Conclusion

Within France, videogame stocks performed better during the last cycle than other French high-tech/IT stocks. For example, a mutual fund dedicated to videogame companies during that period ("Ifuel Equity Fund") was the most profitable European media and telecom private equity investment fund in 2001 [Morningstar02]. Yet in 2001 and 2002, the subsequent decline of French videogame stocks and the financial difficulties of some of the leading French companies, including Infogrames, raise questions about the sustainability of the French challenge, including whether the French companies have access to the committed sources of finance needed to remain world-class publishers. Speculative finance is not committed finance. It might well be that, for reasons that had little if anything to with the videogame industry, investors on the French financial markets were simply more speculative than their British counterparts. The experience of the French stock markets was in line with what is now seen as a worldwide bubble in technology stocks that coincided with the last videogame cycle. The British stock markets were not immune to this speculative fever, but they never became as "exuberant" as the French. There is much more research to be done on the European challenge in the videogame industry, and the rise of the French companies in the 1996 to 2001 cycle. However, our research thus far suggests that one should not reject the hypothesis that the substance—and sensitivity—of the "French touch" in videogames was a greater French propensity to stock-market speculation.