Take-Two suffers $8.2 million quarterly loss

For the past few weeks, Take-Two Interactive enjoyed having one of the best-selling console games in the country. Both the Playstation 2 and Xbox versions of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, published by Take-Two subsidiary Rockstar Games, have been atop the console charts since the game's release April 11, and both editions only slowed down a little in May.

However, having a top game halfway through April couldn't save Take-Two's overall quarterly earnings. The Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas publisher took an $8.2 million loss during the second quarter of its 2005 financial year, which ended on April 30, 2005. However, the deficit was 4 percent less than the loss Take-Two suffered in its Q2 FY04.

Take-Two's loss came in spite of net sales increasing 45 percent to $222.1 million, compared to $153.4 million during the same quarter in 2004. The shortfall also came after a gangbusters first financial quarter, during which Take-Two saw $502.5 million in sales and $55.2 million in profit.

For the six months before April 30, 2005, Take-Two's net income rose 37 percent to $724.5 million, nearly $200 million more than the same period during the previous year, courtesy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The company's six-month net income was $47.1 million, over twice the $17.2 million in the same six months in 2004.

Besides announcing it had somewhat stanched the flow of red ink, Take-Two today also said that three games would be arriving later in the year. First, it was further confirmed that Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City for the PSP would not ship until September. While the GTA PSP's release date had first been set during E3 two weeks ago, the company also revealed that two other games--Top Spin for the PlayStation 2 and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (PC, PS2, Xbox)--would now not hit store shelves until the August-October quarter, later than previously expected.