Time to stop twiddling thumbs people, and go over the NPD results for top hardware and software sales for the month of May. Wii still maintains its lead, as well as the DS, and Niko Bellic is still on top of the food chain with the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. And oh, what's this? The PS3 overtakes Microsoft Xbox 360? Check out the hardware and software charts in the full article.

Will Take-Two eventually give in to Electronic Art's "furtive" nudges (remember, they're not desperate)? In a recent announcement, EA stated that it already secured a loan worth US$ 1 billion in preparation of the big merger if it pushes through. Will it, perhaps? The details in the full article.

This week will no doubt see gamers go ballistic over Rockstar North's highly-publicized and critically-acclaimed title, Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3). But this week is not only about Niko Bellic's (mis)adventures, since Mario and the rest of the gang will also start racing off with motorbikes and karts in Mario Kart Wii. This week is pretty much an exciting one, so don't tarry and go to the full article for the complete list of games to be released this week.

We don't know what the future holds in the event that Electronic Arts manages to acquire Take-Two Interactive, but it probably isn't the end of the world. In fact, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is optimistic enough to say the Grand Theft Auto franchise will probably survive in the hands of EA even if original developer Rockstar North parts ways. Head over to the full article for more details.

Take-Two Interactive owns Rockstar Games (Rockstar North, Rockstar Leeds, etc.), the creator of the Grand Theft Auto series. Other T2 subsidiaries include 2K Games and 2K Sports.

T2 continues to face woes at the hands of NASDAQ (the stock exchange) and the SEC (the US government's Securities and Exchange Commission). And T2's internal investigation into their stock options grants has discovered "significant" backdating.

"Backdating" stock grants means incorrectly dating the stock grants given to company employees so that their values are artificially inflated (the stock values will be based on higher past values).

In the stock investigation case, Take-Two will be forced to look over and restate their earnings reports from April 1997 to August 2003, which will have tax and accounting impacts on their financial statements.

Now Gamasutra reports that NASDAQ warned Take-Two (again) that they will be delisted or removed from the stock exchange for being late for reporting something (again).

The NASDAQ delisting might be worrisome. NASDAQ is complaining that Take-Two did not file its 10K financial report for this fiscal year (that's a big requirement). Take-Two reps have indicated that they "have an understanding" with NASDAQ that the company will continue to be listed in that stock market for the time being, as long as Take-Two make up their delinquencies and other shortcomings to the market by this March.

Yeah, all this economic mumbo-jumbo might seem meaningless to the gaming community - at least the consumer side - but it is rather important to the producer/publisher side of the community. With the price one must pay to make a game these days, especially a next-gen game, it's important to find sources of cash to lavish on one's developers. The stock market is one such source - not to mention one key indicator of the company's performance.

If Take-Two were delisted from NASDAQ, it would be a big blow to Take-Two's reputation in the market. Investors would be less likely to bet on the company, and the publisher would thus have less money to spend on all of their devs and games. Maybe not immediately, maybe only in the long run, but like one important economist said: in the long run, we're all dead.