Video Game Company Stocks

I have no idea how gaming announcements affect stock prices, however I can tell you that something to look out for is a game called, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). It's an MMORPG just like the cash cow World of Warcraft. It's currently being developed by Bioware and published by EA. If theres one game that has a chance to take a large market share in the MMO market, it's SWTOR. It has the potential to be pretty huge for EA (just look at how much they've invested in it). 

BTW, Blizzard is under contract with Activision. 

I'm just a 20 year old video game nerd who knows a fair share about games, however, I don't actively trade any gaming companies nor do I understand what drives their stocks.

blizzard was actually acquired by activision and now the company is called Activision Blizzard, Inc.

I really love the company but the public doesn't as although blizzard itself has strong products, they are very slow with releases.

Activision is also the same. Back when they had the guitar hero coming out on the fly, along with WoW, Call of Duty, and other games, it was doing alot better but now its pretty stagnant reflected by its product line being shallow.

I don't know why I thought it was merely a contract - I guess it's just hard for me to imagine Blizzard not being it's own company (makes me sad).

Blizzards motto is essentially, "it's done, when it's done". They have the track record to back up there product, so it seems like investors are lenient with the developer. Most publishers end up pushing games out to soon causing them to fail - this never happens with Blizzard. Blizzard is currently working on a successor to WoW, and Diablo 3. 

Perception in the gaming community towards activision and EA is very poor, however, they are undoubtedly creating more profits. This year is going to be very big for the industry as well - battlefield 3 and mw3 are both releasing this holiday which are to my knowledge, the biggest money makers for EA and Acti. (edit: I meant for the console. WoW surely makes the most money of any game)

If you're really interested in trading gaming stocks, I would suggest following and anticipating the major gaming conventions held throughout the year, such as the recently completed E3. We are nearing the end of the current console generation too. Usually console generations last around a decade, but with Nintendo already pushing new devices, the pressure will be on microsoft and sony to get their new consoles completed and ready to go. These announcements could still be 2 or 3 years away though.
 

yeah i bought some EA as my first stock in 2009 at 16 something, made a bit of money off it but only put in a thousand or so canadian. It was just for fun. Video game stocks seem kind of weird. For me personally.. nintendo during the wii / ds days pretty much reached the console game developer can go. They had a waiting list 6 months to a year after a release with the wii. How can they ever get better then that?