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Technology Stocks : GTIS - Will it be a Phoenix or not ? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott Miller who wrote (1799)	3/17/1998 9:07:00 PM
From: RJC2006	Respond to of 2319

<<<It's pretty easy to read between the lines of what they're saying. Plus, most producers I know are quite frank with me, in an off-the-record way.>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sigh. >>> Would you be able to share any of those problems with us without violating your insider trading rule, or would you only share the good news (or more probably just your impressions that things are going well)? <<< <<<I could share some problems, but I'm friends with these game companies and will not express these problems publicly. If I do that to their games, they will be more inclined to bad mouth our games. Professional respect for competitors comes into play here.>>> Reminds me of the old joke: "Why didn't the shark eat the lawyer?" Answer: "Professional courtesy." In other words your relationship with them is political and we are all intelligent enough to know that with politics comes misinformation. Something we all are aware you are a champion against. >>> 3. Do good "vibes" about a product usually translate into success? <<<Good vibes are certainly a better indication of success than bad vibes. ;)>>>> Yeah, and I'm having a Woodstock flashback. >>> Do they typically run these games buy a test sample... Test groups are used.>>> I have a great idea. Put Victoria and I in one of your test groups of one of your products. At this point if you get a positive review it's sure to be a huge hit and WE can post the result for you! (insert happy smirk here) >>> 4. How many successful programs (let's say top 20) do you think GTIS needs to be a successful and profitable company? <<<This is not a reliable way to look at things. One ultra-super-mega hit, like a Myst, can keep a company afloat for years (depending on the size of the company and how wisely they spend their profits). But there are simply too many variables involved to boil it down to a number of top 20 hits.>>> This is an educated reply. The fact is without knowing the expenditures for each game and the sales projections it is entirely impossible to predict. The best that can be done is project future sales of a title and estimate the income then comparing this to current sales and income provided that income streams are stable. Hey, it's a fact...bean counting is the name of the game. >>> What fraction of these need to be produced in-house at GTIS? When making your determination, please consider G.O.D. will be making the profit margins on out-of-house products shrink. <<< <<<<Since the first part of your question cannot be answered to any reliable degree (without many more parameters), this second part is equally tough to answer. However, I will say that a publisher that owns brands is better off than one that doesn't. This is common sense. A publisher is better off owning properties that it can continually exploit (without fear of losing the brand, such as when Activision lost the MechWarrior brand), and GT is definitely making business moves with that in mind.>>>> Excuse me for saying this but you have conveniently danced around the issue like a master politician. It seems to me and it seems to Robert that the Gathering of Developers can only be competition to other publishing houses and therefore will invariably shrink the revenue unless higher demand for products makes their entry transparent. Why dance around the issue? To stay on topic, GT's loss of Quake II is the most glaring example of the dangers of not owning a property completely.