Pacific Crest Securities’ Evan Wilson, working on several comments from retail sources, believes that the Rockstar published, Team Bondi-developed L.A. Noire will be delayed until Take-Two’s next fiscal year.
"We have confirmed the delay of L.A. Noire from fiscal Q4 (Oct.) well into [fiscal] 2011 [November 1, 2010 to October 31, 2011]," Wilson wrote. "As far as we can tell, Take-Two has not shown the game to retailers."
Wilson states that this is the 20th major delay from the publisher since its current management team took over back in 2007. L.A. Noire has accounted for three of those delays.
The delay will not prevent the publisher from missing its full-year financial guidance, says Wilson. The company will set the bar conservatively low with its numbers. Whatever negative impact this might have on the company’s fourth quarter results could be made up for by the continued strength of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption.
"Clearly, management either has no control over the release of its games, cannot accurately predict the timing of their completion or is not concerned with the forecasts it issues to investors," Wilson wrote. "In any case, the delays have reinforced the low confidence we have in current management. We continue to have low confidence that management has any idea about when its games will actually be released and believe the confidence that it displays to investors is misplaced."
L.A. Noire represents the first game that Team Bondi is working on. The Australian-based developer hopes to have the game represent 1940s Los Angeles in a noire style, banking on popular settings for detective stories. The game is an “open-ended” challenge, says Rockstar. Gamers will be entangled in a world of violent crime, vice and murder.
The game was originally announced as a PS3 exclusive back in 2005, and has since been picked up by Rockstar for publishing rights on multiple consoles.
Take-Two has not responded to requests for comments at this time regarding the rumored delay.
[Thanks GameSpot]
3 Comments
August 29, 2010
wow who can help me ????
August 30, 2010
"Clearly, management either has no control over the release of its games, cannot accurately predict the timing of their completion or is not concerned with the forecasts it issues to investors,"
Or understands that making good games (which combined with marketing leads to best returns) requires focusing on the quality of the game, rather than the opinions of the people horse-trading your stock.
I'm no particular fan of Take-Two, and Wilson's criticism is in truth fair - but all the best dev's take whatever time is necessary to ensure the product is right, and in most cases that translates to missed released date or no announced release dates at all until the last minute. The industry would benefit from more of that, and less products shoved out the door for the sake of hitting a date.
August 31, 2010
It seems like Take-Two has less control over release schedules than most companies - that implies more than being a "creative hotbed" ... it sounds like their "best practices" just aren't very efficient, and that's key when you're working on such a large project.