Like a washed up superstar, Grand Theft Auto IV continues to drop in NPD figures. This Axl Rose of video games came on strong and sputtered out into oblivion with barely a notice, leaving the spotlight and all hype behind it. This drastic fall may hurt any negotiations “behind closed doors” with Electronic Arts and their constant attempts to take over Take-Two.
Prior to the release of GTA IV we, in our gaming podcast, predicted a huge launch would up the anti against the bids on Take-Two from EA but things didn’t work out exactly as we expected. Although the game has sold 8.5-million units, it might not add any new bargaining power to the back door negotiations.
A game company is only as good as their games. A hit title which dies out quick helps financially guide the future of the company; technically the future isn’t so bright. With the title quickly falling off the top game sales charts we may never see it hit record sales figures to match that of smaller titles. Having one hot title every four years that “breaks records” for a week isn’t a strong weapon against a low bid from a larger publisher.
While EA may not have any record setting “one week” sales titles yet, they do have a consistently strong set of titles which stick on the charts for months with newer titles arriving to take their spot when they fade. The same can be said for a few other notable publishers, Activision and Ubisoft. To survive in the hot game industry, especially with market downturns, one must have a cycle of great games to publish throughout the year consistently year-over-year in order to provide evidence of their financial stability.
Assuming the bid won’t raise for GTA IV, where does that leave Take-Two? Perhaps Take-Two is better off under the umbrella of Electronic Arts after all. The waters are getting more hostile in the industry as companies compete for gamers attention with 100-million dollar titles and casual games and game consoles (read: Wii) start to build a whole new none-gamer-style momentum.
Is Take-Two better off under the EA brand?
Hi guys.
As usual: thanks a lot for your effort and work to bring us this and every other episode 🙂
I am not able to say so much to this episode because I don’t know all the games you talked about ?
I played a lot of Magic Arena as usual, some WoW and since it is released some days ago: Itorah, a hand drawn Meteoidvania Indie Game.
But some things I can say sth about:
Dorfromantik: I own this game and it is really relaxing and I can play it over and over again. You can’t loose in some way so it’s not frustrating 🙂 I really recommend it 🙂
PS5: I am happy i gut a PS5 some months ago, but sadly I did not play so much with it. I only played some hours God of War with the 4K HDR Upgrade.
Gizmondo: I owned this console and yes it had a SIM card in it 🙂 I never played with it, it was only a nice upgrade for my retro gaming collection. I sold
It for way to much money in my opinion, but because of the fact that it is rare and I owned the packaging box, manual and all that stuff it was a nice catch when I bought it 🙂
Super Mario Guide: why is this a topic? Such an old game and now it is a topic? ? but I think some collectors or hardcore fans are really interested in this thing. The game is still played a lot by speedrunners, afaik?
Switch Topic: I really love my switch. It doesn’t need any upgrade, because the games for this console should not be such graphical monster games in 4K HDR… I like it for the simplicity. You can play the games even if you don’t have that much time, they are easy to understand, easy to solve or finish and you can can get back to them after weeks and are in to it after some minutes. No need for an epic storyline which is hard to follow. But for sure that’s my opinion and I understand every person who wants complex storys, hardcore mode and complicated as hell 🙂
Sorry for late commenting, but I wanted to drop the lines to make you know, that I am still a listener and follower even if I don’t comment every episode 🙂
Guys, that’s all from my side. Please keep on the good work, stay healthy and enjoy whatever you do 🙂
Greetings from Germany,
Ralf