Take-Two: GTA IV DLC Too Damn Late

Take-Two's chairman, Strauss Zelnick, has conceded that the GTA IV DLC - The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony - might have been a bit on the late side.

Speaking in a conference call following his company's (not too cracking) financial results for the last quarter, Zelnick had this to say: "Both we and Microsoft believed there was a big market for GTA IV episodic content and some factors affected their performance. Both were released significantly after the launch of the core unit, and therefore weren't able to leverage GTA IV's initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor."

The Lost and Damned came in February, 10 months after GTA IV's April 2008 launch, while The Ballad of Gay Tony just hit in October.

Zelnick also had a few words on the less than titanic splash made by the DLC's offering at retail: "Episodes of Liberty City seems to have been most appealing to those who finished GTA IV and wanted more story and gameplay, which is a smaller market than originally expected."

Still, he wasn't all down in the mouth. He referred to the episodes as "profitable contributors to the company" and said that "There's very little precedent for this type of episodic content at the price point we offered it. And so we're confidant that these titles will continue to have a long life just as we've seen a long life from all of our other prior GTA releases."

^{Source: Joystiq}