Bleeker- you are right; they should piss or get off the pot :) I wish they had just denied the rumors, or not commented. But to just say "yes, it's true; we will spend between 5 and 200 million dollars through either a cash, stock, debt or mixed financing deal to buy or partner with someone at sometime in the future..." is just dumb. Maybe they thought that they look more attractive as a high growth company looking to acquire others, when in reality the market doesn't like uncertainty.
Harry- the advantage to owning your own studio is that your gross margin on sales is higher because you don't give such high royalty rates to a third party. The disadvantage is the overhead of the salaries and the facilities, and the fact that talent will leave you. The advantage to partnering/publishing is that you don't have to pay the overhead or deal with the normal day to day running of the studio (though you will still advance royalties). The downside is that the royalty rate is higher, reducing gross margins. This basically boils down to a simple risk-reward formula.
Recent PC Data info shows FF7 still near the top. Most importantly, it is still commanding a high retail price, $45 (suggesting it has a high wholesale cost). Even with rebates, we should be doing fine.
Nice to see EIDSY up today: my other holdings: TDFX, PMTC, CD, DIMD, RDRT- down baby! Hey, KLIC went up a hair!
Bleeker, thanks for double checking that 200,000 figure for Commandos. BTW, 10% isn't a bad day for THQI! that was a quick rebound! What an incredibly strong and resilient stock...
Jeff Lins |
