Today in GigaGamez Stocks: China Levels, NVidia Regains and Sony Rises
In our daily look at the stocks we find interesting, Giga Gamez tries to keep you guys up to date on what’s happening in the market. As always, we’re happy to hear suggestions on new stocks to include or any juicy tidbits that we may have missed.
Notes for the day: Looking over the numbers for Thursday, the Chinese market is gaining momentum once again after a serious drop last week, and though 2 of our 3 Chinese stocks were down, that should turn around shortly. NVidia took a hit recently as the chip market stumbled, but today is back up 1.22. Sony, after changing their PS2 predictions and announcing their new PS3 social addition, rose 1.28 points today to close at 51.38.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Previous Close: 27.61 Open: 27.72 Close: 27.32 Overall: DOWN 0.29
Sony (NYSE:SNE) Previous Close: 50.10 Open: 51.23 Close: 51.38 Overall: UP 1.28
Nintendo (OTC:NTDOY.PK) Last traded at 34.25 on March 8 Overall: UP 0.60
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) Previous Close: 14.10 Open: 14.20 Close: 14.19 Overall: UP 0.09 Notes: AMD is a processor manufacturer that owns the graphics card company ATI. ATI graphics cards are in constant competition with Nvidia Corp.
Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) Previous Close: 29.60 Open: 30.22 Close: 30.82 Overall: UP 1.22 Notes: Nvidia is a graphics card manufacturer. They are in constant competition with AMD’s ATI.
Shanda (NASDAQ:SNDA) Previous Close: 21.90 Open: 22.15 Close: 21.67 Overall: DOWN 0.23 Notes: The reason that Shanda is listed in our stock reports is that they’re the people behind the highly popular Asian MMO Legend of MIR II, which, according to MMOG Charts, has a PCU (Peak Concurrent User) base of 1 million.
Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) Previous Close: 19.10 Open: 19.23 Close: 18.91 Overall: DOWN 0.19 Notes: Netease is the company behind Fantasy Westward Journey, a popular Asian MMO, which, according to MMOG Charts, has a PCU of almost 1.3 million.
The9 Limited (NASDAQ:NCTY) Previous Close: 32.54 Open: 33.50 Close: 32.72 Overall: UP 0.18 Notes: The9 is a MMO company in China, that imports and localizes other MMOs such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Hellgate: London.
GameLoft (OTC:GLOFF.PK) Last traded at 6.60 on Feb. 27 Overall: DOWN 0.25 Notes: GameLoft is a large producer of mobile games.
Nokia Corp. (NYSE:NOK) Previous Close: 21.51 Open: 21.64 Close: 21.74 Overall: UP 0.23 Notes: Nokia, the mobile phone company, has always had a strong gaming presence. Though the original N-Gage failed, there’s a new attempt at the N-Gage technology currently being developed.
Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) Previous Close: 50.18 Open: 50.50 Close: 50.32 Overall: UP 0.14 Notes: Electronic Arts is pretty self-explanatory as they’re a giant publisher. Also included with EA is their mobile games.
Take-Two (NASDAQ:TTWO) Previous Close: 18.95 Open: 19.30 Close: 19.46 Overall: UP 0.51 Notes: Take-Two is a large publisher that controls the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Recently, Take-Two has had a few problems with their executive team.
THQ (NASDAQ:THQI) Previous Close: 31.81 Open: 32.24 Close: 31.85 Overall: UP 0.04 Notes: Publisher behind Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander and Titan Quest as well as a number of successful franchises. Another note about THQ, according to this report on Next Gen yesterday, THQ may be set to “take off.”
Vivendi Universal (OTC:VIVEF.PK) Last traded at 39.00 on March 8 Overall: UP 0.75 Notes: French publisher and owner of Sierra. Also known for mobile gaming and being the publisher behind World of Warcraft.
Ubi Soft (OTC:UBSFF.PK) Last traded at 44.00 on March 6 Overall: 0.00 Note: Publisher behind the Tom Clancy games and a few interesting mobile properties.
Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) Previous Close: 34.43 Open: 34.62 Close: 34.69 Overall: UP 0.26 Notes: Multimedia giant, Disney, has their fingers in just about every pie.
Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) Previous Close: 19.86 Open: 19.86 Close: 19.80 Overall: DOWN 0.06 Notes: Time Warner’s Warner Bros. has several gaming properties and licensed materials as well as GameTap.
Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) Previous Close: 35.68 Open: 36.10 Close: 36.48 Overall: UP 0.80 Notes: Verizon is on the list not only as a cell phone network, but also as a gaming platform.
Viacom, Inc (NYSE:VIA) Previous Close: 38.56 Open: 38.76 Close: 38.73 Overall: UP 0.17 Notes: Viacom is the parent company of MTV and all of the MTV properties, which includes Nickelodeon.
Quick Reference of Terms:
Over the Counter (OTC): This is a term used to notate that a stock is traded via a non-major market.
Pink Sheet (.PK): The suffix attached to a stock when it is traded on the Pink Sheets Electronic Quotation service, which is known as a OTC market.
It should be noted that as far as the Chinese market goes, things like The9 and other such distributors are extremely volatile. This is natural, as companies like The9 produce NOTHING of value on their own. The instability for that particular company came from uncertainties about the contract to license BC for China. As of February, they apparently have things settled.
Now, a lot of The9’s problems, and thus uncertainties, comes from their own infrastructure problems; there IS a huge issue of them actually being able to support the demand for the game. In fact, there previously was a HUGE uproar in the Chinese playerbase about the login queues. The significance of this is that Chinese players do not pay a flat monthly fee like Western players do, but instead pay on a finer gradient, which previously meant that they had to pay for the 2 hour queue BEFORE they actually got into the game. This is why this particular company is volatile, and as such things revolve around their ability to grow in response to this difficulty.
A difficulty which, evidently, Blizzard themselves routinely halfass as a matter of course. $25 transfers? Yep, that sounds like a fucking awesome fix! Really interested in paying more for a simple character transfer than i would for the actual gametime!
And from that, further instability can come from what kind of fucktarded hoops The9 has to jump through to compensate for Blizzards own deep, DEEP logistical fuckups.
Besides that, you really have to wonder who’s buying nVidia stock, and for what reason. Is it simply because the PC graphics card market is going to aimlessly push ahead, and PC games are going to encourage them to do so for no discernable reason? Is is some sort of vicious cycle like that? Are stocks like that becoming too insular?