EA update. They said in an 8K on Friday afternoon that they don't expect a material change to FY18 forecasts. However, I think it's fair to say the chance of major upside has decreased. I'm on the lookout for a quick dip to the 6-month lows in the $105's. Barring a complete sales disaster of SWB2. and we should get an early sign of that on Monday from the weekly UK sales, I think that'll be a good entry.

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.

Things are looking worse for EA and SWB2. The physical sales in UK were down 60% from SWB1, but remember EA implied sell-in is equal. Belgium just came out today ruling that loot boxes are gambling and they'll be taking this further with the EU. At least one or two other EU countries are seriously looking at it. Also Hawaii came out today saying they're looking into legislation, specifically calling out EA and SWB2 as an "online casino", also saying they're talking to other States about the issue. This is potentially bigger than just SWB2's sell-through. MTX are a huge, huge part of EA's profits. If you consider Ultimate Team's $832M revenue to have a 100% profit margin, and add in some contribution from other games, then almost $900M of EA's $1,224M operating income is from these loot boxes.

Ultimately, I don't think much will change. China and Korea already have laws in place and Blizzard promptly circumvented them. The main damage short term is perception of what could happen with loot boxes, plus concern about gamer backlash which we may be seeing with SWB2. Longer term, I think EA and others will just get better at hiding the monetization levers, probably with no change to income.

Jester,

I agree that EA will figure out a structure to circumvent the 'gambling' issue, altho that is what it is. If I've got the right iteration, Need for Speed (Payback is current?)  also pretty much sucks wind. Forza iterations seem much more solid.  Although on some of their 'pillar' games (FIFA) looks like they did a good job. And given that ATVI's COD WWII has gotten some really questionable reviews (70 from Gamespot), and that Battlefield 1, though old, is much more appealing to me than the WWII, as I had thought WWII would've been an ATVI blockbuster. There are some nice incentive discounts on BF 1, such as cdkeys.com $20 for the regular edition, $30 for 'Revolution' edition. Very tempting, esp. if multiplayer is still robust.

I finally have taken the plunge, *way* too late (I was considering NVDA @$120 as a nice buy - now $215), into a position in NVDA and ISRG, the latter of which is beyond most all analysts targets but just keeps ramming it higher. So far, I'm up $6.50. Not quite a fair wage for a day's work :-)

Limited, but my son played COD WW2 and loved it. Loved Nazi zombies and the war mode.  I tried to buy it at WalMart and best Buy on Black Friday and it sold out at both. Appears to be sold out on Amazon currently, but available through 3rd party sellers >$60 and still it is the #1 PS4 and XBOX1 game on amazon (behind a few Nintendo titles). I have also seen good reviews, so I would not be too negative on it.

Jon,

Of course, it's a matter of personal preference in what one finds exciting to play. I'm figuring that I'll either go with BF1 or WWII, and probably the former, having played a bit of it and read the some of the metacritic reviews.

And yeah, game deals selling out can drive you nuts. Every time I get notice that Target has Forza 3 back in stock for $15, I go there online and find it's not available within 300 miles of me. Some of the better deals I've seen that you can actually get are on cdkeys.com - Cuphead, Fallout 4, Doom, Wolfenstein, a number of others at good discounts. Origin (It's EA....gag, gag) is selling BF1 for pc for $20, or the Revolution Edition for $30, or BF1 Revolution and Titanfall 2 deluxe combined for $40. All of them seem like good deals to me.

I picked up an xbox one s w/Halo Bundle at Walmart, and the console and games come out to about $170. A bargain for a 4k streaming player built in. But this nags at me: Yeah, $170 is a great price, but if you just bump it up about $300 to an Xbox One x, you'll get 4k gaming to go with your 4k TV, old 360 titles that have been remastered will most often look better than the originals, and over the life of the console, it ought to justify itself out. If you've got a discover card and go thru Amazon or Walmart, you get 5% cash back. And I tentatively bought an Asus Strix 1080ti for $800. Why not just switch to console gaming with the One x? I must be a fool.

Politicians appear to be piling on the bandwagon of whipping EA for introducing young kiddies with poor judgment to make in-game gambling purchases:  youtube.com/wa...RuL4os

I don't see it as much besides political grandstanding on an easy target. Yes, EA is slime, but I doubt you're going to find some 10 year old standing on a soap box pouring dollars into machines in Vegas. It reminds me a little bit of when politicians were flogging the industry as an instigator of sociopathic violence, when the Grand Theft Auto series got so popular. Funny, of all the shootings in the intervening years, I can't recall any shooter who said video games were his inspiration. (And it just hit me - every one of the shooters have been male. Aren't there any angry, crazy women out there with guns?)

 

 

 

 

Jamok, that's a good tip on cdkeys. I saw on slickdeals that cdkeys had a deal on Forza Horizon 3 digital which I needed to use on my PC. They had the game + Hot Wheels expansion for $28 after some other code was applied, then I got the Car Pass on Live for $7.50. Now all I'm missing is a handful of cars in the over-priced VIP pack, and the Blizzard expansion which I can get later. Then I realized I was needing a new hard drive so I hopped on newegg and found they were selling 2TB Seagate Firecuda for $99 or Barracuda Pro for about $115, and they came with AC Origins, so I got that too.