Rockstar games

Rockstar Games is a multinational video game developer and publisher based in New York City, owned by Take-Two Interactive following its purchase of British video game publisher BMG Interactive. The publisher is known for the Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, L.A. Noire, The Warriors, Bully, Manhunt, Midnight Club and Red Dead games, as well as the use of open world, free roaming settings in their games. It comprises studios that have been acquired and renamed as well as others that have been created internally. While many of the studios Take-Two Interactive has acquired have been merged into the Rockstar brand, several other recent ones have retained their previous identities and have become part of the company's 2K Games division. The Rockstar Games label was founded in New York City in 1998 by the British video game producers Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman.
The main headquarters of Rockstar Games (commonly referred to as Rockstar NYC) is located on Broadway in the SoHo neighbourhood of New York City, part of the Take-Two Interactive offices. It is home to the marketing, public relations and product development departments.
As of February 2014, Rockstar Games titles have shipped more than 250 million copies, the largest franchise being the Grand Theft Auto series which alone has shipments of at least 157.5 million. In March 2014, Rockstar Games received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award at the British Academy Video Games Awards.
In October 2011, Rockstar creative vice-president Dan Houser told Famitsu that Rockstar was intentionally avoiding developing in the first-person shooter genre. "We're deliberately avoiding that right now", he said, according to a 1UP.com translation. "It's in our DNA to avoid doing what other companies are doing. I suppose you could say that Max Payne 3 is something close to an FPS, but there are really unique aspects to the setting and gameplay there, too, not just in the story. You have to have originality in your games; you have to have some kind of interesting message. You could say that the goalpoint of Rockstar is to have the players really feel what we're trying to do". Houser went on to say that Rockstar has "made new genres by ourselves with games like the GTA series. We didn't rely on testimonials in a business textbook to do what we've done. I think we succeeded precisely because we didn't concentrate on profit... If we make the sort of games we want to play, then we believe people are going to buy them.

Ever since 2001, the Grand Theft Auto series has been a major success, both critically and financially. It has generated perfect or near perfect reviews and scores on almost all of the games, and has sold over 150 million copies worldwide, as of September 2013. The Times Online reported that Grand Theft Auto IV recorded 609,000 copies in the UK on its first day of release. In its first week, Grand Theft Auto IV sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide and grossed over $500 million.
In 2006, Grand Theft Auto was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs among Concorde, Red Telephone Boxes, Catseyes, The Underground, Mini, Tomb Raider and the World Wide Web.
The series has broken several records, resulting in Guinness World Records awarding the series 10 world records in the Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include Most Guest Stars in a Video Game Series, Largest Voice Cast in a Video Game (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), Largest In-Game Soundtrack (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) as well as Most Successful Entertainment Launch of All Time (Grand Theft Auto V). Guinness World Records also ranked Grand Theft Auto in third place on their list of top 50 console games of all time based on initial impact and lasting legacy. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is listed as the most successful game on the PlayStation 2 according to The Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition.
Grand Theft Auto III, San Andreas and Vice City currently lie at the 2nd, 5th and 6th highest rated PlayStation 2 games on Metacritic, respectively, while Chinatown Wars is rated the best game on the Nintendo DS and the second best on the PlayStation Portable, and Grand Theft Auto IV is currently rated the second best game ever, with a score of 98, only trailing behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Also, Vice City, Grand Theft Auto III, San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto IV lie at 11th, 24th, 27th and 93rd best PC games of all time, on Metacritic. Along with this, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony are currently placed 35th and 59th in the top Xbox 360 games.