During Take-Two’s quarterly call today, CEO Ben Feder announced that BioShock 2 will ship on November 3 for the US and on October 30 in Europe. Yay!

Press Release

This never-ending tango is finally over. Take-Two will be a lone wolf for the foreseeable future.

“Take-Two’s Board of Directors and management have a clear mandate from stockholders to maximize value,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of the Board of Take-Two. “We are strongly positioned creatively, financially and competitively to benefit from the opportunities we see in the fastest growing segment of the entertainment industry. Our management and outstanding and talented employees have maintained an unwavering focus on our products and our business through this lengthy strategic review process and we are confident in our prospects. We remain focused on maximizing value for stockholders and are executing on our business strategies in a determined manner.”

PR

Electronic Arts has “moved on,” and is no longer interested in buying Take Two Interactive, the publisher of, among of games, Grand Theft Auto IV. EA made it official sometime Sunday evening, ending the months-long back-and-forth between the two companies.

Ask any gamer, and they’d tell you Electronic Arts was simply looking to buy the Grand Theft Auto brand, which, at least in the U.S., is good as gold right now. And since the holiday shopping season is rapidly approaching, EA didn’t feel there was enough time to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is—you know, business stuff—in time to get some of the holiday GTA money. So they balked.

There are other, larger business-y concerns going on here, but I’m gonna guess that none of you care too much about that.

Besides, isn’t it an unofficial rule of the Internet that you must hate everything EA does and produces?

That’s right, folks. 2K just announced that you, PS3 owners, will get Bioshock on the 21st of October.

Headlining the list of new features is the inclusion of the Survivor difficulty mode, Trophy support and the addition of all-new Add-On Game Content. Created exclusively for the PLAYSTATION 3 system version of BioShock, the Challenge Rooms will test the mettle of new and seasoned gamers by requiring them to utilize the knowledge and skills they have learned while traversing the halls of Rapture. The first Challenge Room will be viewable by appointment at Games Convention 2008 (CCL, Level 0, A02/1 + A02/2) from August 20 to August 24 and will be available for download shortly after launch.

EA has been after Take-Two since late last year. The process went public in February with Take Two letting EA’s offer expire five times. Now, EA has finally given up on its attempts to acquire Take Two at around $25-26 per share. The deal would have been worth around $2 billion, however Take Two has held fast that the offer was too low.

It looks like EA is finally going to listen and take a second look. EA may be the world’s largest video game publisher, but having the Grand Theft Auto franchise (not to mention BioShock) would certainly be an impressive feather in its hat. Take-Two and EA expect to enter into a confidentiality agreement, formalizing the process to “evaluate strategic alternatives”.

I feel for the poor publishers, really I do. How to make the big bucks when so many games A: suck and B: cost millions to produce? Some have taken refuge on the rock of microtransactions. From a penny to a couple bucks, publishers and developers have found that sometimes people will shell out a little cash for a little something extra in-game. Nobody’s really nailed it down, yet — most models are either unprofitable, reviled by gamers, or both. But that won’t stop a 900-pound gorilla like Take-Two from giving it a shot.

I doubt anything like Bad Company’s extra weapons will ever sit well with consumers, but Guild Wars tried doing away with monthly fees in order to sell episodic content, and now they eat off solid gold plates. Take-Two says it is pursuing ad placement in its sports games; now that’s something I can deal with. Updating the ads on the Jumbotron and alongside the field doesn’t interfere with gameplay, and may even make it more realistic to some. I can’t say I’m looking forward to more in-game advertising and buyable items, but if those enable excellent games, then I won’t object.

That’s right, I’m starting the rumor here. Why not? Why not 8? If such an unique game and story can survive a trilogy, why not an octilogy?

Seriously, though, Bioshock 3 was confirmed yesterday by Take-Two as being in the works. Wasn’t so long ago we heard that number two was coming out, not to mention the movie and iPhone versions.

Ah, the birth of a franchise — and the slow death of originality.

Looks like EA’s takeover of Take-Two is on ice for the time being while the FTC does a little digging around after an information request was given to EA. But if it takes longer than 45 days for the FTC to conclude their probing then EA can go ahead with their attempted acquisition of the GTA publisher. The drama continues.

Now it’s official, folks. PS3 fanboys will have to wait until October, though. Full release after the break.
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There aren’t exactly any details at the moment to back up this claim, but the UK’s Playstation magazine, PSM3, is promising an in-depth preview along with screenshots according to CVG. No word on when the popular Take-Two title will be available for the Sony platform, but, as usual, we’ll keep a lookout for you PS3 fanboys.

