Fielding a question on today's quarterly investors call regarding the performance of Grand Theft Auto 4's DLC double-header and the accompanying retail bundle - The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony, and Episodes from Liberty City, respectively - Take-Two CEO Ben Feder admits, "Both we and Microsoft believed there was a big market for GTA 4 episodic content and some factors affected their performance." Calling the two companies' relationship "a historic, strategic partnership" - remember this? - and calling the episodes themselves "profitable contributors to the company," Feder nevertheless offered some insight into what his company could have done to make them even more profitable.
"Both were released significantly after the launch of the core unit," Feder says, referring to the April 2008 launch of Grand Theft Auto 4. "And therefore weren't able to leverage GTA 4's initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor." With The Lost and Damned coming out in February of this year, some 10 months after GTA 4's initial release, and The Ballad of Gay Tony this past October, 18 months after the initial release, we'd have to agree that timing played an issue; the GTA 4 hype machine had worn off.
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