Gaming Company Profile: Take Two Games

Take Two Games is a publicly traded gaming company that develops, publishes and distributes video games, computer games and gaming peripherals. Take Two Games trades under the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System or NASDAQ under the symbol TTWO.

Started in 1999, the company has its main headquarters in New York City. It also has an international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Through these two headquarters, Take Two Games coordinates smaller offices and development studios in Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Washington, England, Germany, Spain and Australia, among other locations worldwide. The company has been growing rapidly despite a few setbacks.

In 2004, Take Two Games started two new companies: 2K Games and 2K Sports. Both of these companies are associated with ESPN. Through these companies, Take Two Games has sold sports-based games such as "Major League Baseball 2K."

In 2005, Take Two Games went through a major overhaul in corporate management. Ryan Brant, who was, at the time, the CEO, along with CFOs Larry Muller and David James, Jr. and Head of Sales Robert Blau were all replaced after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission found that they were falsifying business records in order to inflate revenue for the 2000 and 2001 fiscal years.

On March 29, 2007, at the annual investors meeting, five out of six board members, including Paul Eibeler, the CEO, were voted out by investors. Ben Feder replaced Eibeler as CEO.

Recently, Electronic Arts tried to takeover Take Two Games. The bid was an all-cash bid. Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of the Board for Take Two Games, stated in a press release that "the latest extension of EA's unsolicited, highly conditional tender offer does not alter the fact that their proposal still significantly undervalues Take Two." The takeover attempt failed when the takeover bid expired on June 16, 2008.

Under the leadership of Feder, Take Two Games is experiencing steady growth, unlike some of the other publicly traded gaming companies, such as Electronic Arts, whose stock is currently down considerably.

Take Two Games owns the rights to the "Max Payne" video game series, the "Grand Theft Auto" series and the "Sid Meier" series. With these popular game series, among others, Take Two Games has secured a place in the gaming world. Fans of these games wait in line for hours sometimes to get the latest copies of the games.

Take Two Games just released a new Sid Meier game for the series. This is helping to boost the stock right now. Take Two Games also has plans to release new versions of many of its popular games in the near future.

Also in the company's plans are to release a series of carnival type games suitable for gamers of all ages, including children.

Take Two Games has full-time video game developers all over the world who are working around the clock to develop profitable games for the company.

Currently, NASDAQ rates Take Two Games as a low to moderate investment risk. One of the reasons for this is that the company produces games for most of the major gaming systems including the Xbox and Playstation lines of video game systems.

Because Take Two Games offers online gaming for some of its games, it is considered to be an industry leader. When you couple this with the fact that the company is developing new technology throughout the world to bring video games to a new level, this company is almost unstoppable.

Sources:
http://www.nasdaq.com
http://ir.take2games.com/index.cfm
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&CIK=ttwo&filenum=&State=&SIC=&owner=include&action=getcompany