After years of record-breaking holiday sales, GameStop reports its second-highest holiday sales ever, citing economic weakness, item shortages and winter storms as reasons for the lack of upward momentum. More »
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CNBC gives a big free ad to Activision for about a minute, then Daniel Rosensweig, the Guitar Hero CEO, gets down to bidness. He doesn’t think rhythm gaming’s a saturated market. Less than 20% of console-owning households have one. More »
Sales were up at Take-Two Interactive, thanks to sales of games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Midnight Club: Los Angeles, but the publisher saw losses also increase to the tune of $15 million.
Publisher Ubisoft brought us up to speed on its financial performance today, tallying up first-half sales of €344.5 million ($684 million). CEO Yves Guillemot also confirmed that the next Assassin’s Creed was in development.
Chicago-based developer Midway announced its third quarter earnings today, pulling in $US51.4 million in revenue. That’s better than the $US36.7 million it did the year prior and thankfully in line with expectations. The bad news — oh, there’s bad news, naturally — is that Midway took a loss of $US75.9 million, with losses planned to continue for the year. That’s worse than the quarter before and the year prior, for those who like to keep track of such things.
Kojima Productions stealth action game is still buttering the bread at Konami. During the company’s first half — ignore those “Q2″s, that’s all April to September stuff — gamers worldwide snatched up over 4 million copies of Metal Gear Solid 4, with total Metal Gear series sales amounting to 4.33 million. That’s more than a third of the Konami’s total game sales for the six month period, with the games division pulling in about $US950 million in revenue. Yeah, you should definitely expect a Metal Gear Solid 5.
Things have been tough for THQ over the past couple weeks, with delays, studio closures and a tumbling stock price making headlines. The company announced its quarterly results today which were, surprise, surprise, not too good. The publisher reported sales of $US164.8 million, down from $US229.3 million in the same quarter last year.
In its first quarter as a combined company, Activision Blizzard raked in $US711 million for the three month period ending in September, the publisher announced today. That’s a big take prior to the holidays and bigger than the projected outlook, but still resulted in a loss of $US194 million for the company.
Midway isn’t the only company feeling the pinch in these troubled economic times, but yesterday they were hit especially hard, according to Forbes. The company’s stock hit a 52-week low today, losing 12% of its market value, with owner Sumner Redstone facing the possibility of selling more assets to help keep it afloat.
Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division saw revenue up 68 percent in its third fiscal quarter, thanks to “robust” demand for Xbox 360 consoles, the company announced today. The console sold 19 million units during the three months ending March 31st, a 74 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
