THQ: Welcome to the Jungle -11/16/10 at 8:06 AM CSTby Perry Rod

The once mighty shovelware developer, THQ Inc. (THQI), has found itself surrounded, deep in enemy territory. With the rise of the Wii and Nintendo based products, THQ has been forced to move away from children's products and is trying to succeed with what the industry calls, "core titles."  These are risky high development cost titles for an older de...

Take Two, THQ Down 20% in August -09/01/10 at 12:56 PM CDTby Perry Rod

With the NASDAQ and Dow Jones Index down 6% and 4%, respectively, two video game publishers have seen their shares beaten down to a bloody pulp in the last month – THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) and Take Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO). Competitor Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS), meanwhile, was down 4% in the same period. THQ issued a weak quarterly update whic...

THQ Says Wait Until 2012 For Growth -08/12/10 at 11:34 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Yeah, wait until the stock drops another couple dollars.  THQ (NASDAQ:THQI) now says that it will earn “roughly” .81 to .86 in its second half this fiscal year (ending in March, 2011).  That’s because the company just lost .21 in a quarter that featured its crucial UFC title and now forecasts .60 to .65 in adjusted losses for i...

Michael Pachter Overestimates, Take Two Interactive Shares Tumble -08/12/10 at 9:07 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Call it the Pachter effect. Video game analyst Michael Pachter, who himself has seemed to admit in the past that his monthly U.S. sales estimates for publishers come without much extensive research, has perhaps managed to help move Take Two Interactive’s stock (NASDAQ:TTWO) down about 17% in only three days.  How?  On Monday of this week,...

THQ Inc. E3 2010 Performance Review -06/21/10 at 10:15 AM CDTby Perry Rod

THQ (NASDAQ:THQI) knows how to put on a show at E3.  You would never know that they are struggling as a company if you saw the noise they made at E3.  But in the end, it’s a question of whether their titles hold up among the competition: Red Faction - This new iteration looks similar to the previous offering as far as graphics, but doesn't...

Hopes and Dreams Continue at Take Two Interactive Software -12/28/09 at 10:11 AM CSTby Perry Rod

He said in 1993 it was always his dream to run his own media company.  Strauss Zelnick left a nice job at Fox and took a big risk to work on a start-up video game company, Crystal Dynamics.  That risk turned out to be a failure for him at the time but provided him with a resume entry that would prove to be invaluable. When Carl Icahn bought int...

NPD Results Delayed for Gamestop Corp, Activision, Take Two Interacti... -10/15/09 at 5:27 PM CDTby Mahyar Hashemi

Video game investors will have to wait a couple more business days to see September's NPD results for video game software and hardware sales.  "We have just released a communication to our clients, explaining that, due to last minute processing requirements, the NPD Video Games Retail Tracking information for September 2009 will now be released on Mo...

Wedbush Morgan Upgrades Gamestop (GME) -10/08/09 at 10:59 AM CDTby Perry Rod

Calling Gamestop's guidance "conservative" and citing valuation, Wedbush Morgan senior analyst Michael Pachter raised his rating and price target for Gamestop to $34 and "Outperform". "We expect industry sales to return to positive territory in September, and think that GameStop is well positioned to recover as well. " Gamestop is up around 3% this mornin...

Why THQ Inc. (THQI) is Unlikely To Be A Buyout Target And Why dealRep... -09/22/09 at 11:49 AM CDTby Perry Rod

Take Two (TTWO) Interactive, a company with a major video game sports division, received a buyout offer last year from video game sports giant Electronic Arts (ERTS) before the market storm.  Today, there is a rumor that THQ (THQI), whose list of internal intellectual property is small and comparatively unimpressive in terms of sales volume, is recei...

Take Two Interactive Burns Through 300 Million Cash -09/02/09 at 12:10 PM CDTby Perry Rod

It was just one year ago that Take Two (TTWO) Interactive Software Inc. announced that it had accumulated 339 million dollars in cash from the success of Grand Theft Auto 4.  They had no debt. Today, just twelve months later, they have managed to burn through almost all of that cash.  With a recent 5 million dollar cash settlement and 138 millio...

Xbox 360 Pricecut Welcomed By Interactive Entertainment: Activision, ... -08/24/09 at 8:36 AM CDTby Perry Rod

At the GamesCom conference last week, eyebrows were raised when Microsoft did not announce a pricecut of the 360 after Sony announced their PlayStation 3 console's drop to $299. Over the weekend, however, a Wal Mart (WMT) advertisement distributed by video game website Kotaku and also another regional chain advertisement appear to confirm the coming of a ...