Microsoft Pays 50M For Exclusive GTA Content

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Microsoft Pays $50M For Exclusive GTA Content

By: Nathan Weinberg
2007-06-20

Microsoft put its money where its mouth was, paying Take-Two $50 million to secure exclusive rights to downloadable...

... episodic content for Grand Theft Auto IV. When GTA IV, coming this October 16 to Xbox 360 and PS3, was announced, it was also announced that episodic content (basically new plot, missions and content for the game after its release) would be coming to both consoled. No more, the new content will be completely exclusive to the Xbox 360, with PS3 owners missing out entirely on the two episodes coming next year.

According to Take-Two's second quarter earnings call, the episodic content will only be coming to the Xbox 360, and that there has been a $25 million payment for each episode, both deferred revenue the company has disclosed to shareholders:

Evan Wilson - Pacific Crest Securities

Thank you. And as it relates to the deferred revenue chunk associated with the episodic content on X-Box 360, you can see that $25 million of that moved into short-term deferred. Could you give us any sense of when that's going to hit the P&L? Will we see $25 million at one time and then the second 25 or will it be a slow bleed?

Lainie Goldstein

The first 25 is for the first episodic content package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of '08. That's why it moved into current because it's in the next 12 months. The second 25 will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal '08.

(via Digg)

The question is, why didn't Sony pay up as well? Did Take-Two make an offer to both, top bidder gets the exclusive, and Microsoft won, or is this something Microsoft negotiated seperately? The fact is, many people have yet to move into the current generation of game consoles, and many of them will buy an Xbox 360 or PS3 to play Grand Theft Auto. So long as the 360 version has the whole game, and the PS3 version is missing part of it in the larger scheme, there's no reason for those people to buy a PS3, and that's what makes this such a big mistake by Sony, and a real coup for Microsoft.

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