Eight news stories 8.5

• THQ have announced less than impressive financial results with a loss for the year of $33.5 million. With the market booming and consolidation the order of the day they must be pretty vulnerable as a takeover target. With global distribution system, 16 internal studios and a billion dollar plus turnover they are ripe for the picking.
• GTA IV breaks all entertainment sales records with a $500 million first week.Of course it did, and will continue to. It deserves to. More important is the perception of a game launch becoming an event for the mass market media in the way that a film release is. There is a lot of mileage to be had here by astute game marketing professionals.
• Electronics Arts launch new brand, EA Sports Freestyle, for casual sporting games. A clever move this, to capitalise on the huge growth in casual gaming with a strong brand that helps shape consumers’ visions of it’s offerings.
• Take Two is suing the Chicago Transit Authority for pulling it’s bus advertising campaign. Quite right too. All this because people at the Transit Authority were stupid enough to believe Fox News.
• Game Chairman sells £2.28 million of stock. You can’t blame him bailing out at the top of the market, other Game directors have. Boxed games are on their way out and the big names in downloads will almost certainly not be the current high street names.
• CNN presenter Glenn Beck displays amazing ignorance with an attack on GTA IV. He said it teaches: “sons to treat women like whores” and that it “is training our kids to be killers”. He goes on: “In Grand Theft Auto, your son, husband or boyfriend or whoever, can hire a prostitute, have sex with her and then beat her to death with a baseball bat. When a police officer comes after him, he can either light him on fire or cut him in half with chainsaw.” He ought to try reading books. Many of them are much worse.
• The EA/Take Two soap opera continues. Now, it seems, there is only a 50% chance of it going through. EA, obviously want to get their critical mass over the size where they are a takeover target. Maybe Take Two aren’t the best way of doing this, the premium seems excessive and the fit isn’t the best in the world. Maybe Take Two would be better merged with THQ. The combined company could shed itself of masses of overheads and use GTA revenue to finance lots of development at the Take Two studios.
• Infogrames recruit new CFO. Another piece of their jigsaw comes together. Maybe this brings them closer to having the management horsepower to buy Sci/EIDOS. A marriage that is just waiting to happen.

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