Tag Archives: take-two q3 2009 financials

Take-Two pretty much defined the term “tough comps” last night, soldiering down to over $50 million losses in the last quarter from a sexy $50 million profit this time a year ago. There’s only one GTA IV, clearly.

Here’s all the news from the firm’s Q3 earnings call last night. We do this because we love you. And we want to have sex with you the wrong way. And we definitely won’t respect you in the morning.

• Take-Two Q3 2009 financials show $55.5 million loss
• Take-Two Q3 financials: Big four delays are still on track for first half of 2010
• Houser – Gay Tony must hit discs to get to “more people”
• Take-Two: Natal dev kits “embedded in just about all of our studios”
• Take-Two on GTA V’s announcement – quote of the century
• All Take-Two games “need to have a download component”
• LA Noire is “exciting” and “innovative,” says Feder
• Take-Two Q3 earnings call – the full transcript

Seeking Alpha’s posted up the entire transcript from last night’s Take-Two third quarter financials call, and lots of fun it was too.

Strauss and Ben waffled on for 20 hours about iPhone. There was tons of other stuff too, thankfully.

Knock yourselves out.

Not only is LA Noire not dead, but it’s also “innovative”. Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said so in the publisher’s Q3 earnings call last night.

“It’s in development,” he said in response to a direct question on the game’s status from Janco’s Mike Hickey.

“Nothing to announce today. When we have more to announce we will announce it. We’re continuing to develop it. We think it’s pretty exciting and innovative, and when we have more to share we’ll share it.”

Interestingly, when Hickey asked if Rockstar San Diego was working on the game, Feder emphatically answered:

“It’s handled by Rockstar.”

Wasn’t Rockstar’s Australian team doing this?

During the Take-Two Q3 2009 financial call tonight, company CEO Ben Feder told investors that while retail is important, downloadable content is a main component to the company’s game releases.

“It’s clear that retail is the channel for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, there is a download component to a lot of our games, and there’ll continue to be a download component,” said Feder. “The games live online and they live at retail: they live at both. Whether that’s download first, retail second, or retail first download second, or some combination of the two, that’s an area that we’re going to experiment with because we’re innovating in that area.

“And it’s likely to change from title to title, but everything is going to have a download component, needs to have a download component. It’s one of the key lessons [of The Lost and Damned]. We’ll see how GTA in the retail SKU performs; we’re actually pretty optimistic about it.”

What that means is that all Take-Two games will have downloadable content of sorts from here on out. Granted this has been said before by the company, still, it’s nice to hear.

Guess what? Take-Two really doesn’t want to talk about GTA V. This is what Strauss Zelnick said tonight to an analyst in its Q3 earnings call when asked to give an indication as to when the next title in gaming’s greatest franchise is going to be announced:

“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?”

Big Strauss is a card, non?

Take-Two CEO Ben Feder told investors during the company’s Q3 2009 financial call today that motion sensor kits are currently in-house and in the hands of its development teams right now.

“Natal motion-sensors – yes we have dev kits, yes we’re working on them,” he said. “Obviously, we can’t comment on games we haven’t announced. But those dev kits are embedded in all of our studios, or just about all of our studios, and everybody’s working with them to try to figure out new ways in which we can innovate and create the kind of content that this company is famous for.

“So yes, we’re working on it.”

At least we think it was Feder that said that. There were too many people adding their input on the question at the time. We will have another listen just to be sure.

Anyway, later on during the call, it was clarified that Sony’s motion controller was currently in-house as well.

So that’s good to know.

Rockstar’s Dan Houser reckons GTA IV’s DLC episodes have to come to discs because digital distribution for larger items just isn’t there yet.

“I know, as a consumer, I’m more comfortable buying songs, which are almost like playing a jukebox, than I am buying movies as purely digital items,” Houser told USA Today.

“We all feel that way, so we can surely get more people to experience it if we put it on a disc.”

However you end up consuming Gay Tony, it looks as though it’s going to be awesome. Houser expanded on the plot.

“Luis has to do some of these favors and see if he can get them out of debt,” he added.

“The situation with Tony’s drug problems gets worse and worse, and Tony gets more and more out of control.”

Sounds fun. The episode’s first movie was released tonight. It’s awesome. The content releases on October 29.

Take-Two has stated during it’s Q3 2009 financial call to investors that the “big four” that have been delayed into 2010 are still on track for the first half of the year.

While representative refused to give an exact date for each, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, BioShock 2 and Max Payne 3 will be released in a four month window.

It was also mentioned that each game is a stand alone product, and not a port created for each platform.

The call is still ongoing, and we will update you as it continues.

Take-Two’s shown a Q3 net revenue of $138.6 million compared to $433.8 for the same time as last year.

Big drop there, but you have to remember that GTA IV came out in Q3 last year.

Net loss for the third quarter was $55.5 million or $0.72 per share, compared to net income of $51.8 million or $0.67 per share in the third quarter of fiscal 2008.

For the nine months ended July 31, 2009, net revenue was $625.1 million, compared to $1,214.1 million for the same period a year ago, which included the release and strong post-launch performance of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Net loss for the first nine months of fiscal 2009 was $115.9 million or $1.51 per share, compared to net income of $112.1 million or $1.48 for the 2008 period.

The full thing is through the break, and the conference call to investors is ongoing.

We will keep you updated on any announcements.

More »