Take Two/Rockstar Links With Sega Sports, Reveals Upcoming Roster

Thanks to GameGossip for its round-up of Take Two/Rockstar Games' recently announced financial results, as the publisher reported "net loss for the quarter [of] $14.6 million", but made significant announcements in the statement including "letter of intent entered into between Take-Two and Sega Corporation to co-publish and exclusively distribute on a worldwide basis Sega's ESPN Videogames." Elsewhere, it was noted that "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the PlayStation 2 has sold approximately 300,000 copies as of the week ending May 30, 2004, making it one of the most successful debuts of a Western video game in Japan", and some less well-known forthcoming titles from various Take Two divisions include "Spy vs. Spy for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox [and] Ford Mustang: 40th Anniversary Edition for the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox."

Comments

Sega + Rockstar

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop at just ESPN sports franchises? I'd like to see a cooperative Rockstar/Sega Sammy game developed...

Manhunt 2: The Continued Adventures of Alex Kidd
Vectorman: Revolver
Grand Theft Auto X, feat. Rez Trance Vibrator

Re:Sega + Rockstar

[AvantLegion]

>> Grand Theft Auto X, feat. Rez Trance Vibrator

Wouldn't that be "Grand Theft Autoerotic"?

Re:Sega + Rockstar

[zonker]

Grant Theft Ulala: Cosmic Dance Attack?

Man,

[Anonymous Coward]

the gaming market sucks. Even companies with hugely popular stuff is bleeding red all over the place.

Reminds me why I never went into the biz.

suck

[cultobill]

(fp?)

I'm surprised by this, as the GTA series did/does really well. The more recent games from Rockstar (Manhunt) are less impressive, but I thought they still did well enough to keep the company in the black.

Re:suck

[cultobill]

I failed it.

Re:suck

[Neo-Rio-101]

Over in Japan there are loads of billboards with "Vice City Out Now on Playstation 2".
I've had that game on PC for ages... but it's only recently got out here.

I don't know about "Manhunt", but from what I hear it's very similar to Eidos' "Hitman" series in the gameplay department.... the only major differences seem to be loads more gore, the ability to throw heads you cut off around to distract people, the ability to fight hand-to hand, and hide in shadows.

Oh, and the scenes where you have to drop fridges on people.

Re:suck

[Slyght]

No, it's not too much like Hitman, except for the stealth element. In Manhunt, your goal is basically to get to Point A to Point B without getting killed, which involves killing others along the way. Hitman is more "Kill Person A, Kill Person B, Get Out". So basically, the goal in Manhunt is to survive, the goal in Hitman is to assassinate.

Once you get past the novelty of Manhunt's gore, there really isn't much to it. There are much better stealth-action games on the market.

Rockstar + EA Sports?

[Neo-Rio-101]

Maybe we'd see titles like: "NHL hockey fights 2005" "Mike Tyson pitfighter 2006" "Ben Johnson's Superhuman Decathlon" "Muttiah Muralitharan's no-ball cricket 2005" I was going to say "Handball Maradonna" would be a good game, but apparently that game was already made on the Commodore 64.

Game industry has no balls

[superpulpsicle]

The gaming industry fears taking any type of chance. Every damn game is surrounded by a cazillion dollar budget. For every product that fails to do decent the company sinks to hell. So every damn game is either a clone of a successful one or a sequel to a previous generation game.

People who bitch about manhunt, I thought that actually seem original enough to buy. The industry has no room for anything but sports games now.

Re:Game industry has no balls

[psyco484]

It's not about not having balls, though I agree game innovation has been slowing creatively. There have been a lot of sequels, a lot of movie games (which rarely are worth looking at), and a lot of the same stuff with prettier graphics. But guess what, people keep buying them, even if they're not new ideas. This is not a bad thing.

Take a look at this case from a business perspective, it can be applied to more than just this example: GTA3 sold incredibly well. It was a new idea in that the previous GTA titles weren't very 3d, and were no where near as extensive (that and there weren't any other games like it available at the time, now we have spin offs like "True Crime"). This did so well the company creates GTA:VC, basically an expanded GTA3 with flashier graphics and a bigger game in general. GTA3 made the company a ton of money. GTA:VC made the company even more money. The logical thing for this company to do would be to create another GTA, as the past indicates doing so will make them a lot of money.

