Take-Two posts loss despite L.A. Noire success
Team Bondi's game ships 4 million, but company reports declining revenue and profits
Take-Two Interactive has reported declining revenue and profits for the first quarter ending June 30 2011.
The company posted revenue of $334.4 million, an 11 percent drop year-on-year drop from $375.4 million. However, it reported a net loss of $8.7 million, a significant decline from the $36.3 million net profit in the same quarter last year.
Take-Two's faltering performance is in spite of Team Bondi's L.A. Noire shipping 4 million units, and the release of Duke Nukem Forever, which CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors is, "projected to be profitable for Take-Two."
Other "strong contributors" to net revenue were Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do and NBA 2K11, which has sold 5.5 million units to date - the highest selling title in the history of 2K Sports.
Digitally delivered content represented $24.6 million of the company's net revenue - a 40 percent year-on-year increase.
Red Dead Redemption has now sold 11 million units worldwide, with the Undead Nightmare expansion pack contributing 2 million units on disc alone.
"During the first quarter, we delivered revenue and Non-GAAP profits that were in line with our expectations," Zelnick said in a statement. "Given our solid performance year-to-date and robust pipeline of upcoming new releases, we are well positioned to be profitable on a Non-GAAP basis in fiscal year 2012."
Take-Two anticipates between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in revenue for the fiscal year, with significant growth beyond that due to the release Bioshock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, and Borderlands 2 in 2013.
"We also continue to make significant investments in content for online and mobile gaming platforms," Zelnick added. "We recently released... Sid Meier's Pirates! App for the iPad, launched our first social game, Sid Meier's Civilization World, for Facebook, and we are hard at work with our partners in Asia on our three previously announced initiatives to develop online games."
"These initiatives are just the beginning of our ongoing efforts to drive growth through these emerging and exciting areas of gaming."