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DirecTV announces positive Q4 results; no word on new HD channels, DirecTiVo or 24/7 ESPN 3D
While its cable competition deals with fears of cord cutting and losing customers DirecTV's Q4 results reveal it's continuing to add subscribers, growing by 289,000 in the US alone and even more in Latin America. Of course, good news for investors doesn't necessarily mean anything for customers, as news on any new HD channels and the much-anticipated DirecTiVo were notable in their absence. However, our friends at ZatzNotFunny points out both a tweet by the official DirecTV account suggesting the DVR could be delayed (again & again & again) to the second half of the year, and a forum post on DBSTalk that pictures what might be the final hardware and suggests it could end up shipping with the classic TiVo interface. One more interesting note? DirecTV hasn't picked up the 24/7 feed of ESPN 3D, opting to keep it live events only for now for unknown reasons, according to Explore 3DTV.
Nokia shareholders and unions fight back against Microkia
Nokia shareholders are not very happy right now with NOK taking a 25 percent hit since the announcement of the Microsoft marriage. Stephen Elop, Nokia's first foreign-born CEO, is taking heat on multiple fronts even as he prostrates himself to the media in hopes of getting his message out. Already, we've heard numerous conspiracies calling Elop a "trojan horse," sent by Steve Ballmer to sabotage Nokia from within. Conspiraloons are quick to point to records showing Elop holding a significant number of Microsoft shares -- a situation that Elop says is temporary (and outdated) having already sold a majority of his Microsoft position with plans to sell off the rest in favor of Nokia stock just as soon as he's free to do so under regulatory moratoriums meant to prevent insider trading. Nevertheless, Nokia will be facing at least two very real showdowns on its near-term horizon. First, will be a battle with the Finnish trade union Pro which is demanding €100,000 (in addition to severance payments) for every Nokia employee that loses their job under Elop's new strategy -- money the unions says will be used for reeducation. The union estimates that Nokia could cut as many as 25% (5,000 people) of Nokia's 20,000 workers located in Finland. The second major hurdle facing Elop, and the board of directors that appointed him, will come at Nokia's Annual General Meeting for shareholders. Already, a cabal of nine frustrated shareholders have been grabbing attention with its "Nokia Plan B" proposal to oust Stephen Elop and return Nokia to a MeeGo focus giving Symbian a five-year minimum reprieve. The group has since disbanded after its plan was rejected by institutional investors. Nevertheless, we don't expect Symbian / MeeGo fans and developers to give up without a fight, and we expect Helsinki Fair Centre's Amfi Hall to be center-ring when the event kicks off on May 3rd in Helsinki.
Nokia tells investors that 2011 and 2012 will be 'transition years'
Wondering how long it will take for Nokia to fully execute on its new strategy? Here's a clue in a press release targeting investors and financial analysts: "Nokia expects 2011 and 2012 to be transition years, as the company invests to build the planned winning ecosystem with Microsoft. After the transition, Nokia targets longer-term: (1) Devices & Services net sales to grow faster than the market. (2) Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin to be 10% or more." There are many ways to interpret this, naturally. But the one we can't get our minds around is that the Symbian and MeeGo houses were such a mess that they couldn't be repaired by 2012, even after years of effort and huge investments directed towards that goal. And here we thought that MeeGo "inspired both confidence and excitement" while Symbian's only issue was UI related. Update: Stephen Elop says that he expects Nokia to ramp up the transition this year and be ready to ship Windows Phone 7 devices in significant volume in 2012.
