PopTop & Firaxis Merger, Take2 Earnings Report

[Fluteman]

PopTop & Firaxis Merger, Take2 Earnings Report
posted by Thunderfall at 03-08-2006 13:12 | comments: 0
Take-Two Interactive's executive vice president Cindy Buckwalter told analysts in a conference call yesterday following Take-Two's Q1 earnings report that PopTop Software's operations had been merged with Firaxis as a cost-saving measure. "One example we gave was combining the two studios of PopTop and Firaxis," she said. "We think there's a lot of synergies between the studios that we can take advantage of." PopTop is the developer of Railroad Tycoon 3 and Shattered Union.

In its earnings report, Take2 posted net loss of $29.1 million, slightly better than expected. The company incurred costs related to the acquisitions of Firaxis and Irrational Games, which the company purchased for $26.7 million and $11.8 million, respectively. In addition. Take-Two blamed the "continued retail weakness for video game software and lower retail pricing during the holiday selling season in both North America and Europe, as the industry began to transition to new hardware platforms." The publisher said that it expects to return to profitability in its fourth fiscal quarter of 2006.

The GameSpot article mentioned that, according to the latest figures from NPD Funworld, Civilization IV sold nearly 429,000 copies as of January.

I just saw this post on the front page and I was wondering if you guys think this is a good thing? How much will it affect us simple minded Civ addicts ? Any Firaxians out there care to comment?

 

[Meffy]

As experts from the Wall Street Journal to the Tierra Del Fuego Business News will attest, the most reliable way to interpret industry dope is to consult the Mystical Smoking Head of "Bob" at http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Misc/8ball/

I asked "Is Take2's acquisition of Firaxis and Irrational Games a good thing for PC gamers?"

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs replied:

 

[Loopy]

MO is close to MD, right? I mean the initials look alike, so the executives must have thought they were close to one another -- you know how higher ups think. . .

Honestly, assuming they keep the two locations, I suspect it won't have much effect at all -- more of a reorg from above that won't affect the individual studios themselves. The two "companies" will probably just be "reporting" to a common boss instead of however it was aligned before. I'd say the CFO resignation from a couple months ago should have caused more worry than this blurb.