Thoughts on THQ – Are they really in trouble?

Just floating a few thoughts here… I might put these together in another article that I am planning, but right now, I’m just trying to sort through my own investigation into whether we have anything to worry about THQ.

THQ has been in the news lately largely due to two things: the explosion that erupted around “armchair” analyst Peter Skerritt’s Tweet that THQ had canceled its 2014 lineup and expected it to be made a buyout target, and a letter that showed up on NeoGAF purportedly from an ex-employee from THQ that made no bones about where the blame should fall. At the same time, THQ quickly put out fires with their own statement which, predictably, were opposite of all of the doomsday scenarios that were being floated. That’s January.

Before that, in December, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities (and prolific purveyor of financial video gaming punditry) had stated on Gamasutra that the company would run out of cash by the end of the first fiscal quarter for 2013. He wasn’t alone in his estimates with another analyst downgrading its full year revenue estimate for the company’s quarter.

Everything I’m going to post at this point is a matter of public record and can be found with a little digging. Also, as full disclosure, I own no stock in any of the companies mentioned in this article nor do I plan to initiate any positions in the next 72 hours.

That said, the picture is kind of ugly.

The Letter

Let’s start with the reputed letter from the angry ex-THQ employee. It’s correct when it says that their stock price has tanked. In fact, over the last five years, THQ’s stock price has been consistent in one thing – a long, slow descent to the $0.70 range where it ended up in January. Why?

It’s not like THQ doesn’t have a series of titles under their belt that deserve respect and which have impressed critics. At the same time, they’re not the kind of commercial blockbusters that its rivals, Activision and EA, regularly make the rounds with year after year. They sell, but they apparently don’t sell enough to drive the rest of the company’s finances higher.

In 2011, THQ shed studios like there was no tomorrow. They dropped their wireless division and closed THQ Studio Austraila and Blue Tongue. THQ Digital Phonix was also closed. Australia and Phoenix were acquired only a little more than a year earlier. That’s millions burned for what gain?

Perhaps the largest and most recent debacle were the miserable sales for uDraw on the Xbox 360 and the PS3. A year ago, it was a Wii darling. But whatever market research they had used had apparently missed the one thing that gamers already knew – the audiences between the Wii and the Xbox 360/PS3 have very different expectations of their respective platforms.

You want FPS titles, explosions, and multiplayer mayhem with Mortal Kombat, the Xbox 360/PS3 universe has what you want. You want Nintendo-only titles and a largely casual library, you hit up the Wii. It would be as if MK came out for the Wii. What would be the point? Sega saw that with MadWorld (though they were happy with the low sales) and Conduit.

The Games

THQ has a number of interesting licenses, such as with UFC and WWE, but they don’t post the kind of numbers that sales of the next Call of Duty or Battlefield/Bad Company do with their rivals. As noted before, they sell respectfully well, but apparently not well enough to offset the internal debt that the company is apparently creaking under.

To date, in comparison to the shipped copies of 2.6 million that THQ reported for Homefront in 2011, Bad Company 2 moved almost that much in March of 2010 shortly after its release. By 2011, BC2 had reportedly sold around 9 million copies.

Red Faction: Armageddon, while fun, had apparently failed to post the numbers that THQ was hoping for. This was made clear when THQ decided to shelve the series earlier in 2011 after factoring its losses into Q1.

Homefront reportedly sold 1 million copies with another 2.6 million shipped out, yet a few months later, the developer (Kaos Studios) was closed along with THQ Warrington.

It was clear that THQ wanted Homefront as a new FPS franchise in the spirit of EA and Activision’s own set in a unique world, but even with those sales, it apparently wasn’t enough to save it from mediocre reviews and deep discounts at retailers in the following months leaving the plans for it stillborn in the public eye. It doesn’t matter if the game did manage to recoup its costs. Breaking even is certainly good news, but apparently not as profitable as THQ wished it to be.

THQ’s fortunes in the Wii segment are also under attack as the Wii U looms just over the horizon, though how deeply this will cut into THQ’s revenues remains to be seen. I guess we’ll find out on February 2nd.

