One would think that a game with the hype, impact, and presence of Grand Theft Auto IV and the addition of downloadable content would be a match made in heaven. But according to a recent investor’s call with Take-Two, it seems that the Episodes from Liberty City did not do as well for the company as they would have liked.
“Both we and Microsoft believed there was a big market for GTA 4 episodic content and some factors affected their performance,” said Chief Executive Officer Ben Feder, though he would still go on to say that the episodes were “profitable contributors to the company.”
But despite this, they feel that under the right circumstances, the episodes could have been even more profitable. What were those circumstances?
“Both were released significantly after the launch of the core unit,” Feder said in reference to Grand Theft Auto 4’s launch in April 2008. “And therefore weren’t able to leverage GTA 4’s initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor.”
This does indeed make sense, as the first episode, The Lost and Damned, arrived in February 2009– ten months after the release of GTAIV itself. And then The Ballad of Gay Tony came even further down the line, in October 2009.
Of course, this also presents an interesting conundrum to developers: many consumers, particularly the vocal ones, seem to outright despise DLC that is available early, deeming that it should be a part of the retail package. And yet, this DLC comes less than a year after the launch, and the reception is not what they had hoped.
One has to wonder how they can balance the two out, and when releasing such content is considered “too soon.”
