Online trading has been around since the dotcom boom, but most online platforms stillhave an old-school feel about them and are just not with it on the UI front. Then there’s Macquarie Edge, with its slick Web 2.0 interface. Here’s five cool features worth having a look at using JB Hi-Fi as an example:

Plenty of non-member features

Unlike most online financial management systems (and MMOs), Edge lets you play with lots of features without signing up, like access to stock research and company announcements. You can join as a member without having an actual trading account, and by doing so, you can set up watch lists—handy for fantasy share trading—and configure email or SMS alerts.

Visual news search results

When you perform company searches, Edge shows you a visual representation of related topics in a bubble chart. The search results for JB are on the left. The closer the bubbles are, the more relevant the topic; the larger they are, the more info available. Hovering over a bubble lets you see and access related news, market reports, video and other information (some of which is restricted to trading members, but much of it is freely available).

Highly interactive graphs

Tracking performance on Edge is impressively interactive, letting you mouse over and see exact figures for a particular date, like in the graph above. As you can see, JB stocks have been on the up and up, riding on a 45% rise in net profit last financial year despite the economic downturn.

Social networking features

This is an Australian first. Most people make investment decisions based on tips from friends, family and colleagues. Edge makes the most of this by allowing you to interact Facebook-style with investors you know. You can view their portfolios (shown as a proportional representation, not a total value, for privacy reasons) if they agree, and you can similarly open yours to others. You can also check out the most viewed and most held stocks across the entire Edge community.

Live market information when you buy or sell

If you do decide to jump in and place a trade, it’s a three-step process and Edge provides a live market view from start to finish. This is particularly useful if your decision is based on a trend that could reverse without warning.

See it for yourself at Macquarie Edge.

Disclosure: Macquarie Edge is a current sponsor of Kotaku.

What analysts and strategists are calling “unsubstantiated chatter” had a profound effect on EA stock today, rising 8.1% to $US20.01 during Nasdaq trading this afternoon.

“There’s talk that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring Electronic Arts. It’s unsubstantiated chatter, but it’s out there,” said Frederic Ruffy, an options strategist at WhatsTrading.com in New York.

And sometimes being out there is more than enough. Microsoft shares also rose during the day, gaining 1.1% to $US26.05, despite analysts claiming that such a move makes no sense whatsoever.

But Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, said Electronic Arts was not on Microsoft’s “radar screen” based on his industry contacts. “Our contacts just don’t see Microsoft buying Electronic Arts, no synergies whatsoever, and also not Microsoft’s corporate primary focus right now,” Chowdhry wrote in an e-mailed note.

A quick glance about the internet finds that analysts largely agree — this doesn’t seem like a likely move. Still, we’ve reached out to Microsoft and EA alike, and will update the story once we receive any response.

Electronic Arts stock up on takeover talk-traders [Reuters - Thanks David!]

Financial publication Forbes takes a look at some of the things people are still willing to spend money on in the face of the recession, and of course, our favourite hobby makes the cut.

The economy might be tanking, but we still need our stuff. Without our stuff, what would we be? Stuffless…and no one wants that. Forbes details 10 of the stuffs that people are still willing to hand over their precious, precious money for. Video games were the second item on their list, right after smart phones.

Consumers today desire affordable escapism, and video games fall into that category. Two top-selling games—”Madden NFL ‘09″ and the “Wii Fit”—sold 5 million units combined in the third quarter of 2008, according to NPD.

Other items that made the list include toy building sets, car maintenance items, and personal hygiene items. I never thought I would see video games in the same list as personal hygiene items, but there you go.

Ten Things We’re Still Buying [Forbes.com - Thanks Josh!]

GameDaily reports that Michael Klotz, senior account manager at the NPD Group, says the video games industry is already feeling the effects of the recession.

Gee, I could have told you that, looking at the list of recent industry layoffs. But Klotz pointed out in a Game Business Law summit at Southern Methodist University’s law school that spending on games hasn’t gone down – one out of every four American dollars is still spent on games. Rather, the rate of growth is decreasing; the 9, 12 and 8% increases in August, October and November should have been way higher, according to Klotz.

“The game industry is growing, but it has been impacted by the recession,” he said. “We probably would have seen even more growth if it hadn’t been impacted by the current economic climate in the U.S.”

Games Already in Recession, says NPD [GameDaily]

“As an industry, we’re in denial about the problems with retail,” Braben argued, citing a common myth that online distribution will become the norm in the coming generation.

“Retail is killing the longevity of our titles,” he said, with the massive used game market contributing to the problem. “The industry sees none of this” when it comes to preowned sales.

Meanwhile, the retail film industry puts its new films front and centre, and the stores in which movies are sold are often more attractive and inviting than game stores.

“What’s worse, if you ask for a new release, they’ll offer you a used one, and it’s not even much cheaper,” said Braben. “What it’s doing as an industry, means the long tail, which is what games rely on, is going to go away. And relying on online is killing ourselves.”

Braben suggested selling higher-priced copies of games to rental stores, then lowering the prices of not-for-resale copies — thus making new games more affordable for players, while introducing additional revenue streams for rentals.

“We can add value for people who have actually bought the game,” he said — designers should come up with additional content that rewards those who buy games new.

