Late last week Patrick and I sent an essay question to a couple of gaming’s most knowledgeable and quotable financial analysts.

We wanted to know when they thought the PS2 would drop in price to $99 in the U.S.

This was our full question:

Sony dropped the price of the first PlayStation to $99 in 1999, four years after the system’s release. The PS2 has been out since 2000, and in almost double the time, still has not dropped to $99. There are many reasons for this: lack of competition for the PS2 in the back half of the last hardware generation; Sony’s struggles getting the expensive PS3 off the ground; etc. The question is: Do you think the PS2 will go down to $99? When and why?

In short order, we heard back from Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities and Evan Wilson of Pacific Crest Securities.

Neither gave us reason to expect a price drop any time soon. And one of them gave us two games to blame: “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”

On Thursday evening, Pachter left us a voicemail, in which he said:

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Which video game consoles do the people running a giant publisher like Ubisoft like the most?

Possibly the ones on which they can sell the most games.

Yesterday, as part of a sales announcement , the “Assassin’s Creed” and “Rainbow Six” publisher released statistics that show just which consoles help move the most games.

Ubisoft didn’t disclose raw sales figures but did reveal the percentage of the company’s game sales on each platform.

Lessons learned: Given that the PlayStation 3 accounted for 20% of the company’s sales last year, it’s clearly a meaningful machine to Ubisoft. But maybe not as much as the Xbox 360 and the DS, which contributed 26% each.

And what did the Wii do for Ubisoft last year?

You don’t want to know.

Still, you just might learn something about how well Ubisoft is or isn’t capitalizing off your favorite consoles. The numbers are below…

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[UPDATED with comment from Take-Two]

Video game publisher Electronic Arts announced today that it is attempting to buy Take-Two Interactive, publisher of “Grand Theft Auto,” “BioShock” and the 2K Sports line in a stock purchase valued at $2 billion.

The announcement stems from a post-Valentine’s Day February 15 rejection by Take-Two Interactive executive chairman Strauss Zelnick of EA’s initial offer and a subsequent rejection of a second one offered on February 19.

As a result EA is taking the issue public. CEO John Riccitiello said in today in a press release detailing the deal: “Our all-cash proposal is a unique opportunity for Take-Two shareholders to realize immediate value at a substantial premium, while creating long-term value for EA shareholders. Take-Two’s game designers would also benefit from EA’s financial resources, stable, game-focused management team, and strong global publishing capabilities.”

EA’s attempt to purchase Take-Two Interactive comes less than three months after Activision and Vivendi announced their plans to merge into a company called Activision Blizzard in a deal valued at $18.9 billion.

We’ve put in requests for comment to Take-Two and Rockstar. EA will be holding an 8AM eastern time tomorrow to further discuss the company’s hopes for its planned purchase.

[UPDATE: Feb 24, 5:11PM ET]

In response to EA’s online charm offensive seemingly aimed at Take-Two Interactive’s stockholders, the Board of Directors at Take-Two has issued a press release detailing their rejection. Calling the $26 per share offer “inadequate inadequate in multiple respects and not in the best interests of Take-Two’s stockholders,” they say that EA’s proposal “substantially undervalues” their company.

Regarding “GTA IV” Take-Two’s Zelnick stated: “We offered to initiate discussions with EA on April 30th, 2008 (the day after ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is scheduled to release). We believe this offer demonstrated our commitment to pursuing all avenues to maximize stockholder value, while we believe that EA’s refusal to entertain this path is evidence of their desire to acquire Take-Two at a significant discount, whereas we believe this value rightly belongs to our stockholders.”

Today on a conference call at 4:30 PM EST, the bigwigs at Activision released the company’s Third Quarter Fiscal 2008 results.

America’s top third-party game publisher revealed details about last year’s earnings as well as its future plans for the 2008 calendar year and beyond.

Activision CEO and Chairman Robert Kotick stated that 2007 was Activision’s “best year ever” with record financial and market share results, making it the #1 U.S. console and hand-held publisher for the first time ever. Net revenues for the third quarter were reported at an unprecedented $1.48 billion, an 80% increase from $824.3 million reported for the same quarter last fiscal year. He saw this trend as “a validation of our belief that our audience is expanding… taking mindshare from traditional forms of entertainment, like movies and television.” He also credited the company’s “Guitar Hero” franchise for contributing to the rise of female and first-time gamers.

Most of the call focused on the company’s record earnings and sales as well the growth of the industry in general. “The market continues to reward proven properties further widening the gap between first- and second-tier publishers,” Kotick said. Translation: Expect more “Call of Duty,” “Guitar Hero,” “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” and even another “Tony Hawk” and “Spider-Man.”

