Take-Two should have strong sales to ring in the first part of 2010 with high-profile titles to be released just before summer. A number of the expected titles were titles that were pushed into 2010 for release after not making their original 2009 dates.

While the company didn’t give any actual release updates in an earnings call yesterday, they did, however, confirm that we will see Mafia II, Red Dead Redemption, BioShock 2, and Max Payne 3 all released before summer.

The company is going to need a solid first half of the year to recoup the posted $55.5 million dollar loss that Take-Two announced. The upcoming quarter does hold at least some promise of sales for Take-Two with the release of The Ballad of Gay Tony add-on for GTA IV for Xbox 360 owners, as well as Borderlands, and the PSP/iPhone port of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

The company also did comment on what it learned from the first downloadable expansion pack for GTA IV that was exclusive to the Xbox 360 platform, which was called The Lost and Damned. While the company says that they do see downloadable content growing, retail is still king for the foreseeable future. To this end, the company will be bundling The Lost and Damned as well as The Ballad of Gay Tony as a single disc retail release, as well as offering The Ballad of Gay Tony as a download.

The company did acknowledge that digital distribution does hold much potential for higher potential profit margins, but at least in North America retail still seems to be the primary channel for buyers at this time. Of course, the company does expect a shift as the system improves and people get more accustomed to digital delivery of products.

In other news of note is that the title L.A. Noire is still in development for multiple platforms, but the company declined to provide any additional details. Our sources suggest that Team Bondi is staffing up to finish the title and get it out the door, but no additional information was provided on the title that was first announced in the late fall of 2006. We can tell you that the title is not on the list of upcoming titles to expect from the publisher, so if it would arrive we suspect it will be late fall at the earliest; but a holiday release still might be possible, according to our sources. Expect a more specific update around E3 on this one.