Speaking to an audience at the Cowen Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference this week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick describes Microsoft's plan for a licensing fee on used games as "punishing consumers," and makes it sounds like his company is not in the loop when it comes to getting some of that licensing fee on Xbox One games.

For the fiscal year that ended on March 31, publisher Take-Two recorded a loss of $31.2 million on revenue of approximately $1.2 billion, the company announced last night. For the fourth quarter, the company raked in revenue of of $299.5 million, up from $148.1 million from the same period a year ago. Net income for the quarter was $21.2 million, up from a net loss of $66 million from the same period a year ago.

2K Games will not be on the show floor at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo this summer, according to an announcement on its website. The company did not give any particular reason for not attending this year's show, only promising to release information on its slate of upcoming games later this spring.

ESPN is reporting that Take-Two Interactive has signed an exclusive five-year deal with World Wrestling Entertainment to create and publish WWE-based wrestling games. The new WWE-based games will fall under the name "WWE 2K," with the first game to be released this fall as WWE 2K14, reports ESPN. Take-Two and the WWE have not made an official announcement about this deal yet.

After announcing that Grand Theft Auto V would be getting released a little later in the year than was previously announced and expected, some financial analysts have decided to adjust their opinion on Take-Two Interactive's future earnings. One such firm is BMO Capital Markets.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward S. Williams said in a note to investors that Take-Two moving the upcoming launch of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V for the PS3 and Xbox 360 from a spring 2013 release window to Sept. 17 will have an impact:

As news of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings in Newtown, Connecticut were coming to light on December 14, the finishing touches were being put on a deal with the Nevada Economic Development Board and Take-Two Interactive (see Vegas Inc. for the details). This week that deal is being questioned by the media in the state.

According to documents unearthed by Motley Fool, Billionaire Ken Griffin has increased his financial stake in publisher Take-Two Interactive. Ken Griffin's Citadel Investment Group now holds 5.5 million shares in the company, according to a December 28 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's a substantial jump from the 3 million shares of Take-Two stock held by Griffin's group in October of 2012.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told attendees at the Credit Suisse 2012 Technology Conference in Scottsdale Arizona that he expects some third-party publishers to die off as they attempt to make the jump to the next console generation.

My, Mr. Zelnick sure is chatty this week.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told GameSpot UK that the secret to Grand Theft Auto's continued success is the fact that the games are released years apart, making each debut special.

"It's our view that if you want intellectual properties to be permanent," said Zelnick, "then you run the risk in that circumstance of having consumers fall out of love with that franchise. [Activision] obviously views the world differently."

The transition to the next generation of consoles will not be without a few casualties, says Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

"If you're not capitalized for the transition, you can find out that you're not there for the transition. And historically, in every transition that's occurred in this business, one or two third-parties have gone out of business."

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Michael "Shagg" Washington has failed to convince an appeals court in California that a lower court's ruling on his case against Take-Two Interactive over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas didn't have merit. The lower court ruled that the case filed by the model and backup singer for the rap group Cypress Hill against Take-Two in 2010 was without merit.

Apparently some XCOM: Enemy Unknown players have declared to 2K Games' Firaxis that easy mode isn't all that easy and that they wouldn't mind something done about it. Firaxis has listened to the community (as detailed in this forum thread) and plans to tone things down a bit with a second patch - release date to be determined.

Besides making the game a lot easier in easy mode across all platforms, the patch will deal with a number of other issues that have cropped up:

Take-Two Interactive today released its earnings report for the three months ended September 30, posting booming revenues for the quarter, but warning that it would fall drastically short of its full year projections. It posted net revenues of $273.1 million, up from $107 million from the same period a year ago. During that same period a year ago Civilization V: Game of the Year Edition helped drive the company's revenues.

Today publisher Take-Two announced that it would delay releasing its second quarter earnings report for the fiscal year 2013 and conference call due to the "catastrophic weather conditions in the regions of its corporate headquarters." New York City is currently suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which caused widespread flooding, power outages, and a closure of most means of transportation in and out of town.

A nine-page article in Boston Magazine takes an in-depth look at why former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's company 38 Studios failed and offers the first glimpse inside that company's studio structure, the dysfunction of management, Schilling's opinion on the Kingdoms of Amalur MMO Copernicus, and details on a publishing deal that Schilling claims was almost finalized.

Take-Two Interactive revealed that BioShock Infinite would not be released until early 2013. The game was scheduled for release in October of this year. Irrational Games' Ken Levine said that the extra time would be used to "make Infinite into something even more extraordinary." While fans of the series were disappointed by the news, Take-Two investors took it particularly hard; Take-Two's stock fell 5.7 percent to $12.64 by 12:30 pm after falling to $12.51 earlier in the day. The drop was the lowest intraday price for the stock since Oct. 5 of 2011.

Update: Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has issued a short statement to Game Informer apologizing for his comments about THQ:

"While discussing our strategy I spoke out of turn about someone else’s. It was inappropriate and I regret it."

Another day, another story about game developer layoffs in Australia. This time it's at the 2K Marin studio in New South Wales. According to a Kotaku report, citing asource who wished to remain anonymous, 15 employees have been laid off from the studio formerly known as 2K Canberra. 2K Marin co-developed BioShock 2, and is reportedly involved in developing a new X-Com project.

