Q3 profits of $14m for Take-Two, sales of $236m
Delay of Max Payne 3 cuts profit projection by between $170-$230m
Take-Two turned a profit of just over $14 million in the quarter ending December 31, 2011 - largely thanks to strong sales of its only major release in the period, NBA 2K12.
A busier release period in the same quarter in 2010, combined with stronger catalogue sales, netted a profit of $40.86 million.
Sales for the third quarter totalled $236.33 million, down from $334.29 for the same quarter in the year previous.
In the first nine months of the company's current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2012, Take-Two has lost just shy of $42 million, in the same period in the previous year, the company netted a profit of $76.2 million. For the nine month period of the fiscal year to date, revenues were $677.7 million, down from $954.6 million the year before.
Given the lack of releases in the quarter, these figures were largely in line with the company's projections. Alongside NBA 2K12's sales, LA Noire continued strong catalogue sales, as did the Complete Edition of Red Dead Redemption, and the company confirmed that the Western franchise has now topped 13 million sales in total.
Perhaps the biggest shift in the report was the revision of full year projections. Because the release of Max Payne 3 has now shifted into fiscal 2013, both sales and profit expectations were downgraded significantly.
Previously, the board has expected a full-year sales total of $1-1.1 billion for fiscal 2012. That figure has now been changed to between $790 million and $840 million, suggesting that the company expected to make up a reasonable amount of that shortfall.
In the first three quarters of the fiscal year so far, Take-Two has spent $147.3 million on development and licencing costs. Major title currently in development at the publisher are The Darkness 2, Borderlands 2, Spec Ops: The Line, Bioshock: Infinite, Borderlands 2, XCOM, Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V.
Digital sales accounted for eleven per cent of the company's total for the quarter, largely driven by the iOS and Android versions of Grand Theft Auto III - 10th Anniversary Edition.