San Francisco (AFP) – Take-Two Interactive on Thursday dialed back earnings expectations for the current fiscal year due to the delayed release of keenly anticipated video game “Grand Theft Auto VI”. Take-Two shares slipped nearly 3 percent in after-market trades that followed a quarterly earnings release that included a forecast that sales for 2026 would be much less than the market hoped.
Early this month, the GTA VI launch by Take-Two subsidiary Rockstar Games was postponed to May 2026, and with it the rev of Take-Two earnings from sales of the blockbuster title. GTA VI was originally due to be released later this year, with trailers showing that it would be set in Miami-like Vice City and would feature a playable female protagonist for the first time.
“I believe affording Rockstar additional time for such a groundbreaking project is a worthy investment,” Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick said in an earnings release. “The ambition and complexity of Grand Theft Auto VI is greater than any previous Rockstar title.” Rockstar began work in earnest on the game in 2020, and it has become the most anticipated “entertainment property” of all time, according to Zelnick.
The first trailer for GTA VI appeared in December 2023 and has been seen some 259 million times on Rockstar’s YouTube channel. A recently-released second GTA VI trailer logged more than 109 million views in nine days after being posted on YouTube by Rockstar. The game’s predecessor, GTA V, was released in 2013 and sold more than 200 million copies.
Beyond just Rockstar Games, the whole industry is laser-focused on the GTA launch at a time when the sector has been experiencing stalled growth after riding high during Covid-19 related confinements to break sales records.
© 2024 AFP
