There are very few people in this world who know how to create hits...multiple hits. Those creative minds should be recognized and remunerated in the video game industry for their contribution as much as other forms of media. From a business perspective, that might be more expensive, but if the reward is better selling games the trade-off is worth it.

"I really don't know what the spend will be, but it could be 10 - 12% of projected sales. If we assume a retail price of $100, that's $10 million in marketing for each 1 million units sold. If they go mainstream (have Oprah demo the device), I could see them selling 3 - 4 million, maybe more. That suggests the potential for $30 - 40 million in marketing.]

"We expect that in order to save face, Take-Two management will withdraw its demand that any discussions wait until after the launch of GTA IV, and we think that management will engage in discussions with EA,"

"I think the console [manufacturers] all misjudged the quantity of downloadable content and the opportunity to actually download meaningful content, and so what sounded like a good idea in 2003 or 2004 in the design stage with the 20GB hard drive on the 360 was just not sufficient. Frankly, the surprise to me is that the new SKU is [purportedly] 60GB. I mean, I would think they'd introduce a 200GB or 500GB and eliminate the 20GB and make the 120GB the standard cheapie one.

For EA, sports is enough to pay for the whole [$2 billion] thing. If you get rid of sports competition, you suddenly add Take Two's $200 million per year in sports revenue and EA doesn't compete on price anymore.

Hickey said the GameStop's holiday period typically represents 75 percent of Q4 reported sales, which means that "the street is looking for $2.027 billion in holiday sales, or +17 percent year-on-year."

"I don't think that this is an issue of dissatisfaction with Take-Two; rather, I think it is rational to believe that in the wake of the $850 million Pandemic/BioWare deal, high quality developers like Bungie and [Rockstar] North would look to test their market value"

While this substantial decline was inevitable, it is currently unclear whether the drop reflects consumer transition to next-gen software or weak spending patterns amongst the low-end consumer...we think that the PS2 may finally be on its way out of the industry for good.

"We note that the USD 50 million deferred revenue for GTA episodic content was reclassified as 'long term,' implying a release date no earlier than Q4 2008," commented Pachter in a note to investors following publisher Take Two's latest financial results.

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in his latest report, "We note that Sony recently acknowledged that it will no longer produce its 60Gb PS3, and we expect the price of the 80Gb PS3 to be reduced to $499 before the holidays, maintaining a premium SKU at that price point."