Take-Two: Duke Nukem will be profitable

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 9 August, 2011

L.A. Noire, Red Dead Redemption sales.

Critically mauled shooter Duke Nukem Forever will be profitable for publisher 2K Games and parent company Take-Two.

Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick said during an earnings call last night the Gearbox developed FPS will end up making money for the publisher – despite its negative reviews.

"We're grateful to compete in a market where you can have a critical response that was disappointing, but can still make money," he said.

Take-Two declined to offer sales figures for the game, however.

The Xbox 360 version of Duke Nukem Forever is currently sitting on a 48 out of 100 Metascore. Eurogamer's Duke Nukem Forever review returned a 3/10.

Meanwhile, Team Bondi developed crime caper L.A. Noire shipped four million units. Rockstar cowboy sandbox Red Dead Redemption – one of the biggest games of 2010 – has shipped a whopping 11 million units since May last year. Two million units of the standalone expansion Undead Nightmare were shipped.

Despite its sales success, for the first quarter of its 2012 financial year, Take-Two made a loss of $8.6 million. Sales dipped from $375.4 miillion to $334.4 million.

"Looking ahead to fiscal year 2013, we have already announced three exciting new releases: BioShock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, and Borderlands 2, and we have a very strong pipeline of yet-to-be announced titles in development," Zelnick said.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • cyber_nicco #1 10 months ago

    Sorry, but it's my first first!

  • Murton #2 10 months ago

    Wonder if the rest of those 4 million rage at the piss poor logic in LA Noire as much as I do. I can only assume that Bondi deliberately broke the logic of some interviews to force replay value on those who want perfect scores.

    Depending on how much Take Two spent I can see them making money on Duke, I think GearBox took massive hits both financially and critically by acquiring that game though. Until Duke they had one hell of a streak going, over 10 years of great games without a single miss.

  • landlock #3 10 months ago

    I actually really liked Duke Nukum is was fun and there was alot to have as good laugh at during the game. Hopefully the next one won't be to different.

    @Murton Yeah and in those ten years they only worked on three series' Half Life expansions, Brothers In Arms and Borderlands. on the subject of Half Life they were responsible for the horrible port on the PS2 that was a pretty big miss!
    Edited by landlock at 09/08/11 @ 08:34

  • StolenGlory #4 10 months ago

    Something, anything on Agent would be nice.

  • KDR_11k #5 10 months ago

    DNf wasn't that expensive to make I believe and I doubt they had to pay for the full pre-acquisition dev costs (which probably weren't that high compared to modern games either, the reason it took forever was simply that they tried to do modern day AAA quality with a 1995 sized team, team sizes bloated like hell since then).

  • Murton #6 10 months ago

    @Landlock - never played HL on the PS2, perhaps I should have phrased it differently. As far as games that GearBox made themselves, not including ports, no misses in over 10 years.

    For me the mark of a great game is game you love so much that you overlook any flaws it may have and in my opinion every GearBox developed game (not including ports) I have played so far has achieved that with the exception of DNF, though I haven't really sat down and played DNF long enough to form a full opinion. But from what I've seen and the brief go I have had, it simply didn't live up to the legacy of Duke Nukem 3D or Gearbox Studios, perhaps it's because there was too much leftover still in from 3D Realms, I don't know.

  • DrStrangelove #7 10 months ago

    "We're grateful to compete in a market where you can have a critical response that was disappointing, but can still make money," he said.

    What a lucky coincidence then that the reviews came too late for most people to cancel their pre-order.

  • username84 #8 10 months ago

    I don't care about your sales. I play games I don't bloody invest in them. Why tell me? You can all spunk on the biscuit in your offices, but please don't spunk on me.

  • paulf #9 10 months ago

    is that counting Randy Pitchfords expenses after his whirlwind PR tour?

  • Hindle #10 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 23:04:43 04-04-2012

  • Hindle #11 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 23:04:43 04-04-2012

  • BonzoBanana #12 10 months ago

    They may have bought the assets of the game cheap so never actually paid for the huge development costs so it may be profitable even with low sales for them. Probably a great financial move but there are probably a lot of creditors/investors to the original development company that have lost out and will be gutted that they see little or no return in what they invested in.

  • metalangel #13 10 months ago

    What was wrong with HL on the PS2? I played through it (having beaten the PC version when it first came out) and it was fine, looked and sounded fine, the auto aim you could ignore if you wanted. Only regret was that I never got to play the co-op story with anyone.

  • Freek #14 10 months ago

    Notice that user score is actually LOWER then the critical score on meta critic. Wonder what that will do to the next Duke game, will everybody be as quick to lay down thier cash again?

  • Toothball #15 10 months ago

    @Murton

    The outcomes of interrogations did put me off. You start picking the options that seem right, but then suddenly the case is careering off the course you wanted it to go and you land right in the middle of the wrong outcome.

    I expect that this was by design in order to keep you on your toes, and to show you that incorrect assumptions could lead to the wrong person being arrested. But in practice it comes across as a very unsatisfying gaming mechanic. I came to this expecting, perhaps naively, that I'd be able to solve the cases by finding out the right outcome in much the same way as a Phoenix Wright game. When it emerged that the game was going to do it's own thing (you can probably guess which case), I stopped playing.

    I might see it through at some point I guess, but I probably won't make much of an effort.

  • Lord_Gremlin #16 10 months ago

    I liked Duke Nukem. I like it's humor and how offensive it is (love the Hive level). I just hope next game gets better engine, better graphics and no loading screens. Plus, they should get rid of regenerating health and 2 weapon limit and let us run as fast as in DN3D to dodge bullets.
    Cause that's what Duke do - he doesn't hide from bullets, he outruns em.