After years of record-breaking holiday sales, GameStop reports its second-highest holiday sales ever, citing economic weakness, item shortages, and winter storms as reasons for the lack of upward momentum.
CNBC gives a big free ad to Activision for about a minute, then Daniel Rosensweig, the Guitar Hero CEO, gets down to bidness. He doesn't think rhythm gaming's a saturated market. Less than 20 percent of console-owning households have one.
Microsoft's Xbox division booked an eye-popping 66 percent drop in profit for the 2009 fiscal year, reflecting a terrible economy and mirroring steep declines across all of the software behemoth's business segments.
Publisher THQ announced its quarterly and annual earnings today, pulling in $830 million worth of revenue last year. That's down from the $1.03 billion the company made during its fiscal 2008, leading to substantial losses.
EA embraced the Wii last year and the Wii embraced it right back, with the percentage of revenue due to the Nintendo console nearly doubling over the previous year.
Electronic Arts announced its fourth quarter earnings today, pulling in $860 million in revenue, resulting in a loss of $42 million for the three months ending March 31st. EA's annual losses totaled $1.088 billion.
Software giant Microsoft announced its quarterly earnings today, boasting $13.65 billion in revenue, with $1.57 billion of that from the division responsible for the Xbox 360. That means some bad, some good.
While nearly every other company bled cash, fired employees and cancelled projects, Activision Blizzard posted record results, announcing over $5 billion in revenue for 2008, seeing $429 million worth of profit over the holidays.
Publisher THQ was hit hard during its third quarter, losing $191.8 million over the holidays. That loss, previously expected to be net profit, and more lowered expectations will translate to massive cuts to its workforce.
Electronic Arts announced today that its quarter ending December 31 saw a massive loss, totaling $641 million. EA John Riccitiello called the lower than expected earnings "a clear disappointment," announcing additional, extended layoffs.
Sales were up at Take-Two Interactive, thanks to sales of games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Midnight Club: Los Angeles, but the publisher saw losses also increase to the tune of $15 million.
