Activision Comments on Next-Generation Consoles (ATVI 3Q05 Conf Call Quotes)

Activision (ATVI), #2 maker of gaming software behind Electronic Arts (ERTS), has been on a steep three-year climb on Wall Street:

Activision was recently rated a 'buy' by S&P's Jonathan Rudy, who is particularly impressed with the company's clean balance sheet -- almost no debt and $750 million in cash and short-term holdings.

In ATVI's 3Q05 earnings conference call, publishing unit CEO Michael Griffith commented on the move to next-generation gaming consoles, which began yesterday in earnest with the launch of the Xbox 360:

we expect the following increases: We expect PS2 up by 4.5 million units. Xbox and XBox 360 combined up between 3 and 3.5 million units. GameCube up 1.5 million units and hand helds including GBA, DF and PSP all up 12 to 13 million units…

During this hardware transition cycle, we are fully supporting current generation hardware as long as economically attractive while simultaneously establishing a leadership role supporting the new generation. This is something we couldn't do during the last transition and is helping us tremendously to maximize use of our development and marketing resources. For example, we are experiencing marketing synergy by launching Call of Duty 2 for PC and XBox 360 while simultaneously launching Call of Duty 2 Big Red One for current gen…

we are very bullish on the new [Xbox 360] platform. The good news that we have been hearing consistently from Microsoft is regardless of the exact week of the execution, they have very robust plans to ramp up 360 in the weeks and months ahead. We think it will be a major platform which, of course, is why we are supporting it so heavy at the beginning…

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

Related:

• Top Game Software Stock Plays For New Consoles (ERTS, ATVI, THQ, MSFT, SNE)
• All Seeking Alpha Network articles on Activision and on Game Consoles.
• The complete list of companies (and links to articles about them) covered by The Consumer Electronics Stock Blog.