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...

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,...

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...

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...

Another Day, Another Buyout Rumor - This Time Electronic Arts -09/23/09 at 2:35 PM CDTby Mahyar Hashemi

Why so many rumors in the video game space about acquisitions? Because apparently they work.  THQ Inc. (THQI) was up 13% yesterday as a result of a rumor that Viacom and others are interested in buying them.  But as one poster pointed out, why would THQ raise 100 million in a convertible offering one month prior to a proposed buyout?  It sh...

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 ...