Well, I’m not sure if his suggestions are necessarily going to fix things (certainly won’t make it any easier on retailers), but Braben sounds pretty passionate and inflamed about a lot of these topics. It’s a quick and pretty interesting read, even if you don’t agree with his solutions.

MIGS: Frontier’s Braben On Retailers ‘Killing The Longevity’ Of Games [Gamasutra]

Net revenue was RMB265.20 million or $63 million, a decrease of 34.6% from RMB405.25 million a year ago, mainly on lower online game net revenue, which was adversely impacted by adjustments made to the monetisation features within ZT Online. Analysts expected revenues of $103 million for the quarter.

Gross profit declined 40.9% year-over-year to RMB212.5 million or $50 million, and gross profit margin fell to 80.1% from 88.8% in the third quarter 2007.

Active paying accounts for online games declined 31.6% to 937 thousand, and average revenue per user dropped 4.4% to RMB282.1. Meanwhile, average concurrent users for online games rose 9% from last year to 543 thousand.

Wowee. The interesting thing here is in many Chinese articles I’ve read, players have cited ‘cost’ as a reason they are moving from WoW; clearly, some players are not spending less on domestic games. Even considering the drops in revenue and other indicators, sounds like Giant is steaming along — perhaps their unholy mix of ‘illicit’ MMO features being sanctioned really is just the ticket.

Giant Interactive Q3 profit falls; issues Q4 revenue forecast [RTTNews via PlayNoEvil]

DP: Let’s look several years into the future for a moment. Should I even bother learning today’s skills? Surely they’ll have completely changed by the time I get out of college? What kinds of jobs are absolutely ‘rock-solid’, and will undoubtedly still be around five to 10 years from now? And what new jobs do you think might exist that nobody has quite pinned down just yet?

GN: Specialisation and hierarchy are the norms in film production, and are antithetical to what needs to happen in the games industry. The reason for that distinction is that the game industry is more focused on invention than on repeatability/measurability. Programmers that can draw are going to be in much better shape than an animator specialising in putting talking mouths on cats. The solutions of tomorrow are not going to fall into the production or organisational categories of today.

It’s a quick read and has some worthy tidbits if you’re aiming for a development career.

Valve’s Gabe Newell on Becoming a Game Developer [GameCareerGuide]

… the Wii’s dominance in the United States is equally true in Europe. In both regions, Wii sales are significantly higher than the combined sales of both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Microsoft and Sony have gone back and forth in public statements over which company’s HD console is ahead in Europe. While recent price breaks on the Xbox 360 have probably changed the dynamic significantly, it is worth taking stock of the data reflected in the graph above.

For the 9 months of sales shown in each year, the Xbox 360 appears to have had sales of around 2.1 million systems since 2006 and the PlayStation 3 has garnered sales of over 2.2 million systems since 2007. However, these figures are just for the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain, so they do not cover all of Europe.

Worth a read, especially if you’re a statistics geek.

The Mushroom Growth Plan: Inside Nintendo’s Numbers [Gamasutra]

Hoffman notes that subscriptions have a downside: When it looks like there’s a fixed monthly price until eternity, even a game’s most dedicated fans can eventually balk. Many publishers entice retention with discounts for longer commitments, but Hoffman also suggests that creating a demand for multiple subscriptions per user can prolong the average customer’s lifetime value.

Games can also offer add-ons to the base subscription — Hoffman notes that these “allow more devoted and less price sensitive players to more routinely pay for more value and drive the ACLV higher.”

Pure subscription models, by their very nature, keep out that portion of the player population who’s not willing to pay that amount, however.

“So, while the modelling of the revenue equation is easier, there will always be inherent elasticity to the game,” Hoffman says.

Tiered subscriptions wherein the first tier is free can also help a game reach price-sensitive players, but then it adds to the publisher’s objectives the need to optimise conversion rates from free to paying — while still maintaining the value and integrity of the free experience.

I’ll be trotting up to USC in a few weeks to attend a workshop on MMO design considerations and pricing structures in free to play versus subscription environments, and though it’s nothing I have to worry about except as an end user, I’m always curious to see how and why companies arrive at the structures they do.

Analysis: Vindicia’s Hoffman On MMO Billing Headaches [Gamasutra]

Has the audience been trained to expect disappointment, to have minimal attention spans, by the hype-driven (and thus continually disappointing) game industry? Have the mechanics of games themselves engineered a culture that demands logically-placed, tiered rewards interspersed with occasional, unpredictable conflict?

Has the audience developed its resentful mob mentality by being told what they do and don’t want by a slate of envious, immature game journalists whose largest qualification is that they are more obsessive enthusiasts than those for whom they write?

Journalists and developers will say that they’ve become whatever it is they’ve become because of turning backbends to please an unpleasable audience; the audience can just as easily say they’ve been made what they are by the media they consume.

Vicious cycle, no? In the general gaming marketplace that’s extremely competitive, hype building is the name of the game — and is often inherently at odds with what we might call “responsible journalism.” The big question that none of us can answer is how to get out of the cycle.

Hot Headlines And Hype Cycles — Who’s Responsible? [GameSetWatch]