At 4:30 PM eastern, after the close of the markets, Take-Two Interactive announced its earnings for its second quarter, which ended April 31. The company declared revenues of $539.8 million for a profit of $98.2 million, contrasted with $205.4 million in revenues and a $51.2 million loss during the same quarter a year earlier.

The reason for the turnaround can primarily be attributed to Take-Two-owned Rockstar Games and its incredibly well-reviewed Grand Theft Auto IV, which shipped worldwide on April 29 and sold 6 million copies during its first week, with 11 million sold at the end of May. "While the tremendous consumer, critical and media acclaim for the game speaks for itself, I'd like to take this opportunity  to congratulate the entire Rockstar team on this stunning achievement," said Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick. This sentiment was pointedly repeated by the company's CEO Ben Feder and chief financial officer Lainie Goldstein when it came their time to speak, not simply because it was deserved, but also, in the wake of Electronic Arts' persistent bid to acquire to Take-Two, it's a clear signal to Rockstar that it is Take-Two's crown jewel.

To get some more clarity on the company's performance, we turned to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, who agreed to answer our questions via email. Here's what he had to say:

What's your, um, take on Take-Two's Q2 results?

The Take-Two results are pretty consistent with a huge sell-in of GTA. As you said, 78 percent of publishing revenues were GTA (around $380 million). This translates to around 7 million units at wholesale (hard to know how many collector's editions, so I'm using $55 as an average wholesale price). That leaves around $100 million for the rest of their publishing business.

I had estimated that they would sell in $318 million of GTA and sell-in another $110 million of other, so they missed my "other" estimate by a small amount and sold-in more GTA than I expected.

To read the rest of our Q&A with Pachter, click on the link below.