If you haven’t played Dante’s Inferno yet, you should. The atmosphere of the game alone is enough to merit the 8-12 hour excursion into the epic poem. Find a rainy weekend and rent the game at the very least. If buying is your thing, though, you can get EA’s latest slasher for just $39.99 at Target next week. That’s a damn fine price for a fresh title – a full $20 off retail.

Target is also having a sale on NBA 2K10, dropping it down to $29.99. There are also a few Pokemon deals going down if you want to have the most random collection of games this side of a Sega Saturn. I should probably also remind you that Bad Company 2 and MLB 10: The Show both drop on March 2nd, though those will be full price. Not an altogether bad week for gaming.

The third quarter is always a tough one for publishers and especially for EA. That’s why I wasn’t so surprised when the company reported an $82 million dollar loss for this years fiscal Q3. That’s actually $559 million less than it lost at the same time last year, so things are looking up in the face of a continued recession.

The company does have plenty of good going too. Mass Effect 2 is already off to a great start with more than two million units shipped. Dante’s Inferno, which I covered last week, launches today. Add to it that the company’s most recent social acquisition, Playfish, had two of Facebook’s top ten games this past quarter and things don’t look nearly as dire for EA.

The company also mentioned that it was the “#1 packaged goods publisher in North America and Europe” for fiscal 2009.

Source: EA Investor Relations