Rockstar's latest sells in 3 million copies in first week as 2K Marin shooter delayed; Take-Two posts $107.7 million loss for fiscal year.
Max Payne 3 shipped 3 million copies at launch, parent publisher Take-Two Interactive announced today as part of its latest financial report. The game shipped last week to a warm critical reception, with one analyst projecting it will go on to sell 4 million copies during its lifetime.
Elsewhere in its report, Take-Two revealed that 2K Marin's new first-person shooter XCOM has been delayed yet again. The shooter is now scheduled to arrive between April 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014. The game was originally expected to ship on March 6, 2012, before being pushed to a release by March 31, 2013. No reason was provided for the delay.
The PC version of Max Payne 3 also suffered a delay, albeit a short one. That version is now scheduled to arrive on June 1 worldwide. Previously, it was expected to hit North America on May 29.
Take-Two also parsed new shipment statistics for some of its major properties. The company said franchise shipment figures for Borderlands have reached 6 million units, while the BioShock series now stands at 9.5 million copies.
As for Take-Two's actual earnings, the company reported net revenue of $825.8 million for the period ended March 31, 2012, down 27 percent from the $1.13 billion recorded for the year prior. The company attributed the downturn to tough comparisons against the year prior, which benefited from the success of Red Dead Redemption. The firm took a loss of $107.7 million for the year, compared to a profit of $53.8 million a year ago.
Take-Two specifically called out L.A. Noire, NBA 2K12, Grand Theft Auto catalog titles, Duke Nukem Forever, and Red Dead Redemption as the "strongest contributors" to the company's net revenue for fiscal 2012. Digital content made up $106.6 million, or 13 percent of total revenue for the period, up four percentage points from the 9 percent notched a year ago. The company's digital business was spurred by offerings for GTA titles, Red Dead Redemption, Sid Meier's Civilization games, Borderlands, and L.A. Noire.
The company's fiscal fourth quarter 2012 period was also down, with Take-Two recording revenue of $148.1 million, down from $182.3 million. Again, the firm said the year prior had benefited from the postlaunch performance of Red Dead Redemption. Take-Two suffered a loss of $66 million for the period.
Looking to its current fiscal year, Take-Two expects to notch $225 million to $275 million for the company's first quarter ending June 30, 2012, and $1.75 billion to $1.85 billion for the full fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
@buccomatic I disagree; between the 10 hour campaign spanning multiple difficulties and the content rich multiplayer, this game presents plenty of playtime. Would you have preferred an extra 5 hours on-top of the already meaty single-player?
@buccomatic By those standards, you are going to leave a lot of incredible titles out of your realm of experience. Cheap cost does not a great title make. Then again, we all have our different opinions of what makes a game great. However, to antecedently deny a game based upon the publisher or price is fallacious, don't you think? All games should be judged by playing and, ideally, completing them. Publishers will continue to manipulate costs for profit, but developers have the unfortunate reality of being tied to these publishers. While we, as gamers, may not agree with many of the corporate philosophies being expounded by the publishing side of the deal, we shouldn't punish these amazing developers by ignoring their work. There has to be a better way...
oh !! that XCOM was delayed!!! goodness I thought the article was talking about the remake (enemy unknown) yeah I dont care about the one that is a first person shooter.
How can such a huge selling and great game making company make such losses? It's either very badly run or too many very high up staff members are being paid far too much money. It must be terrible for almost every other company if even Take 2 make losses?
@hsl77 All it takes is a few clunkers (i.e., every 2K sports game aside from the NBA series) to drag everything down. Plus, it's not like the games they are making are cheap. Max Payne 3 was in development for an incredibly long time, and other games have also had long development periods, which costs a lot.
I am somewhat glad for the X-Com delay. I have been playing that game regularly since it's release. I even play it today. I am worried that they will change it too much and it will suck. They say that the people making the game are all fans of the original so hopefully they realized that the product they were about to ship wouldn't live up to the original and decided to scrap it. The old one still holds up today so I can wait.
Wonderful!!!!!!!!!!Delays,Delays,Delays & more Delays...........Wht the hell happened 2 them guys??????????Better tht never release the title..............
I'm looking forward to Max Payne 3 on PC. With games that have lots of DLC coming I usually wait for the GOTY version, but as the DLC is only multiplayer, I'm not interested in that at all. So I'll be getting MP3 sooner.
As for the XCOM shooter, it's obviously been delayed to avoid confusion, and not have two XCOM games hitting the shelves this year. Judging by some comments here, people are *already* confused. There are 2 XCOM games in development - one is a shooter (meh), the other is a proper turn-based strategy game more faithful to the series (yay).
Personally I'm FAR more interested in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the strategy game from Firaxis. That game's looking great so far.
"Take-Two specifically called out L.A. Noire, NBA 2K12, Grand Theft Auto catalog titles, Duke Nukem Forever, and Red Dead Redemption as the 'strongest contributors' to the company's net revenue" Lol, Duke Nukem Forever actually sold enough to be on that list. I wonder how many people liked the game and how many that got disappointed after they bought it. That's a moot point for Take-Two anyway, they're just glad if it sold good enough.
I'd say the DNF was pure nostalgia...I mean, hell I bought DNF despite the ratings because I've been a longtime fan :P. Trust me, if people love a franchise enough, they'll buy it regardless of ratings (like I did with RE: Operation Raccoon City...which seriously, is not that bad a game) :P.
xcom what happen last 12 hours .And for max pynce 3 did it deviled to me it did better than last two. its a shame they didnt do max pynce hd collection :[
They could have made a big chunk of change releasing RDR for the PC. Not enough to make up the loss for the year but still enough to make the loss that much smaller. I'm sure it wouldn't have cost that much to port it to PC, considering all the other developers who do that these days.
I agree RDR would of been great on the PC. This was a title I so hoping for. After playing GUN, the wild west genre or games kinda pulled me in. I suppose we can put this game in the "hope" pile along with Gears of War 2, 3, XIII (2) and other that just left us hanging with "no love" for the PC gamers.
Meh not worth buying right away. I was gonna buy this till they decided to make a multiplayer dlc 2 weeks before the game even released. I'm just gonna wait till the GOTY/ultimate edition comes out
Rockstar's latest sells in 3 million copies in first week
I never rush out and buy a new game. Risks are for fools. I wait until all of the idiots who bought the untested version have had their say, the game has been fixed satisfactorily, then buy.
Could I suggest the YOU read the heading to the article again?
My quote was directly from that heading.and it states "....sells 3 million copies in first week..." The following paragraph heading states "......Max Payne 3 shipped 3 million copies at launch,...".
Not an apology for an article that states two different things, but I like your attitude. You quoted the title, I was referencing the article. Let's just say we both noticed something and commented on it before people think that this is a real argument.
I read the heading, and the title. If they only shipped 3 mil, and they already sold that many, shouldn't I have seen at least one store without any copies this past week?
dont cunfuse the FPS with the genius turn based strategy coming out in October by the civlization company firaxis..I so hope that Sid Meier has a hand in it. I know the Civilization 5 guy got fired straight after CIV 5 was made. Hopefully its the civilization 4 team working on it.
Sterne Agee industry watcher believes Rockstar's new shooter will go quadruple platinum during lifetime; Take-Two fiscal 2013 product slate "best-ever."
Assassin's Creed and Far Cry publisher says its network of 26 studios and over 7,000 developers will allow company to ship major franchises more regularly. Full Story
