John,
Personally, even though a MPRS/ATVI combo makes sense from a games point of view, MPRS cost structure is too high and they are bleeding...no..hemmorhaging... money that will directly affect ATVI's bottom line, near term and long-term. I don't think ATVI needs MPRS badly enough to burden themselves with an unprofitable venture. Look at MPRS' balance sheet. $32 million in long-term debt, bad current ratio, shareholder equity of only $2 million or so. Lots of problems here that would seriously drag ATVI down. Also, I think MPRS would be hard to digest from both an organizational and game development point of view. A lot of games in development...without any real focus. Falcon 4.0 I hear will be great...Mechcommander too. But they really have to start shipping a few quality titles, rather than trying to be the one stop shop for all gamers. They aren't an ERTS or a GTIS. They are way too weak financially to have so many titles on their plate.
I will be sorely disappointed in ATVI management if they buy MPRS. In fact, I will sell all of my shares immediately if they offered more than $4 a share. There's just too much baggage here. MPRS is too much of a distressed company and offering a premium would be unwise. Also, ATVI should take a cue from GTIS backing out on their proposed merger. On the other hand, ATVI is probably looking for companies that they can strip down and get at the meat. I don't know....this is just MHO of course! What do you think?
I think your point about being jaded with first person shooters is
right on the mark. Personally, I think Quake II is selling and will sell big, big numbers. As the first true upgrade in the category,
it's novel. Some people are talking about Half-life and its improved enemy AI and Unreal, ATVI's Sin, etc... but I agree with you that ATVI shouldn't bet the farm on this genre. I'm tired of it, my friends are
tired of it...I like the Mech genre especially, but I also like strategy
games like AOE, Dark Reign, TA, and of course, WCII. I hate flight
simulators like MSFT's game, etc. though the Jane's series is pretty damn good.
I'm glad to see ATVI put out Battlezone...this has the potential to
be great...an action/strategy combo. I wish I had more time to download and play the demo tonight...
you can get it at www.gamespot.com! A great preview there too!
Anyway, thanks a lot for your input. I don't intentionally mean to
shoot down ideas here. You guys are welcome to shoot down mine too! But I like the ideas and the suggestions. Keep them coming so we can discuss them!
Tom C. |
