Take-Two up for sale?
by Richard Mitchell 
{ Mar 19th 2007 at 10:00AM }
Take-Two, publisher of infamously violent games such as Grand Theft Auto 3 and Manhunt, has seen better days. Gamasutra reports that a group of Take-Two shareholders -- who own a combined 46% of the company -- wish to remove the current CEO, Paul Eibeler, and shake up the company's board of directors. Take-Two has postponed it's annual meeting from March 23rd to March 29th in order to review the shareholders' requests and come up with alternative solutions. Currently, the main "alternative" is an outright "sale of the Company."Take-Two recently posted a loss for 2006 and its future has been questioned for some time. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities recently downgraded the company's stock and suggested that Take-Two could eventually be bought and sold in pieces, including its 2K Sports line. With the recent shareholder activity, that prediction could be coming true.
Whether or not this could affect the development of GTAIV remains to be seen, though we're curious to see if Take-Two will now shy away from controversial titles, as its financial troubles began with the eruption of the Hot Coffee scandal.
Take-Two stocks have already gone up as a result of the rumored sale.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PictureMERollins @ Mar 19th 2007 11:10AM
ttwo ripping today, up over a buck on strong volume.
Tony @ Mar 19th 2007 10:41AM
Jack Thompson seems to think he's responsible for this, but I'm willing to bet it's a lot of other things. He's kind of just like a pesky insect by comparison.
J.Goodwin @ Mar 19th 2007 11:07AM
I have to give Pachter his props. I thought he was full of shit when he contemplated EA buying Take2's sports line, but maybe it will end up being that way.
What would be nice would be if Microsoft would buy 2K sports. These guys deserve to be working on a licensed NFL game. Part of the investment could be recouped by selling off the exclusive multiplatform MLB rights to someone else (EA, I guess).
I seriously doubt that the 2K sports guys would like to be back at EA again, and they probably had their best days, IMHO, when they were working at SEGA.
David @ Mar 19th 2007 11:36AM
If they sell, then I won't have to get GTA4 and Manhunt 2 just because of Jack Thompson...
Banjoker @ Mar 19th 2007 12:53PM
Actually, this situation is really occurring *because of* Jack Thompson. Or really, the people who listen to him. Unfortunately, TakeTwo didn't put up much of a fight around the time that Hot Coffee blew up. They denied wrongdoing, then pulled the game without saying, "This was botched." Jack and the Politicos won out in the end. It wasn't a good game with unfortunate secret content hidden away poorly on the disc (what it ACTUALLY was). No, to the media-watching public it was an *integrated* PART of the game, meant for release on the streets.
Never mind that to actually see this content on a console version of the game you would need a modified console (difficult or expensive for a 15-year old to accomplish). Or that it was really an exploited piece of functional but non-active code.
So, seriously, if you wanna drop blame for this situation, Jack and Co. were responsible for putting the heat on, but all they did was swiftboat the company. The real saboteurs were TakeTwo. If they'd properly defended themselves, the public response wouldn't have been such a backlash.