The "big bet": EA aims at a half-million subscribers to make SWTOR profitable
"It's a big bet, but it's the right kind of bet to make for EA." These are the words of BioWare's Ray Muzyka, responding to a conference call to EA investors in which the company admitted that Star Wars: The Old Republic will need to pull in at least 500,000 subscribers to become profitable. This is substantially less than the two million subscriber mark that industry analysts previously predicted. During the conference call, EA CEO John Riccitiello drew a line in the sand between financial failure and victory for The Old Republic: "At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the sort of thing we would write home about. Anything north of one million subscribers is a very profitable business. Essentially it turns on a dime from being quite sharply negative in terms of its EPS [Earnings Per Share] impact to positive the day the product ships. So it's our view that we can be very successful without fundamentally challenging the market leader [World of Warcraft] because we think we'll probably hit the smaller competitors harder when we get out there. Of course, we have no particular ambition to be a distant number two. Our ambitions are higher than that, but we throttle back a little bit relative to our financial projections." While Riccitiello admitted that the title has seen "significant development costs," he claims that costs proposed by the public are far higher than the actual costs of The Old Republic's development. He declined to share the actual costs or the number of staff working on the game. EA also announced that The Old Republic's release date will be in calendar 2011. BioWare has as recently as this January targeted a spring 2011 release. EA's estimate puts its launch somewhere between March 31st and December 31st of this year.
Could EA's history make investors wary about SWTOR?
According to a report on Gamasutra, investors have been slow to support Electronic Arts in its latest MMORPG endeavor, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The article released today cites Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey as saying, "We believe many investors are betting against SWTOR achieving market success, provided the company's (Warhammer Online from Mythic) and industry's track record at releasing successful new MMOs." WAR and of course All Points Bulletin being the latest MMOs from EA could make a potential investor a bit gun-shy about placing his money into another game of the same genre. Investors are not just concerned with the initial sales of SWTOR but also the long-term success of the game. The article uses the sales trend of WAR as an example. The first week's sales of WAR topped at 500,000 subscriptions, which is impressive for any MMO, yet subscriptions did not stick as customer satisfaction plummeted. If an investor is not familiar with BioWare's past successes or if he happens to view BioWare as a rookie in the MMO genre, then his wariness is clearly understandable. Today, Mike Hickey is calling Electronic Arts a "buy," but that may change if investors continue to see EA as a risky investment.
Planet Moon studios loses funding, Bigpoint acquires staff
It was a less-than-happy holiday season for the folks over at Planet Moon Studios, it seems -- multiple sources are reporting that the studio responsible for games such as Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed & Dangerous ran out of funding last December, due to the loss of a "substantial amount" of money allegedly owed by investors. CEO Aaron Loeb says his company will file suit against its debtors. Fortunately, MMO developer Bigpoint has picked up 37 staff members from Planet Moon, swelling the ranks of its San Francisco studio to more than 100 people. Bigpoint's CEO, Heko Hubertz, says the refugee staffers will be put to work using their cross-platform experience on Bigpoint's titles, which it just recently claimed have an audience of over 150 million users. Joystiq has reached out to Loeb for a comment on the pending legal action, and to learn what happened to any titles the company currently has (or had) in development. We'll let you know when we hear back.
Iwata says 3DS will beat 3DTVs to mass market
A lot of the scuttlebutt we've been hearing about 3D and video games has been centered around 3DTVs (and this week's Call of Duty: Black Ops release has been impressing some folks with 3D-enabled televisions), but Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says that if anything ushers 3D out of the movie theaters and into the household, it'll be the 3DS. He told the company's investors recently that "people in Hollywood currently do not believe that 3D television sets will be able to spread into ordinary households with rapid speed. I have the impression that they see Nintendo 3DS as a strong candidate to become the very first 3D device to be able to spread into the mass market in massive volumes." Really, the president of Nintendo thinks the 3DS will be popular? No kidding, tell us another one. But Iwata also said that developers around the world have shown "much stronger interest" in the 3DS than its old dimensionally-challenged cousin, the regular Nintendo DS, did at its own launch. So maybe by next March, we'll all be seeing things in 3D at home. Wait ... without glasses, we mean. No, wait ... aw, you know.
SouthPeak says CDV dispute is resolved, wasn't cheap
SouthPeak Games CEO Melanie Mroz told investors this week that the ongoing legal argument between her company and distributor CDV has been resolved, and while full terms of the agreement weren't released, SouthPeak attributes a solid chunk of its $5.8 million in losses to the legal issues. Mroz says "the litigation costs of $3.2 and 3 million" that the company had to pay "were mainly related to CDV." Next up, the company wants to "put these matters behind us and continue to focus on our business and future growth," but not without My Baby. SouthPeak is still embroiled in the fight over that title with Nobilis and Majesco. Chairman Terry Phillips says that SouthPeak feels the My Baby title "is our series, so we're still hoping that that can happen."