The Financial Picture

THQ currently has a market cap of around $47 million with last reported revenues of $665 million. The lopsided figure is some cause for concern as other analysts smarter than me have indicated that it’s usually a sign of heavy debt.

Pinging on that debt idea, its debt-to-equity ratio is at a staggering 136% – basically saying that it owes a lot of money on every dollar that it has. Now, from that I understand, that’s not a bad thing. A company like Ford has a high debt-to-equity ratio along with a low cap and high revenue. Yet they make enough money to outweigh the debt they put themselves through, so it’s not the only indicator of the health for a company.

On the other hand, you have a company like Kodak which has a low cap and high revenue. Kodak had recently filed for bankruptcy because it couldn’t meet its debt obligations which were about six times its revenue (over $6 billion of debt).

Another indicator, and one which an analyst like Pachter may have been looking at, was their free cash flow per share which is an indicator of how much money the company has over time to sustain operations. Ford is making money. THQ’s cash flow per share is in the negative numbers.

Looking at EA and Activision, both have high revenue streams and reasonably stable stock performance. Activision has World of Warcraft as a monthly cash cow while EA’s diverse library and sports portfolio continue to float its fortunes every quarter. More importantly, neither are saddled with the kind of horrendous debt to equity ratio that THQ carries.

Activision also has positive cash flow per share, though EA doesn’t while still maintaining a strong debt to equity ratio which is far lower than THQ’s. So while EA’s cash flow might be slightly negative, it’s not buckling under a perceived debt load.

This is an old song

This isn’t the first time that analysts have been bearish on THQ’s fortunes. Way back in March, 2009, analyst Mike Hickey at Janco Partners had already said that there was a 50/50 chance for THQ’s bankruptcy. Of course, it hasn’t happened, but their fortunes haven’t improved by much.

The nay saying hasn’t let up since then and the falling stock price and revenue have only gotten worse. Interestingly, Hickey has apparently blamed “corporate ineptitude” as a part of its falling fortunes, something that the letter mentioned above has used.

Based on the above, however, I’m more inclined to think that THQ is going to shed more jobs going forward. Likely what is going to happen is that the company will focus on core studios and shutter a few more to cut costs and trim its liabilities as they did most recently with their kid’s division. It will be a slow, long process, but it won’t necessarily lead to bankruptcy.

This isn’t as unusual as it sounds. Just look at what how the recession has affected downsizing at other companies to see that this is exactly what some of them will do to staunch the bleeding.

As for the buyout rumors, that all depends on whether THQ is really trying to position itself as an attractive investment or whether others will wait for it to file for a supposed bankruptcy and buy smaller chunks of it. Prospective buyers are going to have to absorb the debt unless THQ decides to sell off its licenses as a part of whatever bankruptcy plan they initiate, the same as any other company. That’s basically what Kodak has been trying to do.

At the same time, I can’t dismiss some of the negativity reported by others like Pachter. There’s too much public proof to be had that paints a grim picture of a struggling company. And if anyone is expecting THQ to come out and admit to the problems they are having, dream on. The public, and often the rank and file, are usually the last to know. But the signs are there for everyone to see.

Gamestop does it again

So, this sale ran this weekend....

And people wonder why Gamestop gets some of the hate that it does and why Ebay, Craigslist, or just buying the game off of a friend instead are better alternatives to going to their so-called bargain bins. But the alternatives are doing little to stem Gamestop’s used-sales domination of its bottom line.

It’s no secret that Gamestop’s used game prices have always been thinly veiled gouging exercises of the customer’s wallet. Their earnings report in August last year indicated that their biggest profits now come from used game sales.

I also can’t help but think that some of the backlash against the trend of Online Passes on console games is due to the gouging that Gamestop engages in. Let’s face it: they’re convenient spots to buy used games at, although Best Buy is dipping its toes into that market as well.

Buying an OP for a game that might need it could be more appealing if the prices weren’t so often close to the “near new” price that they hover near at a place like Gamestop. For many people, their stores are the only real local alternative so there’s no way around that.

At least Gamefly understands that whenever they hold one of their sales to clear inventory. And they even include new codes.

