Grand Theft Auto 6, the newest installment in the most popular game franchise ever, may have just teased its release date. It might arrive as early as next year.
Take-Two provided predictions for the future in a press release that was released simultaneously with its annual results report. This included a sizable projection for the fiscal years 2025 and 2026. For reference, the fiscal year 2025 will start in April 2024:
Looking ahead, Fiscal 2025 is a year that our company is eagerly anticipating, according to the announcement. "Over the past few years, we have been putting our firm in the best possible shape to release an exceptionally strong pipeline of projects that we feel will propel our organization to even greater heights of success. We anticipate ushering in this new era in Fiscal 2025 by releasing a number of ground-breaking titles that, in our opinion, will raise the bar for our sector and allow us to surpass $8 billion in Net Bookings and $1 billion in Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow. Delivering significantly stronger operating results in Fiscal 2026 and beyond will help us maintain this momentum.
Grand Theft Auto isn't specifically mentioned by Take-Two here, but it's difficult to picture any other franchise carrying out similar work for them. For starters, Take-Two's net bookings for the most recent fiscal year increased to a record-breaking $5.3 billion. Notably, Zynga's contributions—which it purchased the previous year—helped to break this record. Before this, Take-Two's average yearly net bookings were in the $3 billion range and continuously increasing; it took the purchase of a significant mobile developer to see them increase by more than $1 billion in just one year.
Take-Two would therefore need to make big acquisitions, release roughly twice as many games as it typically does, or create at least one game that is a behemoth by any standard to reach its $8 billion goal. Notably, Take-Two anticipates doing even better in its sales the next year, which would seem impossible without the likes of GTA Online, which was developed on the backs of a brand-new GTA game, to drive its sales through the roof. These types of figures are difficult to envision being achieved by any other series, or even by several brand-new games combined.
On a conference call today, I asked Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about my notion in advance of the company's earnings statement. He declined to confirm or reject it, pointing out that it is not customary for Take-Two to discuss particular, upcoming games in earnings reports like this.
Since a few years ago, Grand Theft Auto V has routinely sold about five million units every quarter, making it the best-selling single game of all time. This was once more accomplished in the most recent quarter, bringing the total number of units sold to 180 million. GTA Online has continued to be a significant source of income for Take-Two. Rockstar, the game's creator, acknowledged last year that GTA 6 was still in the works but has kept a formal lid on any updates. Massive portions of the game were leaked late last year, but Zelnick told IGN a few months later that while this was an "emotional matter" for the devs, the business had not been negatively affected.
0 Comments