Michael Dell given an unsubtle hint by displeased shareholders
It's looking very much like that SEC investigation into Dell and Intel's overly intimate relationship has aggrieved investors in the former company. In a recent shareholder vote on the subject of Michael Dell's continued presence on his eponymous company's board, an almost unprecedented 25 percent expressed their desire that he leaves. We can't say we blame them, considering Michael had to spend $4 million of his own cash to square things with the SEC. He never admitted any personal guilt for the company's misreported earnings, but then innocent people don't tend to pay multimillion-dollar personal fines either. As it stands, he still has the backing of the majority of investors, but Mike might still do best to hand over the CEO reins to someone who hasn't been dragged through the mud of impropriety quite so thoroughly. We hear Mark Hurd might be on the market soon.
Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo being replaced to soothe frustrated investors?
Well, here's a surprise: Reuters says Nokia might consider replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in order to please unhappy shareholders who don't see the cellphone giant effectively competing in the smartphone market. The report is mostly based on analyst chatter and doesn't provide any hard sources, but we've certainly seen analysts swarm around blood in the water like this in the past, so it's not totally out of the question -- especially given core concerns about Symbian^3 delays, stagnant profit growth, and (uh oh) competing against the iPhone. What's more, OPK pledged to build up Nokia's US presence when he took over, and he's obviously failed to deliver on that promise -- US marketshare has fallen from 20 percent to 7 percent, prompting one analyst quoted in the Reuters piece to wonder if "Nokia really has the desire to fix the problem." Ouch. That's a lot of big questions with no easy answers -- OPK is scheduled to speak to shareholders next week, we'll see what he has to say.
Palm also looking at licensing webOS and / or finding new investors
Although we've got the feeling that Palm will eventually be sold off, apparently that's not the only option on the table: Reuters and Street Insider have followed up last night's news that Palm is up for sale with some more details, including the revelations that Cisco is an interested buyer and Palm is also considering licensing webOS and / or seeking an additional infusion of cash from an outside investor. We're at all sure who'd be willing to join Bono's Elevation Partners in pumping more cash into Palm as it stands right now, but we can certainly see the company loosening the strings and licensing webOS to other manufacturers, something it did with great success back in the Palm OS days. Of course, that success eventually led to a string of terrible business decisions and the brink of failure, from upon which Palm has never returned, but hey -- at least it's familiar territory, right? Sigh. In other news, Palm CTO Mitch Allen is scheduled to talk about Palm's patent strategy next month, and the press release announcing his talk straight-up values the company's IP portfolio at $8-$9 a share, or around a billion and a half dollars. If that's true, it means anyone buying Palm at today's closing price and market cap of $6 and $1.01b would be getting a nice little discount -- which is probably why bids are expected to come in this week. We'll see what goes down; it looks like most of you agree with us that HTC would be a terrific match here, but anything can happen. Stay tuned.
Adobe says iPhone / iPad adoption and 'alternative technologies' (cough, HTML5) could harm its business
Adobe might continue to crow about Flash and its importance on both the desktop and mobile devices, but there's no lying to investors, and the company is pretty blunt about the threat of the iPhone and iPad in the end-of-quarter Form 10-Q it just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission: it flatly says that "to the extent new releases of operating systems or other third-party products, platforms or devices, such as the Apple iPhone or iPad, make it more difficult for our products to perform, and our customers are persuaded to use alternative technologies, our business could be harmed." Now, Adobe has to make doom-and-gloom statements in its SEC filings -- it also says that slowing PC sales or a failure to keep up with desktop OS development could harm its business -- but the timing is crazy here, since just yesterday Apple changed the iPhone OS 4 SDK agreement to block devs from using the upcoming Flash CS5 iPhone cross-compiler to build iPhone apps. What's more, Apple's also using HTML5 for its new iAd platform, which could potentially undo Flash's stranglehold on online advertising as well. Yeah, we'd say all that plus the recent push for HTML5 video across the web -- and from Microsoft -- could harm Adobe's business just a little. Better hope that final version of Flash Player 10.1 is everything we'd hoped and dreamed of, because Adobe's going to have to make a real stand here.
