Rovio, the Finnish game maker that let the Angry Birds loose on the world, could go public as early as 2012. That’s what Rovio Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka told Bloomberg.

These birds are nothing short of a pop culture phenom with numerous games, plush toys and even a movie deal in the works. The game concept couldn’t be more simple: The player uses a slingshot to hurl birds at pigs who stole their eggs. That might not seem like the foundation for an empire with an estimated value of around $1 billion but it has been so far.

Homefront was released yesterday (March 15, 2011) across PS3, Xbox 360 and PC platforms. Homefront is also available through OnLive. In the period in which it has been available, Homefront has caused more problems for THQ than anticipated. Homefront hasn’t been getting particularly good reviews. The game currently has a 73% average on Metacritic after factoring in overall scores for each platform. Scores have been as low as 50, and as high as 93. This inconsistency has led THQ’s shares to drop by around 21% in an afternoon.

The Dallas Morning News reports that GameStop’s stock dropped substantially Wednesday (December 2, 2009) after Walmart announced decent discounts on some bestselling games and $50 gift cards for Nintendo Wii buyers.

GameStop stock dropped 8.3 percent after to close at $21.87 after Walmart revealed discounts on games including Madden 2010 and Left 4 Dead 2, knocking their price down to $50. The DMN quotes Arvind Bhatia an analyst at Dallas’ Sterne Agee & Leach, saying GameStop is probably not worried.

In a move drawing a lot of industry attention, GameStop director Leonard Riggio has sold 2.3 million shares of the company’s stock.

He earned $60.2 million from the sale and reduced his ownership in the game retail company from 6.9 percent to 5.5 percent. The timing seems odd as the sale comes right before the holiday season, when GameStop generally expects to make billions. The holiday season of 2009 is packed with potential sales blockbusters including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and New Super Mario Bros.

In the wake of what Eidos considered lackluster holiday sales for Tomb Raider Underworld, developer Crystal Dynamics laid off approximately 30 people on Friday (January 9, 2009), according to Kotaku. Ironically, Crystal Dynamics is the developer hailed for breathing life back into the Tomb Raider franchise after it had become synonymous with sequelitis.

Even Underworld doesn’t seem to be a flop by reasonable standards, having sold 1.5 million units in a crowded holiday season filled with blockbuster titles. The true answer may lie in a look at Eidos’ stock price, which dipped by 25 percent after the company announced the latest Lara Croft installment had failed to…