So Diablo III is getting slightly delayed

And that’s according to this entry. That’s fine by me considering that it is Diablo, so the expectations are exponentially huge and it’s to the team’s credit that they’re taking the time to do things right. Well, except for that “always on” thing, but at least they’re not burying that fact beneath doublespeak.

I like this particular bit:

Let’s start off small: Scrolls of Identification are no longer in the game. Unidentified items and the act of identifying them is still very much part of the game, but now when obtaining an unidentified item you’ll simply right click it, a short cast timer will occur as your character examines the item, and it will become identified. We love the double-discovery of finding a present and then unwrapping it, but we don’t think it requires a physical item you have to find and keep in your bags to get the same effect. From now on you’ll just be able to inherently identify all your items, no need to carry scrolls. Your character in Diablo III is just that badass now.

Emphasis mine. That makes sense considering that you could be a seasoned adventurer that knows a relic when they see it, so being this “badass” isn’t a cop out. It’s a timesaver if anything else keeping one player from trudging back to buy more identify scrolls just to find out what something is. They’re going for expediency here which, in Diablo’s case, sounds like it could work just fine.

Some of the other changes are more far reaching, such as the tweaks to the core attributes like Strength and Dexterity, so that will take some time to flesh out and test.

But it’s also great to see Blizzard posting up progress reports for the community to drool over instead of simply saying that the game is delayed for “Mysterious Reason X” or “Balance Tweaks” without any idea of what those tweaks are. It’s a nice degree of transparency that is much appreciated, at least by this dungeon crawler.

Legend of Grimrock

I can’t wait for this to come out. It’s being made for PCs, the Mac (surprise!), and iOS by indie Almost Human Ltd. and it looks damn good. If you’ve ever played Eye of Beholder from Westwood back in the day, remember Stonekeep, or Dungeon Master, this might be something you may want to check out. It’s old school nostalgia done with 90′ grid movement and fancy graphics. Awesome stuff!

Old School Gaming Journalism – Remembering Scorpia, and those who came before

I remember reading through CGW during my high school years and looking forward to Scorpia’s columns on adventures and RPGs. Her hint columns were preceded by entertaining vignettes that welcomed readers into her corner of the magazine and her articles were also tinted with varying degrees of hard tell-it-as-it-is criticism and genuine amusement.

She always had something to say and through her reviews, she did her part in documenting not only what she liked and hated about the games she played, but also the progression of certain mechanics and approaches by comparing elements to those found in their peers in an outspoken but honest manner.

She had her own blog which you can find here, though she had decided to stop updating it two years ago though everything she had written is still up there including a number of interesting discussions on gaming history – particularly CRPGs (she’s not a fan of JRPGs).

I was mostly a lurker, thankful that she kept up her writing, but was also saddened to see that even someone like her had decided to call it quits. Here’s someone that had lived through and had written about games in a professional capacity from its beginnings on through nearly two decades of articles and walkthroughs saying that she was done. And that only reminded me of how fragile gaming’s history really is.

Looking at places such as the CGW Museum also reminds of that. The internet doesn’t always remember everything as sites rise and fall, either, often taking all of their content with them. Sometimes the admin doesn’t have the heart to put in the work to restore all of it. Or perhaps there were no backups to being with. Many of these places are run by hardcore fans dedicated to preserving their slice of the past. They are paid nothing and do it out of a love for keeping the past alive.

Even the Internet Wayback Machine is limited in what it can resurrect. When Sega-16 went down earlier this year due to being hacked, all of its content was assumed to have been lost. The forums were still up, but the features, reviews, and other content from the main site were inaccessible until the site returned with a new look this past summer. Work is still ongoing, but the new site is looking good as the admins work through the huge body of material they had up there.

That could have turned out much worse, especially if there were no backups to work from.

Older magazines, writers, and the interviews and analyses preserved on pulp are slowly being lost to time…much like anything else. Even though video gaming is relatively young at thirty odd years, there’s a lot of past history that is getting lost in the shuffle. PDF files weren’t around back then, nor eBook alternatives. Much of that preservation requires having access to the actual magazines and slowly scanning each one in to make them available. And like history everywhere else, the more that time passes, the harder it can get to find those missing, paper-bound links.

