With two weeks to go until the end of the year, 2009 is shaping up as a seriously down year for the gaming industry, sales-wise. Through November, sales in eight of the last nine months were worse than in 2008, and with Wal-Mart (WMT) aggressively cutting hardware and software prices going into this holiday season, it is doubtful December will be a whole lot better. Activision Blizzard (ATVI) partner NetEase (NTES) reported underwhelming 3Q09 results last month, and while World of Warcraft (WoW) is now up and running in China, there is no word yet on how many of the four million subscribers The9 (NCTY) had have survived the rocky migration (which included months of WoW being offline).It doesn’t look much better for the hardware makers, and retailer GameStop (GME) could be seriously arrested by a games price war.
Still-in-all, the game publishers in general—and our ATVI in particular—have held up pretty well in 2009, stock-price-wise, at least compared with 2008, which was a genuine disaster:
| 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | Overall since 2005 | ||
| Activision Blizzard | ATVI | 25% | 72% | -39% | 21% | 61% |
| Electronic Arts | ERTS | -4% | 16% | -70% | -4% | -68% |
| Konami | KNM | 37% | 8% | -19% | -36% | -23% |
| Take Two Interactive | TTWO | 0% | 4% | -57% | 13% | -49% |
Previous ATVI-related posts:
- BUY Activision Blizzard (ATVI)—Games People Play (2 Jan 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update—4Q08 results (11 Feb 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #2—“unleash your inner rock star” (31 Mar 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #3—Blizzard fires The9 in China (16 Apr 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #4—1Q09 results surprize to upside (7 May 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #5—strong lineup of future releases (27 May 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #6—2Q09 results again exceed expectations (5 Aug 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #7—3Q09 results provide surprize profit (5 Nov 09)
- Activision Blizzard (ATVI) update #8—Chinese bureaucrats in WoW fight (8 Nov 09)
