Jester,

Yes, I was thinking the same thing, when EA first said it was 'listening' to the community and decided to decrease the credits needed to unlock the most popular Star War heroes from the first series, as I wrote about earlier. Now I see the game is averaging around high 60's scores, and for a big spend franchise, that can't be good news. Pissed gamers and a fairly piss-poor game? Maybe when studios had 15 titles out at a time could one of them be a flop, and the bottom line needle wouldn't be moved all that much.  Like you, with revs concentrated amongst a smaller number of games, and BF being their holiday 'blockbuster', I don't see how their guidance remains unchanged. The players have already told the to piss off with the in-game extortion. Maybe they'll initiate pay toilets in EA's studios and headquarters, figuring the execs can afford to help make the nut. (You probably weren't around when there *were* pay toilets in the US, lol.)

INTC keeps coming out with worrisome news. They have announced that their Chengdu, China fab will be producing their 8700 series of chips, and in particular the 8700k flagship, not just the Malayan plant that was originally planned to produce it all. The fact that the 8700's have been absent to the point of a 'phantom launch' doesn't bode well at all. I think perhaps they make up the revs once the chips are available. (This may be implicated in the fact that at Microcenter you can buy an AMD Ryzen 1700X for $230 right now. On amazon, an 1800X is going for $319. The past-series Intel 7700k is on sale for $249, I think. It likely beats both Ryzens anyway. But the point being that the discounts may come ahead of actual availability of 8700 chips, which beats everything else to dust, pretty much (altho the mobos are pricey.) But even if they're on the cusp of a launch, I think they must be short a fair ton of revenues both on the chips that weren't sold to gamers, as well as, more importantly, those chips not showing up in boxes in time for Christmas. Maybe I'm too pessimistic - the 7700's, and even the 6700's beat AMD on most fronts. But if you're like me, you're going to wait for the best to become available, because the price differential is insignificant over the long term of ownership.)

Likewise, Optane's claims of speed have been tempered by reality to some degree. Add to that Samsung's push to provide 'good enough speed at greatly lower prices' given the improvements in their most recent nand-flash, and they've played the one card that can really hurt INTC in that fight: price/performance.

tomshardware.com/ne...6.html

The long term picture may be better, as INTC and Micron perfect the interfaces and performance of Optane - but that's a cloudy picture. You won't see this in the current price of INTC's stock, I do not believe. I don't think the analysts are paying that much attention - at least most of them. But it does concern me of when earnings season comes around, are they going to surprise miss because of the lack of flagship products in this area? Good thing 99% of cloud centers (I'm told, it may be garbage) have INTC chips involved. And Qualcomm must be smarting over the loss of Apple business to INTC.