Take-Two Delays Max Payne 3 Again, Blames Baseball For Bad Quarter

Originally planned to hit this “winter” then moved to the first half of next year, Rockstar Games‘ third Max Payne title won’t hit until August 2010 at the earliest, publisher Take-Two Interactive announced today.

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The rest of Take-Two’s slate, including BioShock 2, Red Dead Redemption and Mafia II appear to be sticking to their regularly scheduled dates. But Max Payne 3 is now penciled in for a fiscal Q4 2010 release, giving the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game an August to October release window.

The rest of Take-Two’s bad news is financial. The company expects fourth quarter and fiscal year 2009 to be below guidance due to “the performance of its Major League Baseball titles in the fourth quarter” and “lower than expected initial performance of several of its key holiday releases.”

Take-Two’s 2010 is also expected to be loss-heavy, thanks to Major League Baseball losses and the “movement of one triple-A title out of the fiscal year.”

Strauss Zelnick, chairman, says the company’s quarterly financial woes “were partially offset by the performance of our catalog business and a number of our holiday titles, as shown by the successful launch of Borderlands and the leading ratings and market share of NBA 2K10.”

With the publisher’s full fiscal year guidance expecting a loss, even with the release of BioShock, Red Dead Revolver and Max Payne sequels, it sure doesn’t sound like Rockstar will have a new Grand Theft Auto on store shelves—at least not before November 1, 2010—to help put Take-Two in the black.