Take-Two moves year-end to March 31 over "seasonality"

Take-Two said today that it's shifting its year-end from October 31 to March 31 in an effort to "align its fiscal periods more closely with the seasonality of its business and improve comparability with industry peers."

Prepare to get confused.

Financial results for the company's current, original FY, the three and twelve months ended October 31, 2010, will be issued in mid-December.

Take-Two will file a transition report for the five-month transition period of November 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010, which means it'll be able to report full-year financials running from March 2010 to March 2011.

In English, Take-Two's getting busy with some gerrymandering to make itself look better. Go Strauss.

The move also means we're highly likely to see some big, early 2011 releases that the company wants to get into the same year as RDR: we're still waiting on those Max 3 and Noir announces, right?

Speaking to GI, Screen Digest's Piers Harding-Rolls described the change as "sensible".

"Most other games publishers' financial years finish at the end of March, so aligning to that standard makes it easier for the company to strategically plan in relation to the competition," he said, adding:

"As we know the Christmas quarter is so heavily loaded for the traditional games business it also makes sense to have it in the middle of the year, rather than either front or back loading the FY," said Harding-Rolls. "So the move reflects the seasonality of the packaged business as well."

Expect everyone reporting these figures to now completely f**k it all up. The scenes will be amazing.