Take Two Revenues Up, Profits Down, Still Ignores Wii
It's that time of year again when all of the big publishing houses release fourth quarter fiscal reports and Take Two's is an interesting array of positives, negatives, and confusing choices. Let's take a quick look at some of the more interesting points raised in the 11 page document, shall we?
First up is Take Two's announcement of "long-term agreements" with Rockstar Games. Remember the whispers of the GTA developer striking out on their own? With contracts for Rockstar's senior creative talent extended to 2012, those rumors should be squashed for the next few years. Next is the cold, hard fact that while the company saw record breaking revenues they also lost $15 million during the fourth quarter. Revenue by platform saw the PS3 take the top spot with 35% of their earnings thanks to Bioshock, the 360 came in second with 28%, Wii with 13%, PS2 proved that it just won't die with 8%, PSP took in a surprising 7%, PC had 5%, and Nintendo Handhelds wrapped it up with 4%.
It seems hard to believe that the company that makes Grand Theft Auto 4 is losing money right now, but looking over their roster of titles and taking a long, hard look at the game industry at the moment it's pretty easy to see why. While Take Two's efforts on the PS3 and 360 are among some of the best titles in recent memory (GTA4, Bioshock), it's easy to forget that their big budgets require even more copies to be sold than normal before the first dollar of profit is seen. At the same time, the publishing giant's Wii efforts are of a "questionable" quality at best with Take Two's offerings consisting of minigame collections (Carnival Games), B grade sports games (2K series), and a port of slightly successful of Bully. I would hardly call this the best effort they could muster.
As much as I loved the gay-positive sandbox adventure getting a second chance at success, I think that if Take Two really wanted to sincerely test the Wii waters they should have used something with a little more name recognition than Bully or the tragically misunderstood Manhunt 2. Imagine if they choose something like GTA: San Andreas or Liberty City Stories instead? We know that Wii is capable of presenting the game accurately (with the possibility of slightly enhanced visuals) and would be attention-grabbing from a game design perspective to see how they would translate controls. As relatively cheap as this would have been to produce for whatever reason it just didn't happen. What if they created a GTA4 "companion" title on Wii that would compliment Nico's HD quest and connected to it's big brother SKU via the Social Club? Wouldn't these concepts be more of accurate predictors of the Wii's audience with a significantly lower financial risk? How much longer can publishers like Take Two ignore the Wii's overwhelming success?
[Take-Two posts wider 4th-quarter loss] Forbes
Game-Boy
Posted to Video Games on 18 December 2008
Other stuff like this: 2k sports, bully, business, carnival games, grand theft auto, rockstar, take two interactive
