MS Paid $50 Million For GTA4 Exclusives

According to an earnings call with Take Two CFO Laine Goldstein, Microsoft apparently dished out a massive $50 million in order to get downlaodable content exclusively for the Xbox 360. Goldstein said:

“The first 25 million is for the first episodic content package that ’s supposed to go out and that is in March of ’08. That’s why it moved into current because it’s in the next 12 months. The second 25 will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal ’08.”

$50 million is a lot of money to secure downloadable content for any game, but who knows how it might end up, as downloadable content is very popular on the Xbox Live marketplace. Still, that much money for what appears is two extra episodes is unseen, as GTA4 probably cost less than $50 million to develop in the first place.