Microsoft is a likely bidder for Take-Two takeover - GTA going exclusive?

[mike_intellivision]

BengaBenga said:

 

 Please do the math: There will be about one GTA every 3 years. Let's say it sells 10 million (which I highly doubt on a single platform, not a Sony platform on which the series became big and the hype died a bit with 4). That will be around 300 million dollar in revenue, if we take a $30 per game slice for the publisher+developer (which is reasonable). The development of GTA4 costed $100 million. So on GTA your talking about a $200,- million profit. In 3 years. That's not by far enough to warrant a take-over. They won't ever be able to get their money back. Not even close

Sure TT has other franchises, but those are not so important since others make that kind of games too. Midnight Club and the Sports games all have competitors, they won't be an enormous advantage for 360 or the next Xbox.

 

It just hit me about the sports liceneses. I doubtl MLB would allow its baseball game only on the 360. It could produce a first-party game for the 360, but would lose the third-party exclusive license. The NHL and NBA have substitutes put out by EA, so those could become first-party games, but those licenses may also have some langauge in them about having to produce for all consoles. (Also, the quality of the 2K games has seem to be a bit adrift lately, but that's an issue for another time).

In other words, there are proable agreements which would make this very tough to do -- the same things that keep EA from doing making a console then doing exclusive Madden for it ...the minute they do that, they are in violation of the agreement.

 Mike from Morgantown