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...

THQ Inc. Still Looks Overvalued -11/20/09 at 12:46 PM CSTby Perry Rod

Hopes are running high at THQ Inc (NASDAQ:THQI).  That's because hope is all they can count on at this point. MX vs. ATV, a product being released on four consoles is coming next week without significant fanfare, according to Amazon bestseller charts and others.  The racing genre as a whole has been underperforming in the past year, as seen rece...

Outrageous: Electronic Arts Inc CEO Riccitello Buys His Own Company a... -11/17/09 at 3:33 PM CSTby Perry Rod

What is it about greedy video game publisher executives? Just two years ago at Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS), with only eight months on the job as Chief Executive Officer, John Riccitello announced a buyout of Pandemic and Bioware studios from his former firm Elevation Partners, of which he was one of the founders.  The purchase price looked astrono...

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...

Electronic Arts Chairman Larry Probst in a High Profile Failure -10/02/09 at 2:41 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Larry Probst, current chairman of Electronic Arts (ERTS), served for three years as the company's CEO and is its largest individual shareholder.  In that three years, Electronic Arts stock was flat while the S&P 500 rose 30% and Activision, its biggest competitor, rose 170%.  He stepped down as CEO in 2007 but still holds the position of cha...