“Game On” is The Fly's weekly recap of the stories that strengthen or undermine video game stocks.
'Helldivers' drives UK sales: Earlier this week, Gamesindustry.biz's Christopher Dring said: report UK game sales rose 26% year-on-year in March, and the company announced a 7% increase in first-quarter game sales in the UK. Mr. Dring is Sony's (Sony) multiplayer shooter Helldivers 2 is currently trending ahead of sales of Sony's 2023 hit Spider-Man 2, eight weeks after its release. On the other hand, Capcom's (coy) “Dragon’s Dogma 2” surpassed Square Enix (SQNXF) According to Dring, “Final Fantasy VII: A Realm was a close second” in its debut month.
On the hardware side, total console sales in the UK in March were up 22% from February, but down 15% from March 2023. Dring noted that sales for all consoles were down year-over-year, with PlayStation 5 sales down 9%. Nintendo Switch (NTDOY) Sales fell 20%, with Xbox Series X/S (MSFT) 18% drop.
Transforming Xbox: Last week, Windows Central's Jez Corden reported that Kareem Choudhry, corporate vice president of Xbox Emerging Technologies, is leaving the company after 26 years at Microsoft. Mr. Choudhry has worked on some of the Xbox maker's cutting-edge technology products, including Xbox Cloud Gaming and his recent AI efforts. The move comes ahead of a broader reorganization of Xbox's leadership, with some team members being promoted and new employees expected to join the company, the authors said.
Corden said the broader leadership overhaul is designed to streamline processes and help the Xbox maker accelerate plans for things like its subscription service Xbox Game Pass and hardware. Meanwhile, the company said in an internal memo that it will move its AI team under the hardware ecosystem to accelerate innovation in that area.
Take-Two Upgrade: On Monday, Citi upgraded Take-Two Interactive (Two) We raise our price target from $170 to $200 and upgrade the stock from Neutral to Buy. There were three key unknowns in the stock on Monday: the timing of Grand Theft Auto VI's release, GTA VI's pre-order size and trends within the mobile portfolio, analysts research. told investors in a note. However, at Citi's prevailing stock price level, we see a bullish case of $235 and a bearish case of $130, close to a favorable 4:1 risk-reward ratio, analysts told investors in a research note. . The company believes the timing of the next GTA release is a “very real but manageable risk.”
Other featured stories:
- Capcom announced last week that Dragon's Dogma 2 has already sold more than 2.5 million copies in its first few weeks (read more)
- NetEase (NTES) Strength in Hong Kong comes from reports of resuming partnership with Blizzard in China (read more)
- GameStop (GME) COO Nir Patel says he is leaving the company (read more)
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