Seth

Take Two's New GTA Game Sells Well; EA: “Nothing Has Changed”

Take Two is a company with a strong pipeline of games and a very loyal fan base. Invariably, EA's pending hostile offer is going to rankle some members of that group. A hostile takeover is, after all, by definition hostile.

Here, the initial three comments on this article, and the negative tone in a few of them, seems to reflect some of that frustration. It's clear at least two readers believe Take Two is not getting a fair valuation and that analyst Michael Pachter is not held in their high regard. Fair enough, but directing those criticisms to this article is off base.

This was not an article about valuation, nor Pachter. Nowhere does the article discuss whether EA's offer is fair, or reasonable. Nowhere does it discuss what Take Two might be worth. Nowhere did it take a position on whether Pachter is likely to be right or wrong.

Quite simply, this article was about two things: 1. Adding perspective to GTA IV sales data; and 2. looking at whether or not those sales results are likely to influence EA's current bid.

The research and analysis provided address just those two points. The reference to Pachter in context, as case in point, was an example of how analysts modeled for GTA IV sales before the retail release and how even the stellar sales results isn't changing their opinions. The point wasn't whether his analysis proves accurate but that the analysis didn't change despite GTA IV's sales performance.