Read on for more highlights, including what’s going on with the Activision-Blizzard merger and what to expect for the aforementioned franchises…

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Does anyone remember the Nintendo drought? Those not-so-glorious times when Nintendo 64 and GameCube owners waited month after month for something — anything — new to be released for their system?

Well, may I introduce you to the Nintendo flood?

There are a slew of Wii titles coming out this week. And nothing else for other systems.

When I checked the GameStop’s online Coming Soon list right before Christmas I saw that the list of the next eight titles for the PS3 and the 360 stretched into February (”Cabela’s Monster Bass Fishing” and “Devil May Cry 4,” respectively). For Wii, that list barely got into January.

How does that happen? Where did these Wii games come from?

On the Wednesday before Christmas I spoke to a man who had the answers. Paul Rinde is the CEO of Destineer, a Minneapolis-based game publisher responsible for some high-profile Mac ports (they published “Unreal Tournament 3” and “Halo” for Apple computers). The company was founded in 2000 and is now being positioned to make a splash on the Wii in 2008. At the time of our interview, Rinde’s company had just shipped its first Wii game,”Indianapolis 500 Legends.”

And there were six more in the pipeline, marked on GameStop for release this week, though possibly not really trickling out completely until the end of January or so.

Again, how does this happen? What exactly is Destineer — aside from a game publisher that, located just 10 minutes from the offices of Game Informer magazine, currently employs former GI writers like the guy who had to backpedal from posting that publication’s infamously low “Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door” score? And, other trivia aside, aren’t these the kind of publishing practices on the Wii that some game reporters say are part of the problem? You know, the problem that EGM hammered Nintendo on a few months ago?

Or is this a great sign of what starved Nintendo system owners have been waiting for for a decade: at last… widespread third-party support.

Paul Rinde answered all my questions. Read on.

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At 8:30 AM ET the heads of Activision and Vivendi Games led a transcontinental conference call to explain yesterday’s Activision-Blizzard merger news. Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy revealed that the deal had it’s genesis a year ago.

Among the headlines: this merger has not ignited any plans for a “World of Warcraft” console game. “We don’t have any plans on the console side,” Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said. “Blizzard’s focus is on the PC side. If we were to release anything on the console side it would be managed on the Blizzard side of the business.”

Most of the talk on the call involved financials and repeated explanations that the combined company is projected to have the largest income of any game publisher. Activision CEO Robert Kotick estimated that Activision Blizzard will have 15% of the $28 billion worldwide gaming market, allowing plenty of room for growth. He said the company will have 6000 employees, about half of them in “product development.” Said Kotick, the combined company “unites the industry’s best development resources in one organization.”

What games are these executives most proud of? Activision’s “Tony Hawk” did not get a mention on the call, but “Guitar Hero” did. The most enthusiasm was expressed for Vivendi-owned Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft.” Levy described it as ” the most powerful relevant and successful interactive brand ever.” It was revealed that Blizzard will report $1.1 billion in revenue this year, $517 million in operating income.

Repeated mentions were made of “unlocking Blizzard’s value.” Kotick said the combined company will “derive the benefits form Blizzard’s deep knowledge of online gaming and the Chinese and Korean market.” How this will affect Blizzard is unclear. Yesterday, Blizzard posted a FAQ on the company’s site that implying little would change about how Blizzard Entertainment makes its own games.

As for how this will affect Activision’s series…

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Big news doesn’t wait for the weekdays. Via Santa Monica and Paris, a press release was issued today to announce plans for the merger of American games publisher Activision (”Tony Hawk,” “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty” and holders of the James Bond and Spider-Man licenses) with Paris-headquartered Vivendi Games (The Blizzard-developed “World of Warcraft” as well as “Crash Bandicoot” and “Spyro“)The combined company would be called Activision Blizzard and is touted in the release as “the world’s largest pure-play online and console game publisher.” The companies peg the deal’s value at $18.9 billion, with Vivendi taking control of 52% of Activision stock and Activision chief Robert Kotick will serve as the merged company’s CEO. The deal is expected to be finalized in mid-2008.

What does this mean for gamers? Today’s announcement has primarily been relayed in strict financial terms. Without any obvious overlaps in the game franchises Activision and Vivendi publish and develop there are no clear signs of how this will affect what games the new company will produce. (In other words it’s not as if Activision has a “WoW” clone that will now be shut down or that Vivendi had a rival skateboarding series that would now be cut).

A couple of gamer-oriented things did trickle out today:
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