Take-Two Interactive have had a good year through 2010 despite the lack of (or lack of news relating to) a new Grand Theft Auto. But of course, Grand Theft Auto remains the publisher's main staple.
Provided the company keeps its priorities straight, the next Grand Theft Auto could become the biggest video game in history. So says analyst Michael Pachter, who first spoke about the estimated release window for the new Grand Theft Auto instalment, which he predicts at "no later than early 2012."
The reason for that is because the three key players in the game's development (Les Benzies, Sam and Dan Houser) contracts expire in January 2012, and because of this, Pachter and Co. believe it would be very beneficial for the trio to deliver the new Grand Theft Auto before their contract comes up for renegotiation, as for a status update:
""We are highly confident that a next version is well into its development, especially given that the prior version was ready on the Xbox 360 in August 2007, and its release was delayed until April 2008 only because of technical problems with the PS3 version (and a contractual obligation not to release on one platform before the other). We estimate that over 200 people work full-time on the game, and estimate that fewer than 30 were required to continue working on the prior version past August 2007. To their credit, Mr. Benzies and both Mr. Housers have a reputation for being workaholics, and for expecting the same from their employees. We find it unfathomable that work on the next Grand Theft Auto began any later than September 2007, so the game will have been under development for four years by the middle of Take-Two’s FY:12. We understand that the team is using the same game engine (the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, or RAGE), and although we expect the next game to be the biggest and deepest ever, we don’t think it is likely that the team will take more than four years to deliver it."
But there is one small caveat: as the publisher attempts to branch out and focus on other potentially big projects, Pachter says those new titles "distract the key members of the Grand Theft Auto team." And though they expect both L.A. Noire and Max Payne 3 to be big, they don't expect either to sell more than 5 million units, while the next Grand Theft Auto might be capable of 20 million+.
The number of people who own consoles in early 2012 will be very high, which means that the next Grand Theft Auto will be available to many, many millions around the world.
http://grandtheft5.ucoz.com/news/gtav_must_be_take_two_s_top_priority_pachter/2011-01-10-16Hmm...
