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?
The month, June 2008, Metal Gear Solid 4 takes number one on the NDP figures with 774,600 individual units (over 1-million if you include bundles), in July… they didn’t even make the top ten figure. What the heck?
@EA selling virtual car for $100:
I was initially shocked, but then I remembered previous examples: Battlefield Heroes rents virtual weapons for real money, WoW has players selling in-game gold for real world currency. Heck, TF2 has a whole economy based on virtual goods.
All these examples point out that there is a lot of spare cash, and enough people having it are willing to spend it on whatever they feel it is valuable.
Hey, Jordan, I proposed a similar measure (tax sales from virtual goods) in episode 240 😛
@Modern Warfare 3 beats Avatar:
Well, I wouldn’t say that the gaming industry beats the movie industry, just based on one game. I think we (or at least I) will need to check more numbers.
One thing to be noted though: Activision made that money, not the original dev team (they left Activision after MW2). So, I’m sorry to say that, but the devs just found out how easy they can be replaced, without major losses from the company …
@Move to next-gen is “terrifying“:
… really? PCs already are next-gen, they always were. And the XBox is always very close to the PC, because of the hardware and software similarities. Terrifying? Yeah, but only for Sony and Nintendo, because they failed to understand the importance of a good platform/framework/API.
@Man sues Sony for ToS update forbidding suing:
Ha ha ha! 😀
Well, you can always choose to not use the console … As for Microsoft doing the same thing (forbidding class action suits), shame on them.
As for the size of DynamicJul’s country, yeah, there are a lot of small countries: Monaco, Lichtenstein, Faroe Islands, San Marino …
@QOTW: a game in the STALKER universe.
:)) so apparently there will be no show until mid January … anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
My country is the actually the small island of Malta.
@Naughty Dog: Move to next-gen is “terrifying“: I think that if the PS4 is released in the near future, it will have a launch just as hard as the PS3. Just like Naughty Dog, I think that developers have only just started using the PS3 to its extent and anything new will definitely be a challenge.
@Nintendo only showing E3 Wii U demos at CES 2012: I don’t think this really means anything. I think that they’re just holding everything for E3. First of all, I think that E3 is the most known and the hype that would come from releasing all the information in a few hours would be much greater rather than if they released it over a couple of months.
@QOTW: As far as games that have already been announced, it’s Mass Effect 3. I have already pre-ordered it and hope that it will get me through my GCSEs without me playing any other games.
@Next-gen Hardware:
Maybe they’re skipping a few numbers and working on the PS9 from the PS2 days (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRJXLu3YVpM).
@Paul: Congrats on the move and reuniting with your partner. It’s great to hear queer perspectives on gaming, and I think a lot more people should be coming out as gaymers. 😛
@ ea selling virtual car for $100
I’m not surprised coz most companies do this ,i mean they won’t lost anything physically and its just virtual
@ modern warfare 3 beats avatar
This doesn’t prove that gaming industry is better than the movie industry ,its just one game
@ qotw
I’m most interested in the upcoming transformers game
I wish my classmates know what’s the difference between a flashgame and a title coz they keep teasing that I don’t know games but they’re wrong ,wth they think godswar is a cool game and they compare it to world of warcraft wtf ,btw godswar is a Facebook game mmorpg
@ ea selling virtual car for $100
Yeah virtual items purchases can get real crazy, specially in Online worlds with micro transactions.
About the Entropia Universe space resort the article refers to, it matters to say that those real estates are sources of income. Other players pay a % of their revenue generated on the asteroid. The estate owner could also sell shops and apartments to other players. “Neverdie” announced a few years back that just 6 months after the purchase of the asteroid, he and his investors were already on profit. Personally I felt worse when I saw people spending 30k $ in a handgun.
@ Next-gen and Naughty Dog its not the first time a developer comes out and expresses concerns about how fast we’re moving to a possible next generation of consoles. I think it was last year that Ubisoft said that every time a new generation of consoles comes out, games get more expensive to develop.
Game developers and publishers would like a few more years in this generation before bumping up the investment.
@Star Wars Old Republic
Nice to see its going well for them, but this game was a huge disappointment for me. I was kinda hoping for a massive sandbox mmo like SWG but ah well, just another game that doesn’t really bring anything new other than the conversations with multiplayer.
@Question of the week
Since Skyrim is already here, I’ll go and say Darkfall 2.0 if it ever gets released. Darkfall is a mmorpg sandbox-ish game, with full open pvp and full loot. It is a brutal game where you never feel safe, where you loose whatever you were carrying if someone kills and loots you. One of those games that tried to follow the steps of Ultima Online.