Here's something you don't want to hear from developers: we didn't make DLC to give fans new content, we did it to combat used game sales. I'm paraphrasing, but that's sort of what a top Take-Two Interactive executive told a gathering at ThinkEquity's 8th Annual Growth Conference in New York City earlier this week. Concerning the first batch of downloadable content released for its hit game Red Dead Redemption, he said:

2K Czech has laid off more than 40 staff, according to a Develop report. The layoffs occurred at two studios operating under the 2K Czech brand. One group, based in Brno, has lost up to 40 developers, sources inside the company have told Develop. The other studio in Prague has laid off around 10 employees, according to insiders. Both studios employ around 200.

2K Games tells Develop that the layoffs do not mean that the company is changing the focus of the 2K Czech studio.

Is the Grand Theft Auto franchise heading to Facebook and other social networks? Probably at some point, along with Take-Two's other high profile franchises, but at this point the company is dipping its toes into the waters. Speaking to IndustryGamers, Take-Two COO Karl Slatoff says that the recent launch of Civilization World on Facebook is the beginning of a larger strategy that will ultimately see social and traditional game spaces converging ever so slightly.

A new interview with 2K President Christoph Hartmann over on MCV makes the top executive at the Take-Two label look a little foolish - not that it's MCV's fault. In that interview Hartmann degrades strategy games and Ray Charles among other things. His comments come about as part of a discussion on X-Com, the popular strategy games series that the company is reimagining as a strategy-themed shooter. Here's the first quote, about 90's strategy games:

"The ‘90s generation of gamers all love Xcom and we own the IP, so we thought OK, what do we do with it? Every studio we had wanted to do it and each one had its own spin on it. But the problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary."

Hey GPers!  Up for some opinions on the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Leland Yee’s violent video game law the Kuribo Boot?

United Arab Emirates retail chain Geekay Games updated its Facebook page today with sad, if unsurprising news:

Unfortunate news, L.A. Noire has been banned. Sorry guys :(

Bummer.  The UAE’s National Media Council (NMC) did not reveal why it banned the game and so far, Rockstar has not commented on the situation.

Speculation has it that The Witcher 2 and Duke Nukem Forever will be the next titles to receive a wallop from the NMC banhammer.

Source: Middle East Gamers via Cheater87

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Contributing Editor Andrew Eisen

Would you believe yet another musician is suing a game developer/publisher?

Joining the ranks of No Doubt, Courtney Love and most recently, Axl Rose, Michael “Shagg” Washington, backup singer of rap group Cypress Hill, has filed suit against Rockstar Games and Take-Two.  He alleges that the main character of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was created using his image and life story.

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick does not see a future where digital distribution surpasses big box retail. Speaking to Reuters the chairman and soon-to-be-CEO of the company said that the biggest opportunities for his company would continue to be at traditional retail. He also argued that the transition to digital distribution based on share would be gradual - growing from the current 10 percent share of the market to 25 - 30 "over time."

"I still think in five years the packaged goods business will dominate. It's kind of irrelevant to us, Zelnick told Reuters. "..basically the same gross margin, basically the same risk."

"We don't have any structural impediment to being profitable in a given year," he said.

He also told Reuters that his company is no longer so dependant on the Grand Theft Auto series as its only source of income.

While we wait with bated breath for Pete’s Supreme Court coverage, let’s hop in the wayback machine and revisit the good times of GP’s early days.

Remember, years ago, when GamePolitics was all over any news concerning GTA series publisher Take-Two’s upper management.  Yes, if Paul Eibeler or Strauss Zelnick so much as blew their noses, boy howdy, we were there to report it.

Well, some of you may be interested to know that Take-Two Executive Chairman Strauss Zelnick will be adding the role of Chief Executive Officer to his resume as current CEO Ben Feder will be stepping down on January 1, 2011.  Said Feder:

While being interviewed by MTV’s Multiplayer blog last week, Mafia 2 Senior Producer Denby Grace was asked what he felt was the biggest problem current games suffer from. His answer was, “An obsession with gay space marines.”

This comment did nothing to endear Grace or 2K Games to a GayGamer columnist, operating under the moniker Wootini, who wrote about the comment:

I wasn't planning on buying Mafia 2, mostly because I'm over that whole sandbox crime drama genre, and also because I was more than underwhelmed when I demoed it at Pax East back in March. But now I wouldn't play it if you gave me a free copy. Why do people think talking like this is okay? What is wrong with people?

The United Arab Emirates’ National Media Council has banned the release of Take-Two Interactive’s Mafia II videogame in that country.

Nitin Mathew, of the Dubai-based distribution firm Red Entertainment Distribution, told Arabian Business that the game was banned because of its “excessive violence and nudity.”

Mafia II was going to be released at the end of August, but now it will share the same fate as its predecessor Mafia, which was also banished from the UAE. Other recent games outlawed in the UAE include Heavy Rain, Dante’s Inferno (which wasn’t even submitted to censors), Darksiders, God of War and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Take-Two Interactive fought the good fight but failed to prevail in a lawsuit against a company that specializes in domain squatting - the practice of buying up and sitting on domains for potentially popular products. A company called NA Media grabbed the domain name in early 2004 after word slipped out that BioShock was in the works at Irrational Games. Unfortunately for Take-Two, the company hadn't trademarked "BioShock" before NA Media registered "www.bioshock.com."

That had a profound impact on Take-Two's court case, according to Gamer/Law, which reported today that the company had lost in court. The simple fact that Take-Two hadn't managed to register the trademarks at the time of the URL's registration really weakened the publisher's case, but Name Administration also argued in court that Bioshock had other meanings separate from Take-Two's business - even citing interest from Johnson & Johnson to use it for some odd line of skincare products.