Electronic Arts has been extending its $25.74 per share offer to buy Take Two Interactive for several months now but today that offer will finally expire. EA issued a press release today announcing that the current deadline for the offer, which was scheduled to expire late today, will be allowed to expire.However, that isn't the end of the EA-Take Two saga as EA CEO John Riccitiello and Take Two Executive Chairman Strauss Zelnick spoke on the phone on Friday, according to EA's press release. After that the two companies chatted over the weekend with the result being that EA will allow Take Two "to provide a management presentation to EA containing non-public information."In letters between Riccitiello and Zelnick, it was revealed that EA no longer feels they could intergrate Take Two into their company before the holiday season (where over 50 percent of games are sold). So while the current takeover bid is winding down it's also clear that EA and Take Two could be making some kind of deal in the future....

Electronic Arts continues to dance around the Take Two Interactive tree. EA announced back in January its plans to merge with Take Two but has extended its deadline several times on the deal thanks to Take Two's issues with EA's asking price. Today EA officially announced its latest deadline extension for the deal.The last deadline came and went on July 18 but in a new press release EA states that the deadline has been extended yet again to August 18. There's no indication that EA plans to raise its price offer which Take Two execs have already stated is too low for their tastes.They issued a press release this morning stating that Take Two has continued to discuss possible deals with unnamed "multiple parties."...

Rockstar Games, popular child of parent company Take-Two Interactive, deals not in sandbox titles nor smut simulators, but in controversy. GamesIndustry.biz interview conducted with Take-Two CEO Ben Feder to discuss the controversial gaming landscape which the publisher's popular Grand Theft Auto games have decisively staked as its own territory, as well as the constantly changing topography of that landscape.Now that many gamers have finished Grand Theft Auto IV's expansive campaign, the focus for many players looking for more storyline longevity from the title has shifted to the promised downloadable content. When asked how he feels about DLC's business model when (ostensibly) compared to other sales methods, Feder expressed his belief that the core GTA fans will be "screaming to buy it" when it becomes available.Feder admitted that GTA software "just saturates hardware," but increased hardware sales are pivotal if GTA sales are to be increased. According to Feder, this holiday season's hardware sales will go a long way toward deciding which platform will receive more DLC. After all, noted Feder, it's financially wise for Take-Two to aim for the platform with the larger user base: more gamers equal more money.The interview can be found on GamesIndustry.biz....

Gearbox Software released several details on their upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter Borderlands during the Take-Two Interactive E3 press conference earlier today, reports Shacknews. Gearbox president Randy Pitchford touted the game as a cooperative shooter with randomized elements such as items and level-based progression.Set on the planet Pandora, Pitchford showed a cavernous mine filled with "trives of humanoid enemies to destroy," according to Shacknews. The game will contain over half a million weapons, all of which are supposed to be procedurally generated. "A revolver sniper rifle was spawned during the demo that even surprised Pitchford," says Shacknews. Many of the weapons contain wild explosive effects, prompting Pitchford to promise significant gore and limb loss.Before the demonstration concluded, vehicles were shown via a dune buggie that was driven by two players working in tandem. Two classes, the Hunter and the Solider, were revealed....

And yet again with the delays. Electronic Arts' hostile bid to merge with Take Two Interactive has been going on for several months now with numerous extensions to their so-called "deadline" for the deal to be made. It's kind of like that old Robin Williams routine where he was imitating Liby leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. "Ok, you cross this line of death you die. Ok you cross this line you die. This line you die. Ok you are at my door. I'm not coming out."Anyway a new US Securities and Exchange Commission entry by EA states that the publisher is in "substantial compliance" with the request made earlier this year by the Federal Trade Commission to give more info to the FTC on their planned merger with Take Two. EA has now said that they won't move to complete the merger earlier than August 21, a delay from their previous deadline of July 17. EA's asking price for Take Two remains at $25.74 a share which Take Two execs have repeated stated is too low for them....

