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Take-Two blew a huge hole in the video game industry's expected holiday 2007 haul by announcing that Grand Theft Auto IV won't be released until the first quarter of 2008. Take-Two didn't give a lot of specific reasons for the delay.

"Certain elements of development proved to be more time extensive than expected, especially given the commitment for a simultaneous release on two very different platforms,"  Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick said.

Considerably less surprising is the news that Manhunt 2 won't release this fiscal year either. With the overhaul Rockstar is doing to the game's content to make the ESRB happy, that delay was almost a foregone conclusion. With its two biggest games in limbo, Take-Two downgraded its anticipated revenue to the range between $950 million to $1 billion. The company had initially projected revenue from between $1,2 to $1.25 billion.

Company shares dropped 17 percent after the news broke and Ben Feder, a chief executive at the now embattled company, apologized to investors.

"We are very disappointed to reduce guidance after having previously reaffirmed it,"  Feder said in a statement referencing the company's previous assessment, in June.

Both Microsoft and Sony were counting on this game to boost sales of their systems, Microsoft claiming it as part of the "best holiday lineup in video game history."