Although BioShock has opened to critical acclaim, Take-Two still has its problems by delaying GTA IV till next year and raising eyebrows about the revised edition of Manhunt 2, so Take-Two Interactive may not be out of the boiling cauldron yet.
Take-Two has hit a roller coaster of events this year but in spite of this, financial analyst Michael Pachter has raised his financial estimates for the publisher, but advised that Take-Two is still in need of repair.
He first points to 2K Sports’ line of various sports games and how they’re losing money. When a game like BioShock comes out and generates big income, most of it will be immediately used to recoup the losses for the company’s losses.
Pachter said, "Notwithstanding the likely success of such games as BioShock, the company doesn’t appear to be able to make much money from its everyday business. And as we have said repeatedly, we expect no meaningful change to the business so long as the company continues to produce money-losing sports games."
He moved his revenue estimate for Take Two’s fourth fiscal quarter up to $300 million, with expected sales of BioShock between 1.3 million to 2 million copies. He also factored in initial sales of Manhunt 2 at 500,000 copies, but lowered the expectations of a number of other titles. Games like All-Pro Football 2K8, MLB 2K7 and The Bigs, all of which has only sold 1.5 million copies together.
Despite all of these letdowns, Pachter dismissed the speculation that Take-Two might be eventually acquired. While this has been rumored for quite a few months already, he said that companies like EA would not immediately benefit from Take-Two’s diverse library of games.
Also EA’s acquisitions have always been with smaller companies, such as DICE, Mythic and Criterion, who were all acquired under $100 million each.
[Via GameSpot]
