Touting the popularity of the three pieces of downloadable content released for Borderlands to date, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said today that more are on the way. More »
What do we know about Rockstar North’s PlayStation 3 exclusive title Agent? Not much, other than that Rockstar founder Sam Houser believes that Agent, set in the 1970s and full of delicious espionage, will be “the ultimate action game.” More »
November 3 is the date for BioShock 2 in North America, but Europeans will get a head start. More »
With Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars coming to the Nintendo DS exclusively, does that pave the way for a Wii release? After all, the Wii is the best selling console in North America right now and Take-Two and Rockstar Games don’t shy away from bringing mature content — Manhunt 2 and Bully, for example — to the little white wonder. And Grand Theft Auto IV is making Take-Two big bucks. Sounds like a profitable relationship on par with the perfection of chocolate and peanut butter.
Take-Two CEO Ben Feder is not a gamer, unless you’re talking Carnival Games. He and Board chairman Strauss Zelnick were brought in as turnaround experts during some very low times at Take-Two. The SEC was investigating, the company wasn’t profitable, and many people were wondering if it could weather the storms.
Now, it’s a different story — Grand Theft Auto IV and BioShock are some of the highest-rated titles on Metacritic, and Take-Two is the number three publisher in the industry. The turnaround strategy seems to be working.
Silly John Riccitiello! Big corporate gaming mergers are a thing of the past, eh? Guy didn’t get the memo. Not only did we get one of the industry’s biggest ever mergers only a few days after he said that, but now we’ve got Take-Two CEO Ben Feder saying more couplings are inevitable: I do believe that consolidation ultimately is inevitable…Video-game development is not getting any cheaper. It’s a capital-intensive business, and I don’t see that going away. That will drive some of the smaller competitors out.
Sure will! Then the new big, mean companies can go stale, break up and we can kick the cycle off all over again! Can’t think of a more entertaining way to lose a few billion investment dollars, can you? Consolidation inevitable, says Take-Two CEO [GI.biz] More »
In a conference call with investors earlier today, Take-Two execs Strauss Zelnick and Ben Feder explained the company’s decision to delay Grand Theft Auto IV for the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360. Zelnick chalked up the Q2 2008 push back to “almost strictly technological problems… not problems, but challenges.” They said they were “highly confident” that the game will ship within its new release window.
Asked whether one console in particular was the root of the problem, Zelnick diplomatically responded that “I know there have been rumours in the marketplace about frame rate and some other issues. We don’t think it’s helpful or beneficial to go into exact details of what the technological issues are. We’re pushing the envelope on both the platforms.” Crap. Now I don’t know which torch to light!
