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Grand Theft Auto IV: Take-Two's 'Roman Candle' Goes Off

Posted Apr 29, 2008 10:21am EDT by Aaron Task in Investing, Gaming, Venture Capital, M and A, IPOs

This week's most hotly anticipated event has arrived -- and it's not the Fed meeting, Microsoft-Yahoo, jobs data, or even the 3G iPhone. It's Grand Theft Auto IV!

The latest edition of the blockbuster videogame series hit the stores at midnight and the early reviews have been positive. Analysts are forecasting GTA IV will be among the best-selling games in history, with week one sales estimated between $360 million and $400 million. Analysts estimate 5.8 million units will be sold in week one, and ultimately hit 13 million units in the next 12 months.

In resisting Electronic Arts' unsolicited takeover offer, Take-Two cited the pending release of GTA IV and Take-Two shares have risen above EA's $25.74 offer.

But now that GTA IV is here, with accompanying fanfare, the videogame maker may be hard-pressed to convince Wall Street why they shouldn't "buy the rumor and sell the news."

10 Comments

realdan8899
realdan8899 - Tuesday April 29, 2008 10:53AM EDT

will have to wait for the PC one :-

paulyqd
paulyqd - Tuesday April 29, 2008 10:56AM EDT

invest invest invest

jazminrivers27
jazminrivers27 - Tuesday April 29, 2008 11:01AM EDT

1t5 ok y@ d199

dklongbow
dklongbow - Tuesday April 29, 2008 11:37AM EDT

Take-Two should sell now.

Yahoo! Finance User
Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday April 29, 2008 12:01PM EDT

why do we not consider the moral value as opposed to the stock value

you
Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday April 29, 2008 12:20PM EDT

Turn it into a film and make some more money. Ah, its too violence for the big screen. School kids might get some bad ideas of shooting people and stealing cars. They can spend hours pratice shooting the cops on their X-boxes or Playstations instead. Well, its just a game after all.

you
flip1711 - Wednesday April 30, 2008 07:03AM EDT

Um, no. It's not a movie because that wouldn't work so well and Dan Houser hates video game movies. And yes it is a game, but I doubt you ever played it because you can't spell xbox, sound like a dinosaur, and generally don't pay any attention to research about video games.

you
athensgamer - Wednesday April 30, 2008 08:32AM EDT

He he.....i've already changed ERTS to TTWO...... i won't sell below 30$ !!!

you
Michael H - Wednesday April 30, 2008 09:46PM EDT

People who think games lead to violence really need to pull their head out of their ass...if games lead to violence, almost an entire generation would be murderous criminals by now.

you
Neptune-Beach-FL - Thursday May 01, 2008 11:34AM EDT

NOTE: PS3 & XBOX versions are reporting errors with playability on the GTA IV disk. I am one of those consumers, and have not rec'd a reply from Rockstar/TakeTwo as to whether this will be fixed via patch. Because it's affecting some units on both platforms, no one seems to be able to nail down the cause of the glitch {game freezes, locks system} this has seemingly been kept relatively quiet. www.ktaku.com and 1up.com being the only 'official' media reports of the glitch. The Playstation forums are getting many hits, and I think this will affect share prices [at least temporarily] whhen the news goes mainstream.

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