Last year, Take-Two mentioned when they renewed the Houser brother's contract along with other key members of Rockstar that the Housers and other key members of Rockstar were founding a separate video game company and that Take-Two would not own the company but would have an publishing agreement with the company. Today, Variety posted an article about an announcement for the company but before I could read it the article was pulled from the site. However, an RSS syndicate blog posted a brief preview of the article that mentions that the company will be named 4mm Games. The summary also mentions "...[4mm] hopes to reinvent the roll out of new titles using the Web".  By that it would imply that they are creating a Steam rival. On the other hand, I looked at the official website for the company and it says their focus is "developing online worlds that will define social gaming", which to me implies that they are working on a MMO of some sort. So at the moment, it's not totally clear yet of the focus of the company.The company has a mailing list sign up in the about section. Perhaps we'll hear something soon.

Official Website: 4mm Games
Source: Variety via Movienet

EDIT: It seems I was right about them doing a MMO. After doing more research, I found a video by Jamie King that explains the aim of the company a lot better.

EDIT 2: For anyone worried about Rockstar, don't be. No one is leaving Rockstar, not even the Houser brothers. This is more of a side project for the Housers. The day to day operations of 4mm are under the control of Jamie King who left Rockstar back in 2006 to be at 4mm full time. The title won't be Take-Two funded or even a Take-Two owned IP as Take-Two is merely just a publishing partner. It remains to be seen if Take-Two decides to publish the title under the Rockstar brand. Kinda like Prey which was owned and developed by seperate companies, but with Take-Two as the publisher which decided to publish Prey under it's 2K label. We're betting it will be.

Edit 3: When I read the contract renewal announcement from Take-Two, I assumed the Housers were involved with 4mm Games. The Variety article has since came back online and explains that Jamie King and Gary Foreman are the only two from Rockstar at the company. I apologize for making that mistake. However, just like I stated in edit 2, Rockstar is still not affected in anyway.

Take-Two has just announced it's results for the first quarter of 2009. Below is the game listing for 2009 (Only Rockstar titles)

As you can see, not much is different from what we already knew, however, take a note at the platforms for Beaterator. It says TBA. Could this mean that Beaterator is coming to more platforms than just the PSP? Rockstar Leeds has said before that they wanted to an Xbox Live Arcade game, could this be it or perhaps is Beaterator also going to make an appearance on the Nintendo DS?....Or could it just be a mess up? We'll keep you posted if we hear anything. Next up is the second episode for Grand Theft Auto IV. The results say the game is coming in FY2009 which ends on October 31st. We're betting that the release will be very close to the FY2009 end date.

Source: Take-Two

At the end of 2007, we reported that Gary Dale was leaving Rockstar to become the new Executive Vice President of Take-Two. Now, just a little longer than a year later, he has announced that he is leaving Take-Two completely, but so far has not given a reason for it.

Gaming news site GamesIndustry reported:

He was considered a valuable member of the Take-Two team, and was previously chief operating officer of Grand Theft Auto house Rockstar Games.
Dale's employment with the company will be terminated officially on April 15, 2009.

Source: GamesIndustry.Biz

It's finally the day where all gamers can rejoice for the fact that EA has dropped there $2 billion bid to acquire Take-Two. This comes to us as a shock after the Federal Trade Commission said a few weeks ago that it had conducted an investigation of a merger of the companies, but said no further action was required and closed the investigation.  EA released a statement earlier on Sunday and had this to say.

"After careful consideration, including a management presentation and review of other due diligence materials provided by Take-Two Interactive Software, EA has decided not to make a proposal to acquire Take-Two and has terminated discussions with Take-Two," EA said in a statement Sunday.

Over at Take-Two they released this statement

“We remain focused on creating value for our stockholders and our consumers. This has been our goal since EA launched its conditional and unsolicited bid six months ago, a bid which was repeatedly rejected by our stockholders. As part of that commitment, we remain actively engaged in discussions with other parties in the context of our formal process to consider strategic alternatives.”

Source: CNet News