14 DAY TRIAL // Take Two is facing a tough 2009. As they released their financial results for the fourth quarter of 2008, which showed an increasing loss over the same period of 2007, chairman of the board Strauss Zelnick sought to emphasize the power of DLC as a revenue source in 2009, saying that Grand Theft Auto IV would receive two additions during the next year. Microsoft has just announced that The Lost & Damned would arrive in February, while the second one is slated for the fourth quarter of 2009. Each of the downloadable content packs will cost 20 dollars.
Michael Patcher, the videogames oriented analyst at Wedbush Morgan, doesn't believe in the power of DLC to create enough revenue to see Take Two make a profit. He says that “We estimate that around 7 million copies of the GTA IV disc (required for the download) were sold on the Xbox 360, and believe that no more than 5 million of these were sold to members of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service”. This means that Take Two will not be able to get enough DLC to players to make a profit. Take Two has already taken 50 million dollars from Microsoft as an advanced payment for the production of the DLC and Patcher comments that “Take-Two will receive no cash from sales of downloadable content until each download generates approximately $35 million in sales (around 1.75 million units).”
Of course, as the announced additions to GTA IV arrive, they will probably lead to more sales of the original games, which can also boost revenue for Take Two. Still, the coming packs, which have not been thoroughly detailed by Rockstar, might not be enough to interest those gamers who played the original release and were satisfied with a conclusion to Niko's story. Take Two might be playing a dangerous game by relying on DLC.