Take-Two retains Housers, coy on GTA V

Take-Two has announced "a new incentive compensation programme" based on profit sharing for the Rockstar Games label, and "long-term employment agreements" for key team-members including Sam and Dan Houser and GTA producer Leslie Benzies.

Although Rockstar is wholly owned by Take-Two, the creative personnel are hardly slaves, and could, in theory, have wandered off at some point. Now they can't. "The new employment agreements have an initial term ending on January 31, 2012," Take-Two said yesterday during the usual financial report circus.

Q4 profits for the year that included the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV dived and missed estimates according to people who understand what the hell any of this means, but Take-Two CEO Ben Feder declined to sate investors with news of any plans for a full sequel to its blockbuster third-person action game.

"We're not saying no, it's just way too early to be talking 2010, especially GTA in 2010," MTV reported him saying in the earnings call following the financial announcements.

However, the company did talk about a "newly formed company controlled by key Rockstar Games team members", currently working on "certain new intellectual property" that would be "published exclusively by Take-Two". GameSpot speculated that it might be related to a previously announced, but unidentified PS3-exclusive, but there's no real word yet.

Finally, with GTA Chinatown Wars preparing for release on 17th March for DS, CEO Ben Feder also addressed the issue of adult-orientated content from labels like Rockstar for Nintendo formats. "You just have to because you can't ignore the installed base. You just can't," he pointed out, adding that the company would "do a lot of learning" with GTA on DS.

"Our partnership with Nintendo is as strong as it's ever been...They provide great feedback for us. We're highly focused on it," he added.