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Grand Theft Auto IV Hits the Jackpot

Priya Ganapati

SAN FRANCISCO -- Grand Theft Auto IV, the highly anticipated game from video game publisher Take-Two(TTWO - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), is garnering rave reviews ahead of its release at midnight.

GTA IV has bagged perfect scores from games reviewers, a rare feat for a video game. The big buildup for what many in the industry consider the game of the year is significant because Take-Two wanted to wait for its release before considering any buyout offers.

Take-Two has twice rejected a $2 billion, or $25.74 a share, offer from larger rival Electronic Arts(ERTS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr).

On Friday, IGN.com, games news and reviews site, posted the first review of the game and rated it as flawless or 10 on a scale of one to 10.

There was little doubt that GTA IV would be a critical success but the perfect score is unusual and unexpected. GTA IV is the third game in IGN.com's 10-year history to receive a perfect score.

The last videogame title that achieved that feat was Japanese games publisher Namco's 1999 game Soul Calibur for the SEGA Dreamcast platform and Nintendo's 1998 hit The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64.

"GTA IV gives us characters and a world with a level of depth previously unseen in gaming and elevates its story from a mere shoot-em-up to an Oscar-caliber drama," says Hilary Goldstein, editor-in-chief, IGN Xbox Team in the review. "Every facet of Rockstar's (a division of Take-Two that has created the game) new masterpiece is worthy of applause."

The game is also getting lavish praise from Metacritic, a ratings aggregation site, which has ranked GTA IV for the Sony's(SNE - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) PlayStation 3 console 100 on its scale of one to 100 based on 14 reviews.

Compare that to a score of 96 for Microsoft's(MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) Xbox 360 version of BioShock, another critically acclaimed title from Take-Two that was released last August and went on to become a sleeper hit with a score of 94 for Halo 3, one of last year's biggest hits.

Halo 3 has sold more than eight million copies since it was released in September. Even industry rival Activision's(ATVI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) chartbuster Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare game only received an average score of 94 from Metacritic.

Grand Theft Auto IV continues the story of Niko Bellic, the lead character of the game who is an Eastern European immigrant in Liberty City, a fictional place modeled on New York City. Bellic plays a killer and has a cast of supporting characters, including a drug dealer, a girlfriend, a corrupt police detective and a Russian mob rival.

GTA IV is different from other games because of its level of detail, its strong dialogue and the high level of technological sophistication in rendering life-like action scenes.

"So far everything I have seen is very impressive from visuals, to story telling to technology," says Jeremy Dunham, games editorial manager at IGN.com. "Rockstar has taken what was a bigger-than-life series and made it come alive."

Dean Takahashi, a journalist who blogs at VentureBeat, agrees. GTA IV is "truly one of the best that I have seen," he says in his latest post.

GTA IV's success, however, is likely to have little impact on Take-Two's stock at this point. Shares of Take-Two have fallen into a certain range since EA'sunsolicited offer in February. Take- Two has insisted that it will look at any buyout offers, including EA's, only after the release of GTA IV, a position that EA has rejected.

Take-Two was up 32 cents, or 1.2%, to $26.52 in recent trading.

Analysts say GTA IV could sell in the range of 9 million to 12 million copies this year. Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan estimates the game will sell 9 million copies this year. Wedbush Morgan does not own shares or have an investment banking relationship with the company.

The simExchange, an online fantasy video games stock market, predicts about 11.5 million copies of the game will be sold for the Xbox 360 console alone and about 7.7 million copies for the PS3.