time-warner posts

THQ's stock price took a big leap upwards on Tuesday in trading on rumors that the game publisher might be putting the "For Sale" sign up. MCV reports that Time Warner, Electronic Arts, Viacom and Fox/NewsCorp are all rumored to be looking at the publisher which had its stock price go up 13 percent on those reports.

Naturally none of the companies involved are commenting on the published rumors. THQ got caught with low selling games last year and as a result cut 25 percent of its workforce along with a number of its internal development studios. However, THQ's successful release of the console-only UFC boosted its bottom line recently and may provide new interest in companies who might want to acquire the company to obtain the UFC game license as well as others.

Last week, the entertainment business world was shocked to hear that Disney was planning to purchase comic book company Marvel Entertainment for $3 billion. Marvel's main rival, DC Comics, is already owned by a big media company Time Warner. Now it looks like Time Warner is going to be taking its comic book division a little more seriously.

This week, Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment announced that DC Comics is no more and in a Crisis on Infinite Earths revamp the division will be renamed to DC Entertainment. Warner Bros. Entertainment will now be in charge of " . . . strategically integrating the DC Comics business, brand and characters deeply into Warner Bros. Entertainment and all its content and distribution businesses." That, by the way, does include "interactive entertainment".

Along with this new revamp comes a new leader in Diane Nelson who takes over as president of DC Entertainment. She was previous in charge of Warner Bros. Harry Potter license (and will apparently continue in that role). Long time DC Comics President & Publisher Paul Levitz will leave that position but will become a writer for at least one DC Comic title, Adventure Comics.

This year's release of Batman: Arkham Asylum proved that a good game with a DC Comics character could be made. At the moment the only other announced DC Comics-based game that's in development is DC Universe Online, the MMO that's under development by Sony Online.

Last week's announcement that Japan-based Square Enix was going to try to buy UK-based Eidos had a bit of a hurdle to clear: the fact that Time Warner owns about 20 percent of Eidos' stock. Today Gamasutra reports that Square Enix has reportedly gotten approval from Time Warner to proceed with their plans to acquire Eidos.

As we reported last week, the deal is worth 84 million UK pounds ($120 million). Both the executive teams at Square Enix and Eidos have signed onto the deal and now its up to the shareholders to approve the deal. They will vote sometime in March and if they give their thumbs-up, the deal will be completed by April.

Rumors of an acquisition of UK based Eidos have been running around for a couple of weeks now but it looks like one of the front runners is making a claim for the publisher. Time Warner, which already owns an interest in Eidos, bought another 10 million shares in the publisher, according to Gamasutra.

That raises Time Warner's stake in Eidos to 19 percent of the company. However, a recently amended agreement keeps Time Warner from buying more than 30 percent of Eidos. Other companies supposedly interested in buying Eidos include Electronic Arts, Square Enix and Ubisoft. Who will emerge as the winner? Stay tuned.

Starting today, Comcast subscribers with older hardware or those in high Internet traffic areas, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, might notice slow download speeds that have nothing to do with seeds or leeches. Comcast will be testing an imposed download cap of 200 gigabytes, as reported by The Consumerist. According to The Consumerist's source, "Comcast even has a system ready to go where if you exceed the limit a popup will ask you to purchase additional gigabytes."

Consumerist continued by saying that the graphical user interface for said system is in place, but Comcast "hasn't deployed it, because they're waiting for either another ISP to do it first, or to figure out how to do it without angering their customers, whichever comes first."

Despite claims to the contrary, the rather generous cap is likely another attempt by Comcast to cripple the heavy bandwidth activity that results from the usage peer-to-peer programs such as Limewire and the massively popular BitTorrent. Late last year, Comcast "was surreptitiously interfering with file transfers by posing as one party and then, essentially, hanging up the phone," according to CNET's Declan McCullagh.

Comcast isn't the only cable giant to test download rates and caps. In a recent News Blog post, CNET's Marguerite Reardon wrote that low end "users will pay $29.95 per month for service at a speed of 768 kilobits per second, with a 5GB monthly cap," with a higher price point of $54.90 per month attached to "service at 15 megabits per second, with a 40GB cap." Subscribers who exceed their allotment will be charged $1 per extra gigabyte. "The tiered pricing will work this way for the Internet portion of subscription packages that also include phone or video use," clarified Reardon.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology. "Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a 'gas gauge' on the company's Web page," wrote AP Technology writer Peter Svensson.