Take-Two Interactive announced this morning that it's staying solo. The board met with "various interested parties" over the last five months and decided it was in the best interest of the stockholders to continue building the company independently.

Despite Take-Two's recent stock slump following the EA buyout saga, the company's chairman, Strauss Zelnick, believes it remains competitive in the industry and will maximize value for stockholders. CEO Ben Feder says the company has 15 "wholly owned brands" with sales of over a million units, no debt and an "undrawn $140 million" to play with. Yeah, let's see if that cash gets spent on keeping GTA's Houser brothers.

Just a little while ago, Take-Two announced that EA has agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement and review the object of its hostile financial affection's business plans for the next three years, turning this hostile takeover into something more ... amicable. Take-Two has also confirmed that it intends to let the clock run out on EA's $25.74 per share takeover offer, which expires today at midnight.

At face value, what this means is that EA still wants to buy Take-Two, and that the current offer still isn't reasonable to the Take-Two board. Meanwhile, the FTC will have finished its anti-trust probe on the issue this Thursday. Perhaps once EA gets a look under Take-Two's hood the two companies can come to a mutually agreed upon price to end this saga -- or some other publisher could come out of left field and scoop Take-Two up.

Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick believes the company can be profitable in a non-Grand Theft Auto year. Speaking with Venture Beat, Zelnick explains that while GTA may have been the main source of profitability before, Take-Two is a different company in the wake of titles like BioShock and Carnival Games. Reportedly, the company now has "30 million-plus selling titles, 15 of which are full owned."

Depending on the nature of the content in the first GTA IV DLC (expected later this year), the company might very well see some nice cash flow from the second episode next year. We also have no idea when to expect GTA: Chinatown Wars. From what we can see, GTA is going to be on the T2 fiscal calendar in one form or another for quite some time.

[Via GI.biz]

With another deadline in EA's takeover bid come and gone, the industry's #2 publisher isn't quitting and has reaffirmed it still wants to gobble up Take-Two by extending its $25.74 per share offer deadline to Aug 18. EA currently has only 15% of Take-Two's stock, which translates to 11,741,339 shares. Obviously, EA needs over half the shares to complete the takeover.

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick released a statement that the company's board is "100% committed to maximizing stockholder value," calling EA's bid "inadequate" and recommending stockholders not take the EA offer. He says that Take-Two is currently "engaged in meaningful discussions with multiple parties" and that some of those groups have been conducting due diligence (a fancy legal term for checking under a company's hood and making sure everything looks kosher). Meanwhile, the FTC is probing the deal over possible antitrust issues and should be finished by Aug. 21.

Source – EA extends deadline to Aug. 18
Source – Take-Two responds to fifth extension

10:44 am PT: Just chilling as the press-type folk move on in. Linkin Park is playing,

10:46 am: Strauss takes the stage

Yesterday we learned Strauss Zelnick, the Charmain of Take-Two and the man standing brave against the hostile EA takeover, doesn't like wearing his E3 badge. While waiting to see 2K's latest offerings, the very polished Zelnick, who looks identical to his head-shot above, walked in and handed his badge off to the lady behind the desk exclaiming, "I hate wearing these things!"

Dude, we're totally with you! But, we're not the Strauss Zelnick. We'd love to join you in solidarity, but then security would probably kick us out.

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick's recent interview with CNBC may just be the least surprising one you'll hear all month. First off, he thinks the company made the right moves in holding Grand Theft Auto IV back from its original release and in refusing to acquiesce to the advances of Electronic Arts. Can you believe it?

Also, Zelnick insists that there are no glitches in GTA IV, which makes the news of today's incoming multiplayer patch for the PS3 version of the game just hysterical. Of course, when Strauss said that glitch line, we're pretty sure the interviewer was asking him in her own Draconian fashion if there's any hidden doin' it in the game. Now we're wondering if he's wrong about that too.

Update: The v1.01 patch is now live (18 MB) -- thanks to everyone for the heads-up!

When Strauss Zelnick and his band of merry cohorts (read: Take-Two investors) took over the beleaguered gaming publisher last March, lots of industry pundits thought the veteran biz guy would fix it up and sell it off (EA perhaps?). Speaking at the Reuters Business Summit, Zelnick said, "I'm much more interested in growing the business than in selling it, to be clear."

Zelnick's been working on improving the efficiency of the company (like selling off that silly peripheral business), planning on growth (sell the company? Heck, they're probably going to be hiring!), working on building new IPs instead of licensing them (BioShock did swimmingly) and, oh yeah, GTA IV, about which he says, "I believe this release, Grand Theft Auto IV, is going to be vastly better than those expectations -- vastly better -- and that's hard to do when expectations are so high." Don't call it a comeback.