Chinatown coming to PSP. This was a great game for DS and deserves its status as the highest rated DS game. It'll be interesting to see how similar the game ends up being on PSP. Obviously on a technical level the port is a non-issue. On a design level there were many uses of the stylus control which won't map well to the PSP, however most of those uses were for brief mini-games like hot-wiring a car or opening a stolen truck. Maybe they'll replace those or cut them entirely. The grenade throwing may be a bit harder to map to the controls. I wonder too if they'll use any higher resolution assets or add voice-overs, or additional content to encourage existing owners of the DS game to also buy the PSP version. With so many units of both hardware sold there must be significant cross-over there, especially amongst the hard-core. The DS game was only 128MB in size so even if that goes up for the PSP, it's likely it will still be small enough to be a compelling download for the PSP Go. I've no evidence of this but I think PSP piracy isn't as bad as DS piracy, and the brand is very strong on PSP so this should be easy profits and potentially help boost catalog sales too.

Cost cutting at Rockstar New England. Probably only 10-15 people, and not the highest paid ones either, but it's something. TTWO is still plagued by having too many studios for its headcount, which means significant overhead. Or to put it in terms Zelnick might understand:

Dear Strauss,

Imagine you're going to the gym, but instead of the bench press, treadmills, rowing machine and cable pulls being in the same location, they're all in different cities, and each of these locations has their own manager, receptionist, leases and utility bills.

Now imagine you're a ridiculously overpaid manager of a video games publisher, and your studios which make these things called "games" are like these gyms, so one game is the bench press, one game is the rowing machine, etc.

I hope this helps.

Signed,

Yet another shareholder you've successfully screwed over.

ZeniMax acquired id today for an undisclosed sum. ATVI tried to acquire id for $105M back in 2004, or $90M for the IP only, and were turned down. Since then id's costs will have risen since they've ramped up in size, their engine licensing is negligible these days, and current games are already signed to other publishers (Wolfenstein with ATVI and developed by Raven, Rage to be published by ERTS, and Doom 4 rumored to also be ERTS) so that would lower the value to the acquirer. Even so, it highlights the demand for successful original IP and teams, something TTWO has and it's a resource which is getting thinner on the ground every year, which in turn drives up the value of the ones still standing.

Big volume move from 7.50 range to nearly 9.50 today in 5 days, not including another 3 days bumping around that 7.50 low. I'm not as optimistic of a buyout now compared to a few months ago, due to the recent debt selling and the presence of the ZelnickMedia trading plan which is selling their shares, however it's still worth holding some Sep $10 calls IMO just in case. Even if you put a buyout chance at 20%, the upside to the calls would be 10x-20x their cost. Recently when THQI was nearly the same market cap as TTWO that was unacceptable and the situation was likely to change, and wow how fast it changed with THQI dropping 27% in a few days and TTWO rising 25%. I had that arb play and sadly closed it too soon, and I won't buy TTWO here because I have the $10 calls for any buyout and there are no catalysts over the summer to drive it over the convertibles price around mid $10's. So why the big volume? Is it the hedging that was warned about in the debt selling, or the typical insider moves before news, but if that's the case why would ZelnickMedia be selling shares in a trading plan?