Statistics on sales, the impact of certain titles on others in the embryonic period of game development, and gauging whether sources on Wikipedia are simply parroting references based on even tougher-to-verify points or not are legitimate questions that not enough people are asking – and the answers might be found in a box of magazines hidden in a dusty attic or forgotten in a publisher’s archive.

Before diving into the history of gaming as a whole, I had no idea what a magazine called Softline was, or that Wizardry had proven as far back as the early eighties that games can be used as tools for good by helping a child to open up than as a convenient mouthpiece for Fox News’ latest witch hunt for blame. The arguments being made today about games? Old news.

History is boring to most, though. I’d wager that many would rather obsess over release states, screenshots, exclusive blurbs that tell us nothing other than a title is actually being planned, and pointless lists than in wondering what brought their favorite titles here. There’s no money to be made there for a site looking at how to generate hits. Only a few seem to actually take the time to ask the right questions and dick around with the details, or have the kind of moxie in doing so.

Looking at the fansub community, it’s also not hard to wonder why there isn’t a community like that for Japanese publications – or foreign ones elsewhere – that could provide an early commentary on games such as the roots behind Dragon Quest. Much of the information we have in the West on JRPG history is second-hand – it’s not much of a leap to make that assumption.

And that’s kind of sad. Everyone loves talking up games as ‘art’, though it’s hard not to think that the history behind them is also in danger of being marginalized and forgotten. I’m sure everyone would like to do what they can to ensure that won’t happen, but outside of those fan sites, articles, and rare retrospectives digging deeply and as far into the past as few do, figuring out how to do the right thing isn’t as easy.

E3: Some thoughts

E3 has come and gone and it was one of the more boring ones that I’ve watched from the videos that were fed to the public across the ‘net. There really wasn’t anything that we weren’t expecting from the convention, though Sony had a surprise or two with pricing for the PS Vita (and a groantastic greeting when they had mentioned AT&T as a carrier).

The biggest surprise for me was the Nintendo Wii U. Aside from the name, the system looks like it’s feeding off of the bigger trends happening elsewhere such as the iPad. I like the idea of being able to flick the picture from the television to a little handheld. The PS Vita is going to be able to do the same thing – though you have to have two copies of the game for that to happen at the advantage of being able to go as far as you want from the PS3.

Still, there’s no idea of what the pricing will be for the Wii U or just what it will exactly be capable of doing. It did drop a buss bomb into everyone’s lap with a thunderous announcement, however, that felt more as if they were putting Sony and Microsoft on notice on where they were going to go.

Microsoft’s conference briefing was solid – they did what they had to by showcasing the Kinect and what they have planned to use it. Though the device had done extremely well in sales, the number of games that make use of it haven’t quite caught up. But not only did they show off a few new titles that would take advantage of the device, they also wowed crowds with the Fun Lab which demo’ed features such as scanning in your own avatar to finger detection which is a pretty big deal – no need for a trigger device if it can see your fingers, or so it goes.

As for the games – the usual announcements. Everyone knows about Modern Warfare 3, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, and Prey 2…shooter sequelitis, though that’s not really the developer’s fault in away. The market is crazy for FPS games, especially if they’re built around their favorite franchises, so profit-minded companies such as Activision that also have stockholders to answer to are always eager to feed that need for good or ill. There was also a new Halo that was announced from 343 Studios under Microsoft to continue Master Chief’s story. Come on, you didn’t see that coming? I’ll bet you and most everyone out there that knows anything about Halo did.

As for RPGs, Skyrim was shown off to private audiences. Risen 2 had a presence, but only with the developers talking up how it was going to be different from the sequel (think pirates). And everyone is already hyped for ME3 for 2012.

Then there was Dragon’s Dogma from Capcom which looks like an old-school action RPG. The Capcom name and the action reminded me of their time with the D&D license in the arcade. Then there was Dragon’s Crown from Vanillaware, the makers of Odin’s Sphere which looks like the same game (great artwork) only now with more characters. And of course, we can’t forget about Dark Souls due out in October.

Metro 2033 is also slated for a sequel – Metro: The Last Light. Sounds good and looks even better, so it’s only a matter of time before we hit the tunnels below Red Square again in search of survivors and fighting tooth and nail against horrors.

