Take-Two Financial Call Recap

Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick was in good spirits (and pleasantly humble) during the firms’ financial earnings report this afternoon.

The firm announced their breakout hits from fiscal year 2011 were Rockstar’s open-world western, Red Dead Redemption and the firms own NBA2K11; the former moving a staggering 8 million units and the latter moving 5 million units. RDR has also become the fifth highest rated game on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 according to Metacritic.  While refusing to reveal specific sales numbers for Rockstar/Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire (which only launced this week), Zelnick stated that T2 sees the game as “a powerful new franchise”.

T2 shares are expected to be worth $2 more in fiscal 2013 and the firms revenue on digital content is up year over year by $102 million. This of course includes content like GTA IV‘s Episodes From Liberty City and RDR‘s various add-ons, including Undead Nightmare. The firm says they’ll let Rockstar announce any L.A. Noire DLC.

Looking to the future, the firm has several projects in development from console games to MMOs to social games. They have extended their employment deal with Rockstar’s lead talent (namely the Houser brothers).

Yager’s Spec-Ops: The Line has been pushed back (again) into fiscal-year 2013, but Irrational Games’ BioShock: Infinite is still on for “calender year 2012″.

Asked by an analyst during the call’s Q&A, Zelnick confirmed both Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 and Agent are still in development. Even after being plied several times for specifics, Zelnick still refused to give out L.A. Noire‘s first-week sales numbers (which are rumored to sit at 1.6m in comparison to RDR’s 1.9m launch week numbers the same week, last year), citing not wanting to make a possibly overly-positive projection for the title’s long-term performance. He did, however, appear to have much praise and appreciation for both Rockstar and Team Bondi (having visited the developer last year). T2 expects the game to be a top Game of The Year contender for the 2011 awards season. All in all, the franchise looks to have a very bright future.