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?