take-two posts

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.

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.

Mafia 2 is by far one of the most anticipated games of the fall/holiday 2010 buying season for PC games and publisher 2K Games has gone all out to let people know about the sequel to the 2002 open world crime action game. But for all the pre-release hype and attention, a financial analyst believes it's been all for nothing in terms of making money for 2K Games' parent company Take Two Interactive.

According to IndustryGamers, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes that the game's mixed reviews has hurt Mafia 2's sales changes. Also, according to Pachter, "consumer interest appears to be waning, as the game's position has dropped in many best-seller lists in its first week." Pachter believes that those factors will make the game "unlikely to achieve profitability" for Take Two.

With less than a week before the release of Mafia II, the long awaited open world crime action game is taking some heat from an Italian American service group. Gamasutra reports that the group called UNICO National has sent out a press release demanding that publisher Take Two Interactive delay the release of the game and "cleanse it of all references to Italians and Italian-Americans."

The press release claims that Mafia II, developed by 2K Czech and published by Take Two's 2K Games label, continues the "denigrating stereotype of organized crime being the exclusive domain of Italians and Italian-Americans." In response, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick has issued his own statement, saying that he "fully and completely" stands behind the game and its development team, adding, "We aim to distinguish creative and compelling story telling that advances artistic expression from subject matter that gratuitously exploits or glorifies violence or stereotypes."

Download Mafia II Demo (941 MB)
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Mafia is one of those sleeper hits one sees on a fairly frequent basis on the PC, but its sequel doesn't look like it'll be a quiet, quaint release like the first was. The latest video in an ongoing developer diary series chronicles the efforts of the developers to make the Mafia 2 world more realistic and important for players. It's nothing particularly revolutionary, but it definitely shows how much care 2K Czech has put into the game.

Several interesting bits are mentioned. First, you can only take 2-3 hits, which is a big difference from the relative immunity to bullets most sandbox protagonists have. Second, cars are intended to handle more realistically, which both makes them "heavier" to control but more satisfying. Third, melee combat will be context-sensitive in regards to take-downs, which means you will be able to do things like smash someone's head into a wall.

Download Mafia II 'Tools of the Trade' Developer Video HD (253 MB)
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As usual, Take Two Interactive marches to the beat of a different drummer as it releases its quarterly financial reports a month after everyone else has done the same. Today the publisher announced that for the quarter that ended on April 30 the company brought in $268 million in revenue, a massive increase compared to the $174.3 million the company brought in for the same period a year ago. Take Two reported a profit of $16.9 million for the quarter compared to a loss of $10.4 million for the same period a year ago.

The higher revenues came from, among other games, the release of BioShock 2 and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the PC. While there are no major PC games planned for this quarter, Take Two Interactive still plans to release Mafia II on August 24 and Civilization V sometime between August and October of this year.

It's been almost a year since developer 3D Realms laid off the majority of staff from their long-in-development shooter Duke Nukem Forever. While 3D Realms' CEO Scott Miller insists the game has not yet stopped production there's been no real word on the game's progress. Oh, and there's still that pesky lawsuit filed by the game's planned publisher Take Two Interactive.

However some new footage from Duke Nukem Forever has supposedly found its way to YouTube (in fact the video has been there since December 2009 but was just noticed more recently). While some of the footage has been seen before, there are also parts of the video that have not been seen in any previous leaked gameplay footage. Meanwhile, there's been no news on the court fight between 3D Realms and Take Two on the game for some time.

In 2005 a mod maker found a way to unlock a hidden sex mini-game that was put in by the developers of Rockstar North for their PC port of the open world action game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The resulting firestorm of controversy cause some to file lawsuits against Rockstar's parent company Take Two Interactive.

The publisher eventually came to an settlement agreement in court where anyone who bought the original version of the game could get some cash for their trouble. Now Kotaku reports that those cash settlements, ranging from $5 to $35, are finally being mailed out to those folks who requested compensation for having that hidden "hot coffee" scene in the game.

This patch updates Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC. It fixes multiplayer and control issues and converts all regional editions into one single edition.

Download Grand Theft Auto IV v1.0.5 Patch (99 MB)
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