your industry is really not user-friendly, you could maybe, instead of, You know, selling it a few times for a lot of money. You could sell it for a little bit of money a lot of times.”
Opinion
Helgason: Overreliance on microtransactions creates an unhealthy gaming monoculture
“It's really just healthy for the ecosystem to have, like, many different ways of monetizing, and, you know, it's become a bit too much of a monoculture in some ways, like, the people that are making all the money are doing the same thing with microtransactions…”