L.A. Noire a No-Show in 2010

 

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson has said that he has reliable information indicating that L.A. Noire, Team Bondi’s crime drama, will be moved into Take-Two’s 2011 fiscal year.

 

In his latest statement to investors, Wilson said that retail outlets have confirmed that Take-Two is pushing the release from Q4 2010 to the 2011 fiscal calendar, which begins November 1, 2010. But, don’t count on the game coming out this year, as Wilson believes it has been pushed well into the 2011 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],” he wrote. “As far as we can tell, Take-Two has not shown the game to retailers.” 

 

The report focused on Take-Two’s financial forecast, and Wilson criticized the company for being unable to reliably forecast their release dates, which, in turn, makes predicting the company’s financial fortunes difficult. However, in the report, Wilson did suggest that the incredible success of Red Dead Redemption should help Take-Two’s financials remain positive. 

 

“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. In any case, the delays have reinforced the low confidence we have in current management,” he said.

 

“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.”

 

 

Investors in Take-Two should be frustrated at the liquid movement of the release dates. Obviously, Take-Two’s financial situation depends on the titles they release, and as a company that releases only a small handful of games each year, they are heavily dependent upon those titles. 

 

However, as gamers, this is great news. Not so much because L.A. Noire is delayed but because Take-Two, it seems, is a company that would prefer to have a game miss its anticipated release date than have a game come out half-finished. The problem with setting mandatory release dates in the industry is that it can easily lead to a rushed product. If all game publishers were willing to let their developers take time to create their work, would we have more extraordinary experiences? Probably. How many games have had great potential but been hampered by bugs and issues that could have largely been eliminated with greater attention and time? 

 

L.A. Noire is looking like it will be an unbelievable experience. Set in a “perfectly recreated” Los Angeles in the 1940s, the game will tell the story of a series of grisly murders in the city that the player must solve. It will be similar in style to L.A. Confidential, the Academy Award-winning film starring Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce that was a hard-hitting story of corruption and murder in 1950s Los Angeles. All indications are that the game will be worth the wait.