Take Two Show Big Profit, XCOM Still Happening
It's not all doom and despair in game publishing, you know. While we've seen the very sad loss of THQ, and are surrounded by reports of others in lots of trouble, Take Two have just announced a increase in revenues of a whopping 244%. That's a milliontysquillionty pounds, and it's in a year without a GTA game to send their shares rocketing. That's impressive stuff, especially for a publisher known to struggle without Rockstar's powerhouse on the schedule, and it's thanks to Borderlands 2, NBA 2K13 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Oh, and the FPS XCOM is still a thing.
Those revenues are for the last three months of last year, compared to the same in 2011, with total revenues of a whopping $414.8m. And it translates to profits too, seeing 2011's final quarter of $14.2m rise to $70.9m in 2012. And according to my calculator, that's more. Take-Two are quick to boast of the sales for Blands 2 and Hoop Dreams XXVII, with 6 and 4.5 million copies sold respectively. However, while declaring XCOM a "successful launch" and citing it a hit, they didn't give sales figures on that title. Shame, as it would have been interesting to know.
The odd thing to come out of all this is the news that XCOM, the blankly-named first (or is it third?)-person shooter no one is sure they want, is still in development at 2K Marin. After last October's rumour that it might be switching perspectives, and last May's news of a second big slip, we've heard not a thing, until now. And now all we've heard is that work persists. I wonder if it'll have anything in common with the 20 minutes we were shown way back in August 2011?
The future looks bright to Take-Two too. This year, accepting possible major slips, they've got BioShock Infinite and the somewhat delayed GTA V in September, the former likely to do good monies, the latter inevitably going to sell more copies than Kinko's. And of course there will be NBA 2K14 as well.
It's splendid to see a publisher showing growth at the moment, especially one that's not always had the best time with organising its accounts. Let's hope we see more stories like this over the year.