What Attach Rates Tell Us About Performance

Consider the following table detailing fictitiouse sales of consoles and games for them. The figures are completely made up.

If we just look at the absolute values, sales of GTA IV for Xbox (5,000) were greater than GTA IV for PS3 (4,000). Yay for Microsoft. However, the attach rate for GTA IV on Xbox 360 was 2.5% compared to an attach rate of 2.6% for PS3. This means that if Sony continue to sell the same number of consoles as Microsoft, they are expected to realise 5,333 sales, beating Microsoft's 5,000. Yay for Sony.

Attach Rate Biases

Attach rates are often skewed by the actions of early adopters, whose behaviour may not be respresentative of the general buying population. As the age of a console grows, this skew's influence will diminish.

Attach Rates Don't Tell The Whole Story

At face value, when comparing the performances of two platforms and their respective games sales, a higher attach rate would seem to be a good thing. However, this is not necessarily the case. A particular console would experience high attach rates for its games if its hardware sales were dying. After all, the attach rate only describes the ratio between console and game sales. The absolute values for those sales figures should also be considered.

For example, 2 sales of Xbox 360 in the whole of the Arctic Circle balanced against an average of 50 games per console equates to a staggeringly good attach rate of 50:1. But only 2 Xboxes were sold... Boo for Microsoft.

The moral of the story is that attach rate means nothing without a context. And that context is the number of hardware sales that were made.

And going back to the table above, Microsoft did actually sell more consoles and more games...

The numbers were fiction. Let it go.

The civil action relates to pending SEC charges that Take-Two had acted to falsify financial records as part of a stock option-backdating scheme. The SEC had claimed several years ago that Take-Two had backdated stock options that could be exercised at a strike price lower than where the stock was trading on the day the options were granted to its officers, directors, and key employees.

The litigation's precise wording is

during a seven year period, Take-Two defrauded investors by granting backdated, undisclosed "in the money" stock options to officers, directors, and key employees while failing to record required non-cash charges for option-related compensation expenses.

It is claimed that these fraudulant actions were committed 100 times since 1997.

Take-Two agreed to pay a $3.0 million settlement to the SEC "without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations."

The SEC made this announcement last Wednesday. Read the allegations in detail.

Car Jack Streets Storyline

It's a simple storyline. Having run up gambling debts to the mob of over $1 million you must start repaying the mob boss Frankie $50,000 a week, every week until the debt is cleared or you’re a dead man! Car Jack city is a huge urban environment where opportunities abound, both legal and criminal.

Do what ever you can to pay off your debt, including the following dodgy dealings:

• steal cars
• run shipments
• take out gang bangers
• hell you can even deliver pizza if you have to, just make that payment in time or it’s all over!

The protagonist (that means you!) is Huang Lee and the clip shows you what moving 'goods' around Liberty City will be like under orders from his Uncle, Wu 'Kenny' Lee.

Dealing and Delivering

Get a look at what moving goods around Liberty City will be like for protagonist Huang Lee after hitting the streets on the order of his Uncle, Wu 'Kenny' Lee.

Guinness World Records recently announced a list of awards for Grand Theft Auto. These records can now be found in the Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition book and are as follows:

Most Successful Entertainment Product Launch

On the day of the product launch, 29/04/2008, Grand Theft Auto 4 generated a staggering $310 million of sales worldwide. That's in just one day.

Most Controversial Video Game Series

Grand Theft Auto has a reputation for courting controversy for its adult nature and violent themes. More than 4,000 news stories about it have been published, and numerous lawsuits have been brought against Rockstar Games. Accusations include glamourising violence, portraying alleged connections with real-life crimes and the corrupting of impressionable GTA players.

Largest Voice Cast in a Video Game

GTA 4 has featured a total of 861 voice actors. That's like the total cast of Ben Hur, surely.

Highest Production Budget

Production costs on GTA 4 reached $100 million, reported GTA's producer Leslie Benzies in an interview with The Times in April 2008.

Largest Grand Theft Auto Environment

Not much competition for this one, given that the rivals are merely other games in the series! Nevertheless, GTA San Andreas took the title for having the largest playing area in the series, being up to four times the size of other GTA environments.

Largest In-Game Soundtrack

There are 18 radio stations playing 218 licensed tracks featured in GTA 4. Criminals like music.

To date more than 13 million units of Grand Theft Auto 4 have been shipped since its release to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in April 2008. Riding the wave of this success, top Rockstar management (Sam and Dan Houser and the game's producer, Leslie Benzies) have renegotiated lucrative contracts with Take-Two. The new contracts offer them a stock-based profit-sharing arrangement in order to retain their services until January 31, 2012.

In a recent announcement Take-Two revealed that it plans to give a total of 2,849,003 shares out to "certain emplyees" of Rockstar games. Considering that currently the Take-Two share price stands at $7.10, that amounts to a whopping $20.2 million in stock based compensation. The bonus will need to be approved by the shareholder committee at the end of the month, but if you consider just how many successful games the Rockstar team has delivered to Take Two, there shouldn't be any problems.

No, I don'tthink they have any vacancies at the moment.

As if getting a sneaky rare chance to play Chinatown Wars wasn't enough, you'll also be able to take home free, limited-edition Rockstar apparel. That's clothes to you and me. Limited-edition Rockstar clothes. That will be t-shirts and wristbands, I would imagine.

As you can see from the screenshot, the targeted platform for Grand Theft Auto IV Second Episode is Xbox 360 (sorry PlayStation). The games on the list are due for release during the remainder of Take Two's financial year, which ends on 31st October.

Alarmingly, despite over 13m units of GTA IV having been shipped between its release in April 2008 and the end of January this year, Take Two still recorded as Q1 2009 net loss of $50.4m.