Other than that, there wasn’t much else that really drew me out to E3 this time around as it did last year. I actually went last year but this time around, opted to hold back because the show just didn’t seem to offer too much in the way of what would be on the show floor for what I wanted to see – well, unless you were a big Nintendo fan. There were Wii U prototypes on the floor using the controller.

Gamers still win out regardless thanks to all of the titles that are due out. But as for E3 the convention, well, I’m just glad I saved my plane ticket for a few more games instead.

 

The Next Console Generation represents more than one gamble

Outlets, like Kotaku, are reporting that Sony has finally broken its silence to say that they’re working on the PS4. It’s official.

Like with Nintendo, we all knew that they were planning something – it was just a matter of when the news would roll out. More info also comes from across the pond thanks to an investor’s briefing as reported by news site, Nikkei (via Andriasang), in which Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato was quoted as saying “”It is no longer thinkable to have a huge initial financial investment like that of the PS3.”

It came as an answer to a reporter’s question on what the games division would continue to do to remain profitable. Kato had also mentioned the changing nature of the semiconductor market and the huge costs associated with it. It’s no wonder. In 2003, Sony had outlined their investment strategy for the Cell processor with a plan that would cost $1.7 billion USD. The high costs associated with the PS3 had also dragged on their bottom line for years, resulting in cost cutting measures such as the removal of backwards compatibility (the first generation PS3′s had a hardware solution for PS2 emulation).

Trying to Cut the Fat

Back in 2007, Bloomberg reported that Sony’s semiconductor business was 10% of Sony’s reported $70 billion in annual revenue and was seeking a way to outsource that cost to other fabricators – which they eventually did to Toshiba at the tune of $1.1 billion (and later, as reported in 2010, would buy back for an estimated $610 million).

Other companies outsourced by default to keep their own costs down – it was cheaper to design the chip you want and then contract a fab to build it for you. Sony’s heavy investment likely stemmed from their experience with the PS2 when there weren’t as many fabricators then to custom produce what they needed. But things are a bit different now.

In an earlier report that same year, Sony’s Executive Deputy President, Yutaka Nakagawa, had already stated that “Our basic understanding is that we probably won’t need to do everything by ourselves for next-generation chips.” So Sony’s been thinking about this for awhile, resonating with Kato’s statement above.

So what does this mean for the PS4? Will it be cheaper to manufacture? Companies have historically built consoles at a loss in order to gain that ever important foothold in the next generation via retail presence, third-party alliances, and first tier offerings hitting at launch. Even by not going the exotic route as Sony did, Microsoft sold their Xbox 360 hardware at a loss for years until, in 2006, it was reported that manufacturing improvements made it cheaper to produce by simply stopping the bleeding. That’s something of a victory.

Nintendo seems to have been the only one to hit savings early on. In 2006, Joystiq reported a post on NeoGAF that broke down the costs of the console, resulting in an estimated $195.99 – much cheaper than the retail $250 price that it was going for. Then again, the cost of the controllers, packaging, etc. weren’t factored in that particular assessment. Still, it’s reasonable to guess that their costs were much lower than Microsoft and Sony’s. By 2009, it was estimated to have trimmed 45% of its manufacturing costs, printing more money hats for Mario’s House.

A Cell-less future?

So Sony has been thinking on how production will flesh out for the PS4, at least cost-wise, that could potentially make it easier on pocketbooks. But what else could trimming all of this electronic fat mean? If they’re shying away from fabbing their own hardware, does it also mean they’re giving up on designing radically new architecture like the Cell?

It would be a departure from the kind of thinking that had once dominated console design where the hardware was designed down to the silicon. Some of that is still done, but not to the extent that Sony has in developing their Cell processor. Microsoft, for example, opted to develop custom versions of existing technology for its own system – Intel processors for the first generation, then PowerPC variants for the 360. The Wii also uses a PowerPC variant which IBM fabs for them.

Developers have also cited how easy it is to develop for the Xbox 360 which is closer to being a traditional PC in a console, versus something as exotic as the Cell. I’d read that some had even gone so far as to start development for a multiplatform title on the PS3 first before moving on to the Xbox 360 since it was easier than going the other way.

