Biz

Publisher Take Two Interactive is always the last of the publicly trade game publishers to reveal its financial results. Today the company revealed that for the quarter that ended on July 31 it generated $354.1 million in revenue, a massive increase compared to the $94.9 million it made for the same period a year ago. Take Two recorded a profit of $12.4 million for the quarter compared to a loss of $58.3 million for the same period a year ago.

Part of the reason for the better numbers were the high sales of the console only game Red Dead Redemption which Take Two said has sold 6.9 million copies since its release last May. The publisher's PC game release schedule includes Civilization V, NBA 2K11 and the next Borderlands DLC release. Oddly, the press release makes no mention of Max Payne 3, the long-in-development action game that's been delayed a number of times.

So are you ready to hear about something BIG? Then you will have to wait until Friday at 1 pm Eastern time. That's when 2K Games is supposedly revealing something BIG at its booth at PAX Prime 2010. It's apparently so BIG that the publisher is streaming live video from the event so everyone can know what it is about.

What could it be? Some people are speculating that it could be the rumored revival of the long awaited first person shooter Duke Nuke Forever via developer Gearbox Software. In related news, George Broussard, the present of Duke Nukem's owner 3D Realms, has "tweeted" a link to an interesting illustration. What does it really mean?

Medal of Honor's use of a Taliban faction in the upcoming shooter's multiplayer mode has already stirred up a lot of debate. Now Kotaku is reporting that the Electronic Arts-developed game won't be sold at GameStop stores that are located on military based because of that particular feature.

According to a statement from GameStop, the retailer, "has agreed out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores." It added, "GameStop fully supports AAFES in this endeavor and is sensitive to the fact that in multiplayer mode one side will assume the role of Taliban fighter."

This will not affect GameStop from taking reservations and selling the game at all of the company's civilian stores. EA has not commented on this new development although in the past EA Games head Frank Gibeau has been quoted as saying the publisher " .. anticipated this [controversy] when we decided on the concept of the game." The game is still scheduled for release on October 12.

Earlier this week we reported on a new study that claims that the free-to-play PC game business will boom up to $2 billion in revenues by 2015. A publisher with deep PC games ties that wants in on that business is Paradox Interactive. In a new interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester states, "We're releasing three new free-to-play games next year."

And what kinds of games will they be? We know that one of them will be Dreamlords Resurrection, the long-in-development online RTS game. But Wester is also hinting at something else in the works, saying, "It's gonna be very cryptic. It's a type of gameplay that we've never touched before. And it's a type of gameplay that's completely different from what a computer game typically offers." A full announcement will be made later this month.

German-based game developer Headup Games is perhaps best known to US audiences for its sci-fi turn based strategy game Future Wars. Now Headup Games will soon be released via retail stores in a new agreement with new US game publisher Collective Mindz.

According to the email press release, the agreement includes Headup Games' previously released product, including Future Wars, along with its upcoming zombie-themed tactical strategy game Trapped Dead that's due out in early 2011. Headup Games previously announced an digital download publishing agreement with Meridian4. Big Download contacted Merdidian4 and a spokesperson stated that the agreement with Headup Games is still active, saying, "We feel that the additional exposure the games will receive by going into retail will help everyone involved and will get these great games in front of a larger gaming audience."

[Via email press release]

The man who was once the founder and head of the infamous Infinium Labs is dealing with more legal issues over a new company he helped to found a couple of years ago. Gamasutra reports that Tim Roberts has filed a lawsuit against the majority shareholder of the PC game download site GameStreamer.

The story reports that Robert founded GameStreamer in 2008 after founding and then leaving Infinium Labs which tried and failed to release a PC-like set top box for games. He received loans to start the business from Ronald Westman. However last May Roberts left as CEO of GameStreamer along with its CFO Terrance Taylor. GameStreamer, under chairman Westman, then sued Roberts and Taylor, alleging "cybersquatting, trademark infringement, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriating trade secrets" and more. Roberts has now counter-sued Westman, claiming Westman used "predatory loans" to gain control of the majority of GameStreamer. Oddly enough, Roberts also claims he and Taylor were fired from GameStreamer because they would not convert to becoming Seventh Day Adventists.

While other PC game developers and publishers have either moved partly or completely into console game development, Paradox Interactive has still concentrated most of its efforts in making and releasing PC games. In the company's newly launched blog page The Wester Front Paradox's CEO Fredrik Wester states, "What I find most exciting is that more and more people consider PC the gaming machine of the future."

Wester believes the PC gaming industry has several advantages including being able to connect with other PC gamers, more control over pricing and more control over providing updates and expansions. As far as sales, he states " ... we have never sold more games than we did in 2009, and we'll sell even more in 2010." Wester add, "I guess if you look into the future we'll see even more people focusing on PC gaming. Paradox will still be there, making games that PC gamers want to play."

A late breaking development on Monday has put the fate of a well known Japanese publisher, as well as its US subsidiary, in question along with the fate of two recently announced downloadable games. Gamasutra reports that Index Holdings, the parent company of game publisher Atlus, has "dissolved" Atlus in order to focus its attention on "profitable core areas".