Companies that produce a sub-par game sink because, as you said, they have enormous budgets. Take a look at the classic example of Daikatana. Bad marketing and bad management (not to mention a bad game) killed an innovative idea and shut a company down. I bought the game because at that point I believed Romero could make an excellent game, and the idea hadn't been done before, it sounded interesting and worth a shot. Turns out the innovation was done horribly and it did terribly as a result.

It's not that these companies have no balls, it's that they exist to make a profit, and the best way to do that isn't always in creating something entirely new. New things still come out because these sequels and clones need to come from somewhere. If you sincerely feel games are not original enough to be worth playing any more, don't buy them and the companies will get the hint. But if a company is selling record copies of a title that happens to be a sequel, you can't expect them to want to change what they're doing.

New lineup

[Anonymous Coward]

With Rockstar's edge, and Sega Sports' license for professional atheletes, here are a few predictions for future games:

Manhunt 2 - Search for the Raiders lost talent!

"Law" Breakers - GTA style game starring NFL cornerback Ty Law

NFL 2006: Football with weapons!

Grand Theft Auto: L.A. Lakers (including Bonus Mission, make sure you get the suitcase to Darryl Straberry before the clock runs out!)

Re:New lineup

[Anonymous Coward]

Might I reccomend "Mutant League Football" to replace "Football with weapons" It is a damned good game on the Genesis. I also reccomend the much better "Mutant League Hockey"

Comic violence

[Neo-Rio-101]

Stragely, some of these gore fest games tend to do really well in Japan. You just to see the kind of sicko stuff the Japanese have in their comic books to see that comic violence is actually quite popular in Japan. Not real simulated violence... COMIC VIOLENCE. GTA series and Postal2 did quite well in Japan. Postal2 was interesting on another level because (apart from being funny and over-the-top) you could actually complete this game on the hardest level without having to kill anyone (hence the creators of that game clearly pointed out that all the violence possible in the game was the responsibility of the players!). Not sure if Manhunt will be seen as comic violence though though... there is nothing comical about that game.

Stupid big companies

[BortQ]

And I would like to announce the immediate continuation of Sillysoft's existence. We continue to have a profit of greater than 100 dollars! A fine achievement.

Perhaps we should challenge these big boys to a duel?!?!?!

Could this actually help Sega's ESPN franchise?

[Painaxl]

I wonder, will this actually allow me to find ESPN games in the friggin' stores? Seriously, I've been a fan of the Sega franchises for sports since the DC and it gets annoying not being able to find copies in the major stores. Sometimes, places like Target won't even have the ESPN sports game, but rather EA (natch), Sony and Acclaim. Maybe Take Two/Rockstar can provide a distribution boost that will actually help.

Re:Could this actually help Sega's ESPN franchise?

[UconnGuy]

ESPNvideogames.com sells them and is currently offering free shipping. I know it's not the same as having it right away, but the free shipping should be a plus if you can't find the games in stores.

Re:Could this actually help Sega's ESPN franchise?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Why are you buying games at Target? Specialty shops like Gamestop and EB carry all ESPN games and have price drops in a reasonable timeframe. As far as I can tell, Target sells their games at $50 until they don't have any games left to sell.

Budget football?

[h0mer]

I saw a blurb on IGN (I subscribe, sorry for no link) that had stuff about a rumor that ESPN 2K5 will be released at the low, low price of $19.99!

This might work to get the customers that the ESPN franchise needs (the indifferent customer who buys games at Best Buy on a whim). All informed people already know that ESPN is much better than Madden. ;)

This could be the start of a new marketing technique, similar to manufacturer rebates. A game company publishes a new franchise that needs to gain a foothold, they price the first of that series at $19.99. When the inevitable sequel comes out, provided the first game did well, they can price it at $49.99 and sell. Or they can price both at $49.99 and also sell. It doesn't matter!

Re:Budget football?

[SuperMo0]

If you got the first one for $19.99, why would you want to get the second one for $30 more? It wouldn't look like a rebate on the first game, it would look like a price hike on the second one, and that would hurt sales on it. They'd most likely have to keep it down low if they started down low.

Spy vs Spy!!!

[crashnbur]

It's about time the 128-bit gaming market picked this up. I can't wait to see it on my television screen!

That is all.