Take-Two Earnings
Chapter eleven of the same book, no pun intended. From Gamespot;As for the publisher's quarterly results, Take-Two reported revenue for the three months ended April 30 of $205.4 million, down from $265.1 million in the same time frame last year. Take-Two said it reflected the strength of last year's release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, with the shortfall made up partially by sales of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and Major League Baseball 2K7. The publisher also posted a loss of $51.2 million, slightly worse than the $50.4 million it lost in the same quarter the year before.
I'm glad Major League Baseball 2K7 sold well, since it was a nice beta. It's been almost four months since the game was released, and Dynasty mode still has some severe, game-stopping bugs. Thanks for taking care of your customers, guys.
You'll remember that a new management team in place at Take-Two, and they announced a "restructuring" effort along with the earnings release. As always, the restructuring will involve "consolidations" and layoffs.
It's not really clear (yet) how many.
Here's the biggest problem with the restructuring plan, as well as the earnings announcement: Take-Two's largest issue has always been accounting methods. No one trusts the numbers Take-Two puts out, because they have a long history of SEC trouble coupled with troubling audit committee resignations.
Without clean data on what's actually going on financially, trying to fix any of the company's problems will be very, very difficult.
For all its attempts to diversify its product line, Take-Two is still the Grand Theft Auto company, and the future--even the survival--of Take-Two is going to depend on Grand Theft Auto IV.
The game has to ship on October 16. It has to be finished. It has to be excellent. It has to sell millions and millions of units.
In short, the pressure on Rockstar North is absolutely mind-bending.
<< Home