take-two-interactive posts

GoG.com had a number of announcements today at its streaming press conference including big hints about upcoming publishers:

• GoG.com is not only selling the only DRM-free version of The Witcher 2, but starting May 10 people who pre-order the game from the site can start pre-loading the fantasy RPG sequel before its released on May 17. GoG.com will be the only digital download service that will offer a pre-load of the game.
• GoG.com's sales went up 163 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. No specific sales numbers were mentioned.
• Later this spring GoG.com will get some new features including a new game downloader that will have multi-threading features for large downloads and an error checker that will check the download for corruption issues every 10 MBs. Another new feature will add private messages to the web site.
• At the end of the presentation, five big publishers were shown on the screen; Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive, Square Enix, LucasArts and Microsoft. The press conference said that one of those five publishers has signed a deal with GoG.com to bring 25 of its classic games to the site this summer. Two more of the above publishers are in talks with GoG.com to bring some of their own games to the download service as well.

While Activision Blizzard may be laying off 500 workers and shutting down at least one of its studios, the publisher may be planning to make a big move to buy rival Take Two Interactive. MCV reports that according to an unnamed but "senior executive" , the takeover talk comes from "very strong rumours amongst people at a very senior level within the global business."

Take Two Interactive previously was the target of a hostile takeover by Electronic Arts which it successfully fought and won out in 2008. A merger between Activision Blizzard and Take Two would create the biggest third party game publisher in the world.

[Via Blue's News]

Publisher Take Two Interactive's latest financial results are now available for the company's quarter that ended on December 31, 2010. The company exceeded its own guidence with revenues of $334.3 million, slightly lower than the revenues of $360.4 million for the same period a year ago. Take Two had a profit of $40.86 million for the time period, which is slightly higher than the profit of $37.92 million for the same period a year ago.

The company's press release had no major changes to its release scheduled other than today's addition of 2K Games' The Darkness II for fall 2011. Duke Nukem Forever is still due for release on May 3. Spec Ops The Line and XCom have a more vague release window of "Fiscal 2012" which means anytime between April, 1 2011 and March 3, 2012. Finally BioShock Infinite is still scheduled for release in the calendar year of 2012. The long awaited Max Payne 3 still does not have a release date although the publisher has confirmed the game is still in the works.

On Thursday, publisher Take Two Interactive announced its financial results for the past three and 12 months and also gave a revised released schedule of its upcoming games. There wasn't any real changes for the games listed but one upcoming title wasn't listed at all. That was Max Payne 3, the long-in-development third game in the action series begun by Remedy.

The game from developer Rockstar Vancouver was first announced back in May 2009 but aside from an early Game Informer cover story there's been no real previews of the game and its release date has been pushed back several times. Kotaku checked in with Take Two about the missing Max Payne 3 and was assured by the publisher that the game is still in play. The official statement? "We're still working hard on Max, and we'll have more news in the coming months."

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas continues to generate news and controversy years after its 2004 release. The open world action game from Rockstar Games got slammed after someone used a hack to find the hidden "Hot Coffee" sex mini-game in the PC version in 2005. The discovery caused the ESRB to change the rating of the game from M to AO (Adults Only) which then caused Rockstar to pull the game and re-released it with the mini-game removed.

Now IGN reports that Rockstar and its parent company Take Two Interactive has been hit with a lawsuit filed on Monday by Cypress Hill backup singer Michael "Shagg" Washington. Washington claims that he met with Rockstar in 2003 and told the publisher aspects of his own life. He now claims that the game's character Carl "CJ" Johnson is based on those discussions and is suing the parties for "fraud, misappropriation of likeness and infringement" He wants 25 percent of the game's profits, reportedly worth $250 million, as compensation. If you are wondering why it took Washington so long to file a lawsuit, he claims that he didn't even know the game existed until earlier this year when his nephew told him about it. Take Two has already stated that it believes Washington's lawsuit is "completely without merit and will vigorously defend itself in the matter."

The CEO of Take Two Interactive, Ben Feder, will be departing the game publisher as of January 1, 2011. Feder will truly be going on an extended vacation as the press release states he is leaving "to pursue plans to travel in Asia with his family."

Feber has been CEO of Take Two (which includes the 2K Games, 2K Sports and Rockstar Games brands) since 2007 and has seen the company expand its game portfolio with successful releases like Borderlands and other titles . Strauss Zelnick, the company current chairmain, will assume Feder's CEO role. In addition Karl Slatoff who was previous an Executive Vice President of Take Two, will now step into the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer.

Publisher Take Two Interactive has always reported its quarterly financial reports differently than all the other publicly traded game publishers which made for some awkward timing compared to the others. Now it looks like Take Two is taking the hint and changing its quarter "to align its fiscal periods more closely with the seasonality of its business and improve comparability with industry peers."

The company will still report its financial results for its quarter that ends on October 31 in mid-December. It will then enter a transition period that will switch its quarterly financial reporting schedule to the more conventional timeline. The first report under the new financial reporting schedule will report on both three and nine-month results that will end on December 31. Those reports will be announced in early February. The company's fiscal year will now end on March 31, 2011.

More and more we are seeing the PC game industry move to a download business model. But according to the head of Take Two Interactive, this new way to distribute games doesn't mean that boxed game copies are going away anytime soon.

Speaking in a video interview on the Bloomberg web site, Take Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick states that while download game sales are growing, "Right now, digital distribution of our interactive entertainment represents something less than 15 percent of our revenue." Zelnick cites large file sizes as one barrier to having more downloadable games. Also cloud computing systems such as OnLive can still have latency issues. However Zelnick does state that OnLive is "doing a phenomenal job of addressing that challenge."

[Via Gamasutra]

Just before its "shut down" late last week, GoG.com added the first Age of Wonders game to its library of titles. While the other two games in the classic fantasy turn-based strategy series will be added to GoG.com in the near future folks who want to get all three games in the series can now do so via Impulse.

The PC game download service is offering the entire series from developer Triumph Studios in a bundle deal for just $19.99. That deal also includes the soundtrack for each game. You can also get each title individually for $5.99 (Age of Wonders) or $9.99 each (Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic). The games will also be made available to users of the Steam service "soon".

On Thursday, Take Two Interactive made news with a set of financial results that were much higher than expected. Today, investors decided to ride the good news with a much higher stock price. As of this post, Take Two's stock was at $9.80, a rise of over 10 percent compared to Thursday's stock price.

Take Two reported much higher revenues and a net profit when investors had expected a loss. The company announced it was raising its expectations for the rest of its fiscal year which will end on October 31 and says it now expects the company to turn a profit for the entire fiscal year. Upcoming games from Take Two's 2K Games' brand include Civilization V later this month, XCOM and Spec Ops: The Line in 2011 and BioShock Infinite in 2012. And don't forget that 2K Games is about to announce something BIG in about an hour from now.