GTA IV Closes In On 20M Units Shipped

Take-Two this week revealed the latest shipment numbers for its stable of major franchises, including Grand Theft Auto, Midnight Club, Max Payne and others. The company's biggest series, Grand Theft Auto, has shipped over 100 million units total as of February 19, 2011, Take-Two revealed in a series of new slides shown at Wednesday's tech-centric Wedbush Morgan management conference. The latest major GTA installment, Grand Theft Auto IV, has shipped nearly 20 million units since its April 2008 launch, Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a presentation. Take-Two said in June 2010 that GTA IV had shipped 17 million units to date across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The publisher's shipment figures include complete and special editions of the game. Zelnick also revealed that the Midnight Club street racing series has shipped "nearly 18 million" units, and the third-person action game Max Payne has shipped over 7 million units, with Max Payne 3 currently in development. The company also confirmed that last year's critically-acclaimed Western action game Red Dead Redemption has shipped over 8 million units, as previously reported. Under Take-Two's 2K label, the BioShock series has shipped over 8 million units, the Civilization strategy franchise has shipped over 10 million, Gearbox-developed Borderlands has shipped nearly 4 million plus DLC, and the Mafia series has shipped nearly 5 million units, Zelnick revealed. Last year's NBA 2K11 from 2K Sports has shipped over 4 million units and the family-friendly Carnival Games franchise has shipped over 7 million. Part of Take-Two's core strategy is to create wholly-owned IP -- the company said it has launched seven new franchises since 2007, has 16 internally-owned million-unit franchises and has 29 "distinct titles" that have sold over 2 million units worldwide. Zelnick said the company expects around $1.1 billion in revenues for the full fiscal year, and forecasts to be profitable, even without a major new release of Grand Theft Auto.