According to the report the Atlus brand name will continue but at the moment it's unclear how the brand will live on. It's also unclear how this will affect Atlus USA, the North American subsidiary to Atlus. Last June at E3, Atlus USA announced it would publish two downloadable games in 2011; the puzzle-action sequel Trine 2 from developer Frozenbyte and the unusual looking strategy game Rock of Ages from developer ACE Team.

Update: A post on the Atlus USA's message board states, "Don't worry, guys. This is just some corporate organizational maneuvering and won't affect anything we do."

Launched earlier this year, the UK-based PC game download web site Green Man Gaming tried something new in the digital download marketplace. It let its customers download and buy titles and then sell them back to the web site for credits to purchase future games. Apparently the service is doing very well, MCV reports that according to Green Man Gaming it has "exceeded all revenue and sales targets" since it went live last May (specific sales and revenue numbers were not disclosed).

The company is also expanding, hiring new people and launching plans to offer a mobile version of its service next year based on the Android operating system. It also says it is "looking to partner with a large US retailer."

Layoff news continues to hit the game industry. Today Kotaku reports that Ubisoft has give notices to 38 members of its Red Storm Entertainment studio in Cary, North Carolina. The story did not say how many team members remain at Red Storm, which created the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon tactical shooter series.

A spokesperson for Ubisoft said the layoffs were due to "a realignment of production priorities" at the publisher but added that Red Storm team members affected by the layoffs will be given a chance " to consider positions in other Ubisoft studios." Red Storm's current project is working on the multiplayer features for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier which is due out in the first quarter of 2011.

As major AAA game development teams work with new hardware, the amount of money for making the average high profile game has gone up and up over the past few years. It's not uncommon to hear that a game has a budget in the tens of millions of dollars.

However, one game executive seems to believe that trend is over, at least for the moment. Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) vchatted with David DeMartini, the head of Electronic Arts' third party EA Partners division, about budget issues. He he stated, " ... I think budgets for games have actually peaked and are starting to move in the reverse direction again." It's certainly true that small dev teams can make downloadable games that don't cost a lot to make and if popular can quickly make a profit. DeMartini states, "I don't think there's any one right budget for any game. It kind of depends on how big the idea is and what the team needs to be able to make a 90 (percent) rated game with the idea that they're working on."

It was a mixed bag of news for GameStop for its last fiscal quarter. The massive game retailer reported today that revenues for the quarter that ended on July 31 came in at $1.80 billion, slightly ahead of the $1.74 billion in revenue GameStop brought in for the same period a year ago. Profits came in at $40.3 million for the quarter up slightly from $38.7 million for the same period a year ago. GameStop said StarCraft II was one of the retailer's top five best selling titles for the quarter even though the RTS game from Blizzard came out in the last four days of GameStop's quarter.

However GameStop's results just missed analysts expectations and the company also announced that it was lowering its earnings guidence from $0.38-0.41 to $0.35 to $0.38 a share for the current fiscal quarter. Those events caused GameStop's stock to get hit hard today. After today's trading closed the stock price was down over 8 percent.

A few years ago, the game industry was all abuzz about how in-game advertising was going to be a brand new and significant revenue stream for game developers and publishers. And then in 2008 the "Great Recession" hit the ad industry in general like a ton of bricks. The chairman of one of the leading in-game ad companies, IGA Worldwide, Justin Townsend, admitted in March 2009 that it was trying to raise more funds and was even thinking of selling off the company.

Now that the economy is slightly better off (knock on wood) IGA Worldwide has announced that it has in fact secured new funding through new and existing sources. The company stated in a press release that it is "aggressively focusing on expanding our advertising product lineup, game portfolio and global reach for 2010 and 2011." Specific financial numbers for the privately held IGA were not revealed. It states that it has "an exciting line up of AAA game titles" for its services but specific games were not revealed.

The NPD Group's recent report on the current state of the PC game digital download business was slammed by reps from two such services, Impulse and GamersGate. Now even Valve is said to be curious as to how the NPD Group came up with its numbers for its report, which it claimed that digital downloads sales of PC games were almost on a par with PC game sales at brick-and-mortar retailers.

Gamesindustry.biz quotes Valve's marketing head Doug Lombardi as saying, "we're unsure as to how they came up with those numbers, so commenting on them would feel strange. ...". However he did add that "they're starting to make strides to give everyone that information and paint a more complete picture. But again those reports that came out weren't based on any data that we've provided, so it is what is. ..."

Valve's Steam service is considered to be the leading source of PC game download sales but if Valve didn't provide the NPD Group with any numbers from their service it does lead into questions as to how the NPD Group came up with its conclusions. We've emailed the NPD Group for comment and received a response from its PR rep, saying, "Our PC Game download tracker is not a digital POS service. It is based on consumer panel survey data."

There's an old saying: "Don't mess with Texas." In this story's case the saying could be changed to, "Don't mess with Azeroth." Last week Blizzard Entertainment scored a lawsuit win against a party accused of running third party servers for Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft.

Last October Blizzard filed a lawsuit against a company called Scapegaming, claiming it had set up its own private World of Warcraft servers which is a huge violation of the game's End User Licening agreement. A judge found in favor of Blizzard and awarded the company a total of $88,594,589 in statutory damages, inappropriate profits and attorney's fees. It's currently unknown if Scapegaming will appeal the amount of the award.

[Via WoW.com]