14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Take Two has announced that it has lost 22 million dollars during the last quarter of the year and that its losses for the whole of 2009 have reached 137.9 million, which is significantly more than in 2008. Overall revenue for Take Two stood at 968.5 million dollars, which is more than one third less than in 2008.
The big difference is that while during the previous year, Take Two benefited from the release of Gran Theft Auto IV, one of the biggest titles of the year, in 2009, the company could only put out two expansion packs, exclusive to the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, connected to the franchise. The worldwide economic downturn was also of little help to the prospects of the publisher.
Strauss Zelnick, who is the chairman of the board of Take Two, stated after the results were announced that “The fact remains that Take-Two is in a fundamentally strong position to build long term value. We have an outstanding portfolio of hit franchises based largely on internally developed and owned intellectual property, a team of extraordinarily creative and talented people, opportunities to extend our business to new media and markets, and the financial resources to support our strategies.”
The biggest games of the year for Take Two have been NBA2K10, The Lost & Damned, Carnival Games, and The Ballad of Gay Tony. More than 35% of the company’s revenue for the entire year was earned in the past three months and Strauss has singled out new intellectual property Borderlands as being one of the titles that performed very well, selling more than 2 million units worldwide and becoming one the franchises on which it will focus in the future. Developers Gearbox have already released two DLC packs for the game and a sequel might be announced shortly, coming as early as fall 2010.