it won't be till actual sales numbers come out (yep, that means not until way into november-ish) or until related games sales numbers come out (where you can see if the genre, the platform, etc are selling well or not)
Since I have spare money for shorting, I am going to start shorting this stock. Not too deeply (don't want to go into margin call), but at least making it not easy for people to keep on pushing the price into 1 million range.
As is apparent by today's rapid drop of about -150DKP to its recovery to about +3DKP, there are many people who think this stock should be valued at 9 million. This game is going to face much more competition when it is released than when Gears of War did when it was released back in November 2006, then there were few good games, and FPSs in particular, for Gears of War to compete with.
Now Gears of War 2 has to compete with franchises such as Rainbow Six Vegas, Ghost Recon, Call of Duty (which has been revived), Halo (this game could impact sales, remember people will continue to play this game and Call of Duty 4 for a long time), and various other FPS games announced and yet to be announced.
But as happens with most stocks of popular games, it will continue to remain overvalued until the actual numbers come in, which is far off. It remains to be seen whether this stock will fall to a more realistic sub-700DKP before launch or whether it will remain propped up until then.
@deftangel, In my experience, doubling the userbased (H/W) does not mean doubling the game sales. Usually, doubling userbase only increase the game sales by 25% to 50%, max.
Otherwise, we will see 200% or more increase from FFX (first PS2 game) to FFXII (latest PS2 game). Samething with DMC, MGS etc.
IMO, the max should be 4.5 x 1.5 = 6.7, tops. Don't forget, there is a limit to marketing effect (point of diminishing return), so don't count too much on marketing effect.
Gears 1 will probably get to 4.5m if it's at 4m now. There will be twice the numbers of 360's out there at least and this will be marketed to hell as MS' flagship title for 2008. I don't think 8m is beyond the realms of possibility. That's top whack though, anything beyond that I think is a stretch.
This stock fluctuates way too much. People need to get their heads on and stop buying mindlessly. That or someone is trying to drive the price up so they can sell. Don't fall for it people! Do you really expect this to sell twice as much as its predecessor?
Also, the violence in this game would make it less appealing than say Halo that is more cartoony--its just easier for kids to get away with shooting colorful aliens than all the cursing and *ahem* chainsawing in Gears (though there was the option in the first to turn "extreme content" off). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the first Gears despite a much left to be desired online system, but I'm just trying to make a point.
Also, I don't want to get stuck in the overprice trap that Mass Effect got in where it dropped about 15-20% right around launch.
Uggh. I can't fathom buying this stock, its just too risky (well, less so than others.) I would expect this to sell around 5.5-6.5 million, and we are already at 8 million. Although I could see it selling that much, it hasn't yet garnered the brand loyalty and marketing (for the brand) compared to Halo 3. While I don't think we'll be seeing Gears soda anytime soon, I wouldn’t count that out. (I wonder what flavor it would be if it did exist?)
Part 1 of 2-part comment (had to move other part due to site lag.)
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it won't be till actual sales numbers come out (yep, that means not until way into november-ish) or until related games sales numbers come out (where you can see if the genre, the platform, etc are selling well or not)