EA stock rebounds after twin announcements

Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) stock surged today in response to yesterday's news that the software giant would be publishing versions of Half-Life 2 for the Xbox and PC and that soon EA Mobile games would be available to Sprint and Verizon cell phone users.

EA stock closed the day up $3.78 to $61.57, a rise of more than 6 percent. It was just the latest in a series of stock fluctuations that began with a March stock slide after the company downwardly adjusted its expected earnings for that quarter. Most recently, another dropoff occurred after word came that the company had delayed its heavily promoted adaptation of The Godfather, pushing it out of the holiday season entirely.

EA's price spike was the biggest among game companies today, most of which left the day's trading in essentially the same shape as they entered it. No other company managed to gain or lose even a full point, with THQ's (Nasdaq: THQI) .66 and Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) .61 gains being the best of the rest.

EA is scheduled to announce its June quarter results on July 26 in what promises to be a very interesting investors' earnings call.