Microsoft Spends $50 Million on GTA IV Downloadable Content

Exclusives come with a high price these days, but with obvious payoffs. When it comes to Grand Theft Auto IV, the price is fifty million dollars.

Or so one might believe from what one Take Two CFO says.

A transcript from a recent conference call regarding earnings on June 11, 2007 had some newsworthy bits. Lainie Goldstein, Take Two Interactive Software, Inc. Chief Financial Officer, divulged some interesting information to one of the call-in attendees.

The following is direct from that transcript.

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.

As this reads, the “deferred revenue chunk” they speak of is in regards to what part of their revenue they used for the Xbox 360 downloadable content, which fits in line with what Ron posted about before.

Fifty million, eh? I wonder if Sony and Nintendo might try and pull the same deal with some other publisher.