Gamertell

Bloomberg News is reporting that Dubai International Capital has purchased an undisclosed yet “substantial” stake in Sony. Apparently it was known early this month (November 2007) that Dubai as looking to invest $500 million in a Japanese company, though it cannot be confirmed that money was all spent on Sony, which is based in Tokyo (as in Japan).

Dubai is, according to Bloomberg, a $13 billion fund manager that has invested in European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc. If $500 million was paid, Bloomberg estimates it would have bought 1 percent of Sony based on the current stock price. Seems like a chump cut but, if 500 million is only 1 percent, that would make Sony worth $50 billion. Heck, I’d even enjoy only 1/2 percent of that.

So far there is no word on how this will effect the videogame side of Sony. It doesn’t bode well especially since the game division is losing money with the pricey PS3. After the deal was announced, Sony’s stock rose 4.6 percent to close at 5,500 yen (US$49.95) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Unless there are more big money buys into Sony out there, I expect investors to jump on the Sony bandwagon and analysts to start give stronger recommendations for its stock. Let’s hope that translates into less expensive and better games - and systems - for us gamers.

Read [Bloomberg News] Also Read [GameDaily] Also Read [The Inquirer] Also Read [ZDNet]

• Amazon’s Thanksgiving weekend, Cyber Monday 2008 game deals
• Rumor: Street Fighter costumes might be available in LittleBigPlanet
• Reuters no longer desires a Second Life, abandoning its virtual branch

Take Two Interactive announced that it has sold Joytech to rival manufacturer Mad Catz, including all assets and employees.

A subsidiary of Take Two, Joytech manufactures state-of-the-art videogames, audio visual accessories and offers them to the community at competitive prices. Take 2’s CEO, Ben Feder, said he was pleased that Mad Catz was able to keep the employees of Joytech in the sale despite stating earlier that they have planned to divest all of its non-core businesses.

“The sale of the Joytech assets is consistent with one of the key goals we established in our 100 Day Plan: to develop strategic alternatives for any operations that we determined to be outside our core publishing business,“ said Feder in a press release. “We are particularly pleased that we accomplished this goal in a manner that will allow substantially all of our Joytech employees in the US and UK to join Mad Catz, which is a highly respected provider of video game peripherals.“

Read [Game Industry Biz] Site [Mad Catz] Site [Take Two] Site [JoyTech]

• Best Buy offers selected Cyber Monday 2008 game sales
• Amazon’s Thanksgiving weekend, Cyber Monday 2008 game deals
• Circuit City’s Cyber Monday 2008 game deal - buy a game, get a gift card