Madden, Fortnite lead game searches as Baird sees positives overtake negatives
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EA's (NASDAQ:EA) Madden 2024 announcement and the new season of Fortnite, produce by Epic Games, led video game searches last week as positive search terms outweighed negative search terms for the first time since January, investment firm Baird said on Thursday.
Analyst Colin Sebastian noted that searches related to video games "accelerated a bit" last week, with eight search terms seeing positive flows, while there were seven negative search terms, measured by the number of queries.
Sebastian noted that the increase for the search therms were "mostly event driven," with EA (EA) announcing that Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen would be on the cover of Madden 24, resulting in a 44% increase. Separately, the company's FIFA Ultimate Team saw a 9% increase, perhaps related to the announcement that Lionel Messi is joining MLS club, Inter Miami.
Conversely, Activision Blizzard's (ATVI) World of Warcraft, Call of Duty: Warzone and Take-Two's (TTWO) NBA 2K saw declines in queries, down 15%, 8% and 4%, respectively.
Also seeing declines were EA's (EA) Apex Legends and Corsair (CRSR), the gaming peripherals company.
Shares of EA (EA) and Take-Two (TTWO) rose fractionally in mid-day trading, while Activision (ATVI) fell by a similar amount.
On Wednesday, Activision (ATVI) and Microsoft (MSFT) asked a federal judge for a hearing lasting at least five days after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block the pending $69B merger. 
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