Of course, none of this actually means that Sony will stop using the Cell, or design an updated version of it to use for the PS4. But it’s probably a safe bet that they’ll ask someone else to mass produce it than in doing it themselves.

A More Social and Connected Audience

Whatever Sony is planning to do, you can bet that they still have their eye on reclaiming their former market position as the number one go-to console – something they enjoyed with the PS2′s dominance. Can they get back to that point?

In addition to be able to keep production costs down, Sony also has to think about making it friendlier to developers to quickly code through with tools from the start. On the consumer side, tying in a big launch with solid games to get people excited about hardware again would also help.

Selling it at a reasonable price, though, is also going to be very key, though the PS3 did come packed with several features (wireless, blu-ray) that justified it on a hardware level. Yet on the surface, that was still a hard pill to swallow even among PS2 fanatics.

Exclusives help, but for a majority of titles, aren’t as important as they had been a decade ago in retaining brand loyalty anymore for most consumers. Business models have changed – developers are insisting on being able to sell their product through as many channels as possible to recoup costs and put bread on the table. The draconian licensing agreements of the past have been dying off since the late nineties. Hardware lines are getting blurred and developers are looking for more multiplatform releases to keep down spiraling production costs.

That also makes it more difficult to differentiate one console from the other, at least between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, from the gaming level without resorting to pointless video comparisons or disc swapping jokes. Unless you pare things down to the level of certain exclusives such as Gears of War or Killzone, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 offer relatively the same experiences that even the developers emphasize with their own games that show up on both. The only big exception here is the Wii which hasn’t catered as much to the so-called “hardcore” audience as the other two have.

For example, if you’re a hardcore sports or shooter fan, the Wii doesn’t hold a candle to either the Xbox 360 or the PS3 with its bevy of ‘casual’ titles. Yet it’s only on the Wii that you’ll get Nintendo exclusives such as Super Mario Galaxy which still exemplify the creative legacy of its namesake. To some, that’s enough to vote for it with their dollars.

Sony and its peers will also be facing a market far different than the one they had launched into years ago. It’s not only a question of graphics anymore. It’s social tools, online integration, and services in addition to the unspoken guarantee that it has some kind of edge over the others that can’t be replicated. For many, that might come down to how many of their friends are going to be on a certain platform.

That edge used to belong to a greater number of exclusives and graphics horsepower – two things that have become even harder to distinguish with so many multiplatform releases and a visual baseline whose minute differences fuel fanboy wars.

Sometimes I wish for the old days of Sega and Nintendo battling it out – things were far more clear cut then. Exclusives were based on as much the fact that both houses could make their own games and tie in third-parties into ironclad contracts alongside the hardware horsepower that both were willing to pack into their platforms.

With so much of that gone and with motion controls no longer Nintendo’s exclusive surprise, it’ll be very interesting to see what Nintendo’s Project Cafe, the PS4, and whatever Microsoft may be planning for their own console will do to stand out from their peers. Or breaking our wallets.

Let's hope the next big console from Sony doesn't try to break the bank on launch

U Mad at MK?

I leave my volume on only for people on my Friends list on Xbox Live because of the cesspool of pre-school  herp derp that is almost a banner standard when it comes to playing in a popular multiplayer game. There’s enough noise in the world without having to hear the unsupervised ignorance of someone’s spoiled child raping their headset with homophobic racism. But thanks to the miracle of modern technology, it’s also easy to post things like this slice of furious anger.

The person who captured the vid sent another gamer an Xbox Live text message saying “GG” which means “Good Game”. It’s being courteous to the other gamer, something that goes way back to early games on the PC. When text was the only way to go in talking to each other, saying “GG” was seen as being a good sport – even if you did lose.

On the other side of the coin, it could also be interpreted as being a snide attempt at sarcasm. It’s hard to tell when there’s only text.

Apparently the player exposed in the video below raged over being told “GG” after getting beaten in Mortal Kombat, but he took it to a new level by sending a barrage of voice messages.

Mortal Kombat = serious business.

