THQ is facing the possibility of being de-listed from the NASDAQ stock market after the plunge and stagnation of its share price below the minimum bid price of $US1.
Majesco’s share price has again wandered south of Wall Street’s Mendoza line, prompting NASDAQ to tell the maker of Cooking Mama to get it back north of $US1 or face delisting from the exchange.
Rumours can be powerful forces in the economy, as evidenced by an 8.1% rise in Electronic Arts stock today following unsubstantiated rumours that Microsoft was interested in buying the publisher out.
Remember how Atari didn’t want to file their quarterly financial reports? Course you don’t. It’s why we can put links into sentences like that. Anyways, they held off filing them even though they weren’t allowed to, presumably because the news was bad, and were nearly de-listed from the stock exchange as a result. Well, they were given until today to file their reports, so file them Atari did, and the news is…well, yes, bad. They lost $US 11.9 million for the quarter, up over 50% from the same time last year. Things are so awful that in it’s quarterly report, it’s noted that the company had “substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern”. So do we! Atari reports 11.9 million Q1 loss [Gamesindustry.biz]
There’s a certain sense of poignancy about this. Halo 3‘s marketing has been impressive/overwhelming, so much so I’d throw it up there as a shining example of capitalism done right/gone too far. Which is why it makes sense that the crowning PR achievement prior to the game’s launch was to have Master Chief and a bunch of Xbox/Bungie people (including Shane Kim & Frankie O’Connor) ring the bell to signify the close of trading for the day.