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Like Microsoft with Yahoo!, EA refuses to concede defeat in its pursuit of GTA publisher Take-Two. The Redwood City, Calif.-based corp said today that it has extended its self-imposed deadline to acquire Take-Two by one month. So now we have till June 16 to read all sorts of fun stories like:

“T2: You’re undervaluing our company”

and

“EA: No we’re not”

Both EA and Take-Two are down in early morning trading, with EA losing one-quarter of a percentage and Take-Two down just over one percent, as one 10:01am EDT.

Japan, often considered the last country with a passion for the arcade experience, is starting to lose interest in coin operated entertainment. Two of the biggest arcade chains in the region have already closed the doors at over 20% of their locations, and earnings continue to plummet.

Some in the industry are blaming the latest generation of consoles for sending the 6.9 billion dollar industry into a slump. Others blame the cigarette smoke that fills Japanese arcades, the expense, or the lack of innovation. When you get right down to it, it’s really the fact that you just don’t need the arcade anymore. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love arcades. I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of both hours and dollars in them. However, it’s gotten to the point that besides the zomg-rip-off ticket/prize system and the creepy guy who stands a little bit too close while he watches you play, there just isn’t much at this point about the arcade experience you can’t get at home.

Hopefully the industry manages to come up with something that is both enticing to many and unique to the arcade environment. Otherwise, it seems that even in the arcade capital of the world, arcades might be done for.

[Via Reuters]

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EA’s self-imposed deadline vis-à-vis its proposed acquisition of Take-Two expired Friday with nary a peep from either company. EA, fond of money, offered to buy Take-Two, the publisher of GTA, back in February, with the two companies going back and forth like little children ever since. Well, mainly EA; Take Two has been fairly quiet throughout, telling AFP that any further action is “in [EA's] court.” Speaking of balls being in courts, just two hours till game seven of Cavs/Celtics. I’m excited.

So yeah, numbers. EA, remember, offered Take-Two the equivalent of $25.74. Meanwhile, Take-Two closed at $27.10 Friday—on what planet would shareholders accept a bid for less than the present value of the stock?

I’d expect EA to murmur something tomorrow.

The ongoing tango between EA and Take-Two may come to an end on Monday according to Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian. The current bid is set to expire tomorrow and T2 is citing that $25.74/share is far too low. T2’s stock closed at $26.97 yesterday and has been hovering above $26/share since mid-April.

“Expect update on TTWO bid by Monday morning,” he said. “We continue to believe that the current offer of $25.74 per share would be accretive to earnings for Electronic Arts, as well as fill several meaningful product gaps.”

Basically, I’m just glad that Uwe Boll didn’t get it. The director of Pirates of the Caribbean, among other films, has been signed on to direct the Bioshock movie, and will be working with John Logan, who wrote “Gladiator” and adapted “Sweeney Todd.”

These are good choices because the director is familiar with spectacle and effects and likely has people in place he can work with, and the writer has done successful adaptations before. Since Bioshock is already so rich and complete, with settings, dialogue, and a full-blown plot, these guys have nothing they need to make good— they only need to not suck.

Soon after GTA IV launched it was rather apparent that all the bugs weren’t squashed for the PS3 and the only solution Rockstar could muster up was to re-install. Sometime today, if it hasn’t already happened, Sony and Rockstar will release a patch to help alleviate the stress being put on the servers.

“reducing the loads on the servers at GameSpy and hopefully the completely random hangs that some users have seen.”

Can any PS3 owners in the audience check on this for us?

EA’s current offer for Take-Two is set to expire on May 16 and it’s highly unlikely that EA will up the bid like T2 thinks it should. Yes, GTA IV sold more than $500 million globally making it one of the most profitable ‘entertainment’ events. If you recall, Halo 3 sold $400 million in the first week. Take-Two’s stock closed yesterday at $26.35, which is 61 cents higher than EA’s current offer of $25.74/share.

EA’s VP of corporate communications Jeff Brown spoke with GameIndustry.biz and says the current deal is “at best it’s a 50/50 proposition.” He also states that EA is not desperate to takeover T2 and that they just want to utilize their worldwide manufacturing prowess to rule the holiday season.

“EA’s not desperate,” he explained. “Part of our model for making this thing work at USD 2 billion is the assumption that if we can get this done in time to publish their games going into the Christmas holiday in ‘08 – because EA has an unchallenged publishing capability around the world – we could without question sell more units of those games than they could if they were on their own.

“The passage of time serves to weaken the value and the certainty of this deal.”

Brown goes on to say that T2’s decision to wait till after GTA IV was launched is ‘mystifying’ since everyone and their mom knew it would sell well. All this nonsense because EA slipped on some stupid ratings poll. Oh well. Good luck to you, EA.

Stagueve sent us this super cool tribute to GTA which shows flyovers of most of the GTA:SA scenery. I’m not sure the Who music is quite right, but it is sufficiently martial to make me stiffen up a little, especially in anticipation of GTAIV and the promise of Russian mobsters Hot Coffee-ing gazelle-like ladies from the Ukraine.