14 DAY TRIAL // The Grand Theft Auto franchise has been one of the biggest series of sandbox games out there. As such, along with its popularity has come the attention of a lot of gaming analysts and experts, who have ventured in a lot of predictions over the long history of the series.
Now, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter has crunched some numbers, looked a bit into his crystal ball and has made some very interesting predictions about the future of the Rockstar developed franchise. First on the agenda has been the recently-released The Lost and Damned DLC, which, according to the developer and Microsoft, has broken all Xbox Live download records.
Pachter believes that, despite no official numbers being released, the DLC episode has been downloaded 1 million times and will see about 2 million downloads in total until October, when the second DLC episode will make its appearance. Some simple math will lead to a profit of over 40 million dollars for Rockstar, which isn't something to let slip, especially in these troubled economic times that have taken their toll on its owner, Take Two Interactive.
But the most interesting part of Pachter's predictions has been that he claims that the next Grand Theft Auto title will appear around November 2010, as Take Two is keen on rushing the development cycle in order to make as big a profit as possible until the new contract with the company expires in 2012. In light of these forecasts, Pachter has it that now is the best time to buy some stocks from the publisher, as the Wall Street exchange markets price them at 6 dollars a piece.
Now, we've already seen a few rumors about the next GTA title, but Rockstar is quiet on any new projects, declining to make any comments or talk about speculations. Hopefully, we might get to see some details as time goes by, but don't forget that these are just predictions and you should be saving your money until the official word is released.