Y Combinator is seeking iPad app developers
Y Combinator is a relatively famous tech startup firm, a company that invests in startup companies on a regular basis, both to encourage innovation and of course to pick up a tiny share of the equity. Their latest RFS (or Request For Startups) has them asking specifically for companies interested in iPad applications, and the reasons for this interest are pretty intriguing. They say straight off the bat that they don't think the iPad is just bigger iPhone or another tablet computer -- they believe that "the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer. Or more precisely, a Windows transcender." Apple, they say, believes this as well, but rather than take on Windows face first, they've chosen to sideswipe them through the tablet platform. Consumers will pick up an iPad, and almost won't even notice that they're slowly using it more and more while neglecting their more traditional computers. And by the time the iPad is boasting apps that aren't even available on traditional PCs, it's game over. Could it happen? Even Y Combinator admits that it's still only a possibility, but given that they're a company that makes their livelihood by investing in the future, it definitely seems like the windmill is turning in the iPad's direction. [Via DF]
Score $5 million in funding for Gaikai
David Perry's "It's not OnLive" service, Gaikai, recently gained $5 million in venture capital, a Security and Exchanges Commission filing shows. For the uninitiated, basically Perry wants to beam games directly into your house. We imagine the tech behind it is kinda like that crazy set-up the Riddler had running all over Gotham, hence the need for such a large sum of money. All kidding aside, Perry's been very tight-lipped about Gaikai, offering up little via his Twitter account and the usual channels. However, back in July, he did offer the first sneak peek at the game streaming service, which looks like it's coming along nicely. [Via Big Download and Venture Beat]
Shazam picking up investors, boasts 50 million users
Shazam is one of the first apps I actually used in context on the iPhone, and while we haven't heard much about the app since it debuted way back in the early days of the App Store, apparently the company itself has been blowing up, thanks to the free app. They've picked up a nice round of investment from venture capitalists, and the service itself now boasts over 50 million users (by comparison, Last.fm claims only 30 million, but they've gotten way more press than Shazam's service, including recent integration on Xbox Live). That's a heck of an achievement, and Apple is a huge part of it -- not only did Shazam make a big splash on their iPhone app, but they say that Apple actually helped connect the VCs and the company together. That's an interesting peek behind the scenes at what Apple is doing for one of the App Store's oldest and most popular free apps. As for why Shazam is so popular, the VCs say they can see the platform as a "springboard" for selling music, advertising, and a few other commodities. Currently Shazam's free app only lets you tag five songs a month (a limit I never hit and thus didn't know about, even though I would say that I do use the app regularly), but they're planning a paid version that will allow unlimited identification of songs through the iPhone's microphone. I don't know how well that will sell (it's hard to believe that people will pay $5 for a service they are already using for free, though perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of music that people want to "tag"), but it's clear that Shazam is a company that is making the absolute best of having an extremely popular free app on the App Store.
Update: 38 Studios sets facts straight on Copernicus
In a follow-up to our story posted yesterday, 38 Studios has contacted us with a response on the issue of the game's cost to be between 50 million and 100 million and their "tenative release date" as reported by the Boston Globe.According to 38 Studios, the 50 to 100 million figure came from the Boston Globe and not 38 Studios, as finances were never disclosed to the newspaper. Production costs were never mentioned as well during the interview. What was noted in the interview was that MMOs can be quite expensive to build, sometimes costing tens of millions of dollars to put together. As said to us by the company, "38 Studios is a private company and does not, and has never, disclosed financials."Furthermore, the company wishes to stress that the supposed "December 2010" release date is not a date they wish to acknowledge. The company will release the game codenamed Copernicus when it is ready, currently wishing to not set any dates for their upcoming game.Follow after the break for the full release from 38 Studios regarding the release date of Copernicus.
