Take-Two Post Loss - San Andreas Crucial!!! News

The crucial importance of the Grand Theft Auto franchise to the business of Take-Two Interactive was today alarmingly highlighted, with the confirmation that a larger-then-expected quarterly loss has been posted alongside dropping its sales and earnings forecasts based on disappointing sales and a relatively barren release schedule.

Take-Two reported a loss of $14.6 million for the fiscal second quarter ended April 30th compared to a profit of $14.6 million a year earlier, whilst revenue dropped to $153.4 million from $193 million.

In addition the troubled publisher was forced to reduce its forecasts for the current quarter and full year, marking the fourth time in the last six months that the company had had to do so.

Take-Two confirmed that it has delayed a number of releases from the third-quarter to the fourth to allow for extra development time, although confirmed that GTA: San Andreas is still on for its October release â?“ certainly this will be crucial to the whole business of Take-Two Interactive in 2004 and heaps pressure on RockStar North to ensure the game doesnâ??t suffer from any delays.

Certainly Take-Two need to increase the number of quality titles on its catalogue, and itâ??s suggested that the recent deal with SEGA has something to do with this.

The announcement however also confirmed that RockStar Leeds â?“ the mobile division previously known as Mobius Entertainment â?“ are currently developing two titles for the Sony PSP; given that these will be created under the RockStar label, we assume these to be high-profile titles although we cannot confirm rumours that GTA PSP is in development at this point.