Zelnick ties Take-Two guidance to GTA 6 launch after revenue miss

Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick offered new post-earnings comments on Grand Theft Auto 6, BioShock 4, acquisitions and artificial intelligence on November 9, 2026, following the publisher’s Q2 fiscal 2027 report.

Take-Two reported Q2 fiscal 2027 revenue of $1.60 billion, missing the $1.66 billion expectation, Shacknews said on November 9, 2026. The interview followed Take-Two’s second-quarter earnings report and came days before the Grand Theft Auto 6 release. The revenue miss came in the publisher’s final quarter before Grand Theft Auto 6 launches. Shacknews noted the publisher also fell short of the unpublished EPS whisper number investors track.

Earnings per share reached $0.99, beating the $0.90 consensus but staying below the $1.05 whisper number that investors track. The EPS result topped analyst consensus estimates but did not reach the higher whisper number. Shacknews described the report as covering the period immediately before Grand Theft Auto 6’s release.

Take-Two shares traded between $201.50 and $216.00 in after-hours trading on November 9, 2026, after the Q2 fiscal 2027 report. The stock initially fell in after-hours trading before recovering part of its losses following the earnings release. The share swing occurred on the day Take-Two reported Q2 fiscal 2027 results.

Zelnick said Grand Theft Auto 6 launches next week and may become the biggest game launch ever and largest entertainment product launch by revenue. He tied the game’s potential scale to pre-orders that exceeded company expectations while guidance stayed unchanged. Sensor Tower reports Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders at nearly