Responding to a question about the announcement strategy for the next GTA from Arvind Bhatia of brokerage firm Stern Agee, Zelnick made Take-Two’s stance on the subject perfectly clear.

“We’re not going to announce it. We’re not going to announce when we’re going to announce it. And we’re not going to announce the strategy about announcing it or about when we’re going to announce it either, or about the announcement strategy surrounding the announcement of the strategy. Any other questions?”

What do you suppose that means?

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said during an earnings call today that Mafia II, Red Dead Redemption, BioShock 2 and Max Payne 3 would all be shipping sometime between February and June of 2010. That’s a pretty packed schedule, but it’s not like Take-Two has much choice.

Some of those games were pushed back from originally planned 2009 releases, joining the ever crowded Q1 and Q2 of next year. Take-Two gave a looser release window for some of those games back in July. But Zelnick sounded confident that all four heavy hitters would ship in that five month window.

The piece is worth reading not only because it’s highly entertaining, but also because it does a great job of placing the last 18 months of Take-Two’s business dealings in context. Remember how last year EA wanted to buy Take-Two? And Zelnick said other companies were also interested?

If you’re keeping score, in a two year period, Mr Zelnick managed to, on three occasions, make vital statements that were within a matter of weeks proven to be either fabricated or just incredibly incompetent (or worse). Mr. Zelnick managed to resist and reject a buyout offer that was triple the company’s current share price while claiming other interested parties who never emerged. And Mr. Zelnick, meanwhile, tripled his management company’s compensation for these efforts because, after all, he does not engage in regrets and does not “take responsibility for the market.”

These statements and others strongly suggest that investors should proceed with extreme caution with any investment that involves Strauss Zelnick. His performance so far as an executive manager of a publicly traded company is one of the worst I have ever seen in my professional investment experience.

Granted, not many of you will be Take-Two shareholders, but still, that’s not the kind of picture you like to see painted about the guy (and board) responsible for publishing Grand Theft Auto and BioShock.

No Regrets, No Responsibility: Strauss Zelnick, Take Two Interactive’s Chairman [Market Rap, via GamePolitics]

Earlier this year, Electronic Arts were mad for Take-Two. Mad. Looked like a takeover was inevitable. Yet we enter 2009 with Take-Two an independent company. How the hell did that happen?

It happened partly because Take-Two spent a ton of money to keep EA’s hungry wolves at bay. How much money?

According to a Securities and Exchange Comission filing from last week, it was in the region of $11.1 million dollars, which was spent on things like a “strategic review process” and…getting boss Strauss Zelnick on the cover of Men’s Fitness.

Would you try and takeover a company whose boss had body that ripped? No, no you would not.

Take-Two reveals EA bid cost, earnings breakdown [GameSpot]

Take-Two’s financial results last quarter weren’t the greatest. Sure, sales were up, but overall, money was down, and in business terms, money is what counts. Which explains why shareholders gave Take-Two a belting today.

Following on from news that the company’s losses increased to US$15 million, shares in Take-Two took a nosedive, plunging a whopping 21%. They seemed to have closed slightly higher since the original Reuters report, but still, it’s clear the market does not approve.

Take-Two results disappoint, shares fall 21 percent [Reuters]

“Looking ahead, the biggest opportunity that we see for the industry as well as for us is downloadable content,” he said. “With Grand Theft Auto IV we will be offering downloadable episodes that gamers can buy on Xbox Live after they’ve purchased the original title. We’ve also that next week we will be releasing add on content worldwide for Bioshock. And these are our first offerings for downloadable content. We’re excited about the creative opportunity. We are very excited about the profit potential and we’ll see how these things roll out. I think the entire industry is focused in this area.”

Zelnick went on to talk about the importance of microtransactions and how multiplayer gaming could perhaps be the solution to the growing used game market. In other words, make your online mulitplayer good enough and people won’t want to sell the game back.

And then he had to ruin it all by bringing up subscriptions and not, it seems, just for the typical massively multiplayer online PC game

“The holy grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that’s focused on packaged goods that you sell once and then are occasionally resold by others with new benefit to us, and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers, giving them products that they want,” he said. “Who’s better positioned to do that than the company that has the top franchises.”

But what games could you be thinking of doing that to Strauss?

“It’s our view that you won’t be able to apply a subscription model to mid-tier titles,” he said. “The triple-a titles that people really want to have that are really must have are in the best position for this business model.”

Please tell me he’s not thinking of a subscription-based Grand Theft Auto or BioShock. Worse still, this makes two of them.

The issue also features “the future of fitness” brought to you by video games. Fitness has changed.

The magazine’s cover promises to clue Men’s Fitness readers into Zelnick’s fitness regiment, which helps Strauss stay “in the best shape of his life.” We’ll tell you straight up: the man bench presses overstock Big Daddy statues between protein shakes. True story!

Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, First Game Exec To Land A Fitness Mag Cover [Das Gamer]

In periods of high growth, like where we are now, B titles and C titles can do OK. But as soon as you get to the point where the platform penetration has reached its asymptote, then quality reins supreme. We think that if you focus on quality all along, regardless of where the market peak is, you will do better.

Explaining, perhaps, why T2’s Wii catalogue isn’t quite as robust as some other publisher’s.

E3 perspective: Q&A with Chairman Strauss Zelnick on the future of Take-Two Interactive [VentureBeat]

When we go head-to-head with ‘Brand X’ we out-rate them significantly…We outsell them when we go head-to-head. It’s sort of an unheralded achievement. This is a tough business.

On one hand, he’s right! 2K’s basketball and hockey games are normally top-shelf, and they’ve got baseball to themselves. But the “head-to-head” bit…yeah, it’s dancing around that elephant in the room. 2K don’t have an NFL game in the US. They don’t have a football game in Europe/Asia. That’s like saying my 92 Corolla can take on a Ferrari head-to-head, so long as we’re going off the number of wheels and doors and not, you know. Racing.

2K Sports unheralded against EA Sports, says Zelnick [GI.biz]

Zelnick’s answer? “Possibly”, but Zelnick said there’s nothing currently in Take-Two’s schedule that fits that bill. For his part, Zelnick is waiting to see how much staying power the trend has, and whether to define it as a “music genre” or a “rhythm genre”.

Zelnick said such considerations are “terribly important when you invest in AAA properties that you expect people to play for over 20 hours”.

Zelnick has good reason to demonstrate his restraint to his investors, of course – right now his mandate is to prove that they’re better off sticking with his guiding hand than with EA’s.