Leresistant's Blog

This time, as indicated in the title, I will speak of the shares of Take Two. You know that the game Grand Theft Auto IV has sold very well (more than two million copies in the first days of marketing), has been selling a lot of consoles, has been criticized very well ....

Electronic Arts, which increased the number two publishers of video games, since qu'Activision and Vivendi have agreed to merge, desperately want to get their hands on Take 2, to strengthen its position. As a result, they offer two million dollars to shareholders to buy back shares and thus have greater control on society.

The board of Take 2 seeing all this a bad eye, asking shareholders not tender their shares, to keep it, to see record sales beaten by their last game GTA IV.

When we see the figures, more than two million copies, it is reasonable to think that the share price of Take Two will increase fairly rapidly, not because of dividends etc ...?
Well, when you look at the share price, we see that fluctuations are not very important.

Here is a link describing the evolution of stock prices:

LINK

You think what?

PS: Regarding the sales of GTA IV, the ratio is 65/35 for the Xbox 360 in the USA, and 55/45 in the UK.

I do not know if you've already seen the future Thursday Battlefield Heroes, but it perfectly fulfilled its marketing function, which is to attract a maximum of players in the bosom of the high license to Electronic Arts.

Prime interest: this game is completely free. As the video, no need to download it illegally, or pay any penny. No need to pay a monthly subscription to regain his colleagues on the Internet. Therefore, many people will be tempted to test this game, which looks pretty!

Second interest: little violence visible. Unlike previous opus (Vietnam, 2, 2142, and soon Bad Company), which included pervasive violence, this episode may be permitted for children 12 years. Parents need not worry, what happens in the street is sometimes much more violent than what is transcribed in the game Therefore, the panel of potential players is greatly expanded.

Third interest: the graphics cartoon version. Again, in previous episodes, realism was the highlight of the game: physical realistic graphics escalation ... The sky's the cartoon version. The advantages are many: will play small and large too, so much fun with friends. Also, when you look more closely at the technique used to this game, this is not an advanced cell-shading like Crackdown or Naruto, but an old game engine has been reworked for rendering a cartoon. No advanced physics, no deformation of materials, not real-time weather effects: just playing basic, but nervous. In this way, the game becomes even more accessible! And development costs are at the same time reduced. No need indeed to have a computer art, but a machine dating from 2 years could easily turn the title. Another way to broaden the public!

To conclude, one can simply say that this game, in addition to friendly air, is an excellent marketing strategy from Electronic Arts, which I think will attract new people to license Battlefield. The cost of this "campaign" marketing will not be too high, visibility is very important, and this campaign is much more creative than the banal advertisements. The game is developed by DICE, and normally released during the summer of 2008 for download free and legal.

As shown in the video: business + creativity = businessivity!

To have a better dialogue with players, Peter Moore has just opened a blog, or rather a topic on the official forum of Electronic Arts. It offers users to leave feedback, but also to discuss with him about the new EA Sports games.

New method of communication, or boss's desire to better understand the English players?

The topic can be read HERE.

You are probably familiar with the case between Electronic Arts and VG Holding Corp., which owned BioWare and Pandemic Studios? If not, I'll give you a quick summary.

EA has acquired a few days ago the studios BioWare and Pandemic, for a total of $ 620 million, plus $ 155 million for some employees. $ 35 million were also exchanged between EA and VG Holding Corp..

The problem with this acquisition, in particular the studio Bioware, and the Mass Effect license does not belong to Microsoft, but Bioware, so to EA now. This acquisition will not affect the first part of the trilogy, but on the other two episodes, nothing less. Here are some scenarios:

1) EA, seeing that Bioware had based its production pipeline for all three games on the Xbox 360 platform, decides not to change anything in the original plans of the studio: three games will be exclusive to 360. However, teams of EA could intervene in the studio to support staff.

2) EA, in a cost-up (as always, and with an expenditure of $ 810 million), decides to use the title on PS3. Several possibilities are emerging:

2.1) A development versions of PS3 and Xbox 360 simultaneously in the premises of Bioware: the entire pipeline is revised production, research must be done to program the PS3 (worst case).
2.2) A release on Xbox 360 in temporary exclusivity, and Bioware developing the PS3 version for release later (eg Oblivion).
2.3) A release on Xbox 360 in temporary exclusivity, and another EA studio developing the PS3 version for release later (eg GRAW 2 PC, developed by GRIN).

3) EA saw that casual gaming is very buoyant, decides to abandon the development of new generation versions of Mass Effect to carry on the Wii, and benefit from its innovative gameplay (for those who did not understand this was a joke!).

As you can see, many possibilities are conceivable. Therefore, do not speculate, but rather wait to see what will happen after the first opus Mass Effect, via press releases, videos ...

Ubisoft becomes gradually more and more American. Electronic Arts announced on August 3 last now have more than 20% of the voting rights in French society (24.86% to be exact), which enables it to influence significantly on the strategy for Ubisoft.

EA has not increased its capital in the company, but just had the opportunity to receive a "double voting right," because it has only 15.37% of the capital, against 13.4% for the Guillemot family, which owns 19.2% of the voting rights.

EA has not wanted to impose its staff to the board of directors of Ubisoft, leaving it a certain autonomy.

Electronics Arts, the first independent publisher of video games, decided to restructure all its studios. According to its president, John Riccitiello, the studios will be split into four separate units:

- The sports games: EA Sports

- The casual gaming: games on phones, the public ...

- The Sims: a department dedicated to this series.

- Rest: very varied titles such as Command and Conquer, Need For Speed ...

According to EA, this restructuring should save some precious dollars to the firm, given that "develop a big game can cost up to $ 20 million.

Note the extent to which the phenomenon Sims. When you create a division solely for this series, one can easily doubt the turnover that relate these games.