Last month Variety reported that Take Two Interactive and 2K Boston head Ken Levine were in talks to extend Levine's contract at the publisher. Now the New York Post is reporting through unnamed sources that a deal is close to being made with Levine that would keep him at Take Two Interactive with some extra incentives.While neither the publisher nor Levine's agent would officially comment, the New York Post reports that Levine's new deal, if it is finalized, will allow him to have more creative control over his game projects as well as a way to launch new franchises for Take Two. Levine got a lot more clout after the critical and sales success of 2007's first person shooter BioShock. The article quotes an financial analyst as saying that keeping Levine is critical to Take Two if they are to extract a higher selling price from Electronic Arts which currently is engaged in a hostile takeover of Take Two....

It looks like it's not only Electronic Arts that wants to purchase shares of Take Two Interactive. EA has been in the middle of a hostile bid to buy Take Two for months but so far little has come of it. Now a separate company has bought a sizable fraction of shares of Take Two, but not for a take over bid.According to an AP story (via Yahoo) financier Steven A. Cohen has bought about 4.1 million shares in Take Two, which is equivalent to 5.3 percent of the company. Cohen spent $107.6 million to acquire the shares though funds he controls via S.A.C. Capital Advisors LLC. Cohen maintains he bought the fund for investment purposes only but could discuss Take Two's strategy and future plan with the company and others.Meanwhile, EA's bid to take over the company currently has a deadline of July 18 (although they have extended this deadline several times already)....

Even though Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto games mostly sell to console gamers nowadays, it was the PC version of GTA: San Andreas that got the game and its publisher into trouble a few years ago. The "Hot Coffee" mod unlocked a sexual mini-game hidden by the game's developers. The game was re-rated AO by the ESRB, pulled from store shelves and finally re-released without the mini-game as an "M" rated title. A class action lawsuit was filed and Rockstar and its parent company Take Two Interactive settled in court. The settlement let anyone who bought the game before the "Hot Coffee" mini-game was found to get paid between $5 and $35 or receive the revamped version of the title.Well, it turns out only a few of the millions of people who bought the game decided to take up the settlement offer. According to the New York Times, only 2,676 claims have been filed and Take Two estimated it will only pay out $30,000 in the matter (of course the legal fees and funds it lost while it had to pull and then re-release the game are estimated to be in the millions). The settlement isn't quite final; it is set to be approved by a judge next week in court....

It's not exactly a shock but Electronic Arts has announced that it has extended its take over offer for fellow publisher Take Two Interactive yet again. This is the fourth such extension that EA has given for the proposed merger of their rival that they first announced earlier this year. The new deadline is now July 18 and EA has not changed their offer; they are still offering Take Two $25.74 a share for their stock. This was not unexpected as EA had already revealed that they are waiting for the results of an investigation into the merger by the Federal Trade Commission to be completed before they move forward with their plans.Take Two wasted no time in responding to this latest EA extension saying yet again that EA's offer "still significantly undervalues Take-Two". Of course, Take Two has issues of their own with the FTC investigation; it was recently revealed that the company is fighting a subpoena to reveal their financial records....

2K Boston/Australia head Ken Levine has been one of the more open people to talk to in the gaming press, always willing to chat with journalists about everything from his hit game BioShock to game design and writing to pretty much anything else. But lately even Levine has been strangely silent despite a lot of recent BioShock related news, including a sequel announcement and a BioShock movie. Why the clamp down?Variety thinks it knows the answer. Citing unnamed sources, it claims Levine is in the middle of re-negotiating his current contract with 2K Boston/Australia's parent company Take Two Interactive. According to the story the talks have been ongoing for a couple of months now and may take some time to complete. It's unknown exactly what Levine wants from Take Two but BioShock was the publisher's major hit of last year and keeping Levine on board would go a long way to establishing itself as a company that until recently has only had the Grand Theft Auto franchise to fall back on....

Now things are getting interesting. Remember how Electronic Arts announced they would hold off on their bid to merge with Take Two Interactive while the Federal Trade Commission conducts an investigation on said deal? Well apparently Take Two doesn't want to play ball. According to a story in Reuters the FTC issued a subpoena to Take Two asking for documents in their investigation of the merger proposal. The problem? Take Two has refused to comply with the subpoena.Now the The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will hold a hearing on June 24 to see if Take Two should be compelled to respond to the FTC's subpoena. The big question is: what, if anything, is Take Two trying to hide from the FTC? Stay tuned....