38 Studios estimates it will take 50 to 100 million to finish Copernicus, Schilling looking for investors
Curt Schilling is out on the field again -- the investing field, that is. The former baseball star turned game developer is looking for more investors to back 38 Studios and their first game, the title codenamed Copernicus. The company's estimates for their game requires 50 to 100 million more in funding for the staff, all with their tentative December 2010 launch in mind.Keep in mind, of course, that 38 Studios has acquired Maryland developer Big Huge Games, the company known for Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends, and Xbox Arcade's version of Catan. That acquisition doubled the company's headcount and has possibly driven operating costs into the 15 to 20 million a year range, according to the Boston Globe.So far Schilling hasn't had any luck with potential investors. However, as he said to the Boston Globe, "I'm not going to complain about the economy. It's like pitching on a rainy day. The other guy has to pitch in it, too."[Via Cuppycake]
Warhammer holds its ground with 300k subs
A minor note in EA's most recent earnings report revealed that as of March 31, 2009, Warhammer Online had over 300,000 subscribers, which is right about where it was at in December 2008. What's that we hear in the distance? I do believe it's the sound of thousands of haters and fanboys doing glorious forum battle.Three hundred thousand players is actually a pretty good number these days. In fact, CCP was extremely happy to announce hitting the 300k+ mark today, on EVE's 6th birthday. Most MMO analysts would probably say WAR is one of the top 5 subscription MMOs in Europe/North America.On the other hand, EA and Mythic can't be too happy about the current population situation since Mark Jacobs has made a couple famous remarks about population numbers in the past. The first is that WAR would be successful if it had north of 500k subscribers. The second is that 250k subscribers doesn't look too good to investors when you've made an initial investment of over $50M and have high maintenance costs. You might also want to factor in that Mythic started a recruit-a-friend program, free trial, and launched in Russia all during the period of the quarter being reported on.With Aion set for release in fall 2009, WAR may soon face some stiff competition on the PvP/RvR front. A lot may be riding on Mythic's new live expansion, The Land of the Dead set for release this summer.
Activision-Blizzard reveals that it's sitting on a big pile of money
This year, Activision and Blizzard merged under French media group Vivendi (Blizzard's parent company) to become the biggest, baddest game publisher in the known universe. To make sure investors know just how awesome that event was, Vivendi sent out a press release describing its generally excellent financial condition.Earnings for Vivendi as a whole were reported to be up 10.2% for the first six months of this year. While game division earnings are still actually down compared to this time last year, that should be no cause for alarm. It can be attributed to the lack of a World of Warcraft expansion. By this time last year, The Burning Crusade had reached store shelves.Vivendi assured investors that it still plans to release Wrath of the Lich King by the end of this year, so that bump is still coming. But will Wrath be as big as The Burning Crusade? By definition it can't be any bigger, because you have to have played the TBC content to reach the point where you can enjoy most of what Wrath has to offer, right? Apparently we'll see soon. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Funcom suffering a loss of investor confidence
Funcom, makers of Age of Conan, are dealing with some serious financial flux. Since the launch of AoC, their stock has tumbled from $54 to $24 a share on the Oslo Stock Exchange (last price as of the end of the trading day on Friday). This represents the loss of over 55% of the stock value. With little news coming from the world of high finance on the subject, it seems that investors may be jumping ship from the gaming industry starlet. Much speculation continues to be made regarding the true status of Age of Conan and its success or failure, with references to the bugs of all sizes seen post-launch. There have also been several accusations of forum censorship and a number of highly publicized player flights from the game, which may be contributing to market fears that the game is in trouble with its fan base. On the flip side, it should be noted that the price of Funcom stock had been fairly steady, around $25, for several months prior to March of this year. A sharp increase in price coincided with the release of X-Play pre-order statistics for AoC about two months before boxes hit the shelves. That was followed by a distinct downturn just a few weeks after the game's drop date and the slide has continued since, returning it back to familiar price territory just this past week. So the question remains: was the $54 stock price just a temporary bubble around the launch when pre-orders were running rampant or have investors been scared off with the sentiment around the game?