Titanic Japanese Final Fantasy Collection up for grabs

Siliconera reports on a huge Final Fantasy collection being Ebay’ed for the primo price of $15,000. But this isn’t any ordinary collection, it looks like the entire Japanese run of Final Fantasy from the Famicom era up to FF XIII on the PS3.

The asking price still seems high, but it probably would have been worse if these were the Western FF releases – especially if they’ve been ambiguously “graded”. Still, it also looks like the seller kept everything – boxes and inserts all – and has a few hardware pieces in the mix. Even though he points out much of it is used, it’s in remarkably good condition from what the pics show.

Historically, I’ve seen many Japanese titles go for significantly less than their Western counterparts, one reason being due to having so many of them available in the Far East. But that still doesn’t detract from the sheer awesome of all of this and there are a few gems buried here.

Some of the special Final Fantasy hardware in this collection are also going to be commanding a pretty penny. Though the Crystal Chronicles custom Gamecube doesn’t seem that rare, the collection also includes the FFXIII “Lightning” edition of the PS3 which does go for something of a premium.

A quick search shows the Lightning PS3 going for the big asking price of  $1,000 and it just goes up from there which seems reasonable with a collector’s item, especially considering where the price initially started from. When the console went up for sale in Japan, it went from its initial starting price of $530 USD to $700 USD because of how Square Enix allocated them making it harder to get.

The pearl white Gameboy Advance for Final Fantasy Tactics also looks like another gem in this collection. There’s even an Advent Children Complete PS3 (the “Cloud Black” console) up for grabs. It initially sold for as low as $500 USD and has gone up a hundred or so up on auction since then.

It’s a nice stroll through the history of FF’s Japanese releases all in one place, so be sure to check out this fantastic collection.

From the auction - the Famicom and Super Famicom releases of Final Fantasy

Modern Warfare 3 set to wreck New York…and Paris…and some city in Germany…

It’s only been a month or so since Crysis 2 took giant bites out of the Big Apple with aliens, but it looks like the Russians will be the ones squeezing the juice out of it with heavy weaponry in Modern Warfare 3. The new trailer ends ominously with “WW3″ meaning that things go from bad to much much worse following what happened in MW2.

I just hope the story makes a lot more sense in this one than it did in the last game which had Russian soldiers parachuting in from aircraft that apparently flew over the North Pole, or across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean without refueling to get to Washington DC. I know, I know…it’s an FPS, the story doesn’t really matter too much, but it can only stretch credibility so far before it starts feeling like an international episode of the Three Superpowers. Yet it’ll have a lot of FPS action and that’s all anyone really looks forward to with the series anyway. That and the having more multiplayer to plow through with a batch of new maps.

I’ll be more interested to see just how having so many cooks in the kitchen will help, or hinder, the game. At last count, we had a new studio called Sledgehammer on the job, a rebuilt Infinity Ward, and Raven Software. Sledgehammer is a new variable – they’re so spanking clean that they don’t have any published games to their company name yet. I’m sure the individuals in the dev house have titles under their belt, but they’re the big unknown right now.

Infinity Ward is still alive despite the massive exodus of employees following the firings of co-founders Vince Zampella and Joe West last year. Activision “reconstructed” the studio, but it remains to be seen how that might affect Modern Warfare 3. I’m thinking it won’t, unless you keep up with this kind of news on a daily basis and that knowing this is a different Infinity Ward affects what you think of the game.

Raven Software is a known quantity – their single player chops are solid, such as what they recently did with Singularity and Wolfenstein. With the multiplayer, it’s hit or miss but often not as strong as the single player. Still, I like their stuff and enjoyed both. If they have anything to do with how the single-player is being planned out and executed, expect a solid palette of action set pieces and a story that doesn’t seem filled with holes large enough to sail the Admiral Kuznetsov through.

Then again, Battlefield seems to be following the same tack if you follow the events in the Bad Company series making both franchises responsible for versions of WW3 that involve furious, ultranationalist Russians. At the very least, Bad Company doesn’t have Magic Russian Logistics.

But the big question is…who will players vote for with their wallets? Modern Warfare 3? Or Battlefield 3? Ultranationalist Russians? Or Middle Eastern Earthquakes? Or maybe both for an FPS overload sundae?

Oh yeah. It’s on.