Electronic Arts may have put their take over bid of Take Two Interactive on hold while the Federal Trade Commission finishes their report on the proposed merger. That factisn't stopping financial analysts from putting their opinions in play on who Take Two might merge with besides EA. Forbes.com has an article which offers some speculation on this subject.One such company that might be interested in Take Two is Activision but of course they are already in the middle of completing a massive merger of their own with Vivendi Games to form Activision Blizzard later this summer. Yet another possiblity is Ubisoft who is looking to expand (ironically, Ubisoft is also 20 percent owned by EA). However, money could be an issue there; the article points out that Ubisoft doesn't have the cash to match or top EA's current $2 billion bid. Still Take Two execs have said they have entered talks with other parties besides EA; it should be interesting to see what comes of these talks....

Take Two Interactive apparently knows a good franchise when it sees one. Case in point: BioShock. The imaginative first person shooter from Ken Levine's team at 2K Boston/Australia has won tons of awards and, as revealed today in Take Two's latest financial announcement, has shipped 2.2 million copies between the PC and Xbox 360 versions. A few months ago, it was announced that BioShock 2 was in developed at the new 2K Marin studio (Levine will have some input, though) for release sometime in Take Two's 2009 fiscal year (which ends Oct. 31, 2009). A deal to make a BioShock film was also announced earlier this year.But Take Two is already looking to the far future of the franchise. During the financial analyst conference call today (you can listen to the repeat at Take Two's web site), one analyst asked if the BioShock movie will be released around the same time as BioShock 2. The replay from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was that it was more likely it would be released around the same time as BioShock 3. Yes, the company is looking far ahead to the next game in the series. Of course, BioShock 2 could be a sales bomb and the BioShock movie could fall into "development hell" so it's way too early to get excited yet. But it's clear Take Two execs want to have something other than the Grand Theft Auto franchise to prop up their revenues....

It's not a shock, but Take Two Interactive's last fiscal quarter (which ended April 30) was a huge one for the publisher. Today the company announced that revenues for the quarter came in at $539.8 million, up from $205.4 million from the same period a year ago. Net profit was $98.2 million for the quarter, up from a loss of $51.2 million from the same period a year ago.Of course the big reason for the huge numbers was the success of the Xbox 360 and PS3 release of Grand Theft Auto IV from Take 2's Rockstar brand (so far there has been no announcement of a PC version of the game; all of the GTA games have eventually been ported to the PC platform). Take Two did say that their first person shooter Bioshock has shipped 2.2 million copies in total for the Xbox 360 and PC platforms. Take Two's line-up for the rest of their 2008 fiscal year (which ends October 31) does not currently contain any PC titles but their 2009 fiscal line-up will have PC games like Bioshock 2, Borderlands and Mafia 2....

Electronic Arts let its proposed $2 billion buy out offer for Take Two Interactive lapse on May 16 but this morning the publisher announced yet another extension of its offer, this time until 11:59 pm EST on June 16. This is the second time that EA has extended its buyout offer for Take Two, who is riding high at the moment on the success of the Grand Theft Auto IV release. The company was expected to extend its offer even though it let the previous deadline pass without comment.Of course, EA may have a problem since it is still going to stick with its $25.74 per share offer. Take Two's stock closed at a higher price on Friday at $27.10 a share. In EA's official statement it said it decided to extend the deadline to "allow the FTC review process to continue." According to the press release, 6,210,261 shares of Take Two stock have accepted the EA offer. However, as Take Two noted in a previous press release, that's only about 8 percent of Take Two's total stock.Update: Take Two has now responded to EA's latest buy out extension, stating once again that is recommending to its shareholders not to take EA up on its offer. It added, "We said we were willing to begin formal discussions with interested parties on April 30, following the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, and we have in fact begun that process." No further info was revealed on who those parties actually are nor what kinds of offers they have given Take Two....