Take-Two Not Too Pleased With GTA IV Expansion Sales

When it was announced that Grand Theft Auto IV expansion packs would be released exclusively for the Xbox 360, PS3 owners were not too happy. The deal cost Microsoft $50 million, a move I'm not sure they're rejoicing over now that sales of the DLCs are not too exciting.

""Both we and Microsoft Believe that there was a big market for GTA IV episodic content," Ben Feder, Take-Two's CEO admitted to investors on a conference call on Thursday.

Feder seems to believe that timing caused the lackluster performance. "Both were released significantly after unit and therefore weren't able to leverage GTA IV's initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor."

The first expansion, The Lost and Damned came out in February 2009, The Ballad of Gay Tony made its way to Xbox Live this past October. In the same month, Rockstar also released Episodes From Liberty City, a retail disc that included both expansions.

Neither Take-Two nor Microsoft have released the sales figures of the expansions, but considering Feder's language and the fact that Episodes of Liberty City failed to make the NPD's top 20 list in November, I think it's safe to conclude that the games underperformed.

Although the sales are slower than anticipated, Feder believes there's longevity in the expansions. "There's very little precedent for this type of episodic content at the price point we offered it," he said, "and so, we're confident that these titles will continue to have a long life just as we've seen a long life from all our prior GTA releases."

Alright folks, what do you think was the biggest contributing factor to weak sales of the expansions? Comment below.

[Via Kotaku]

12/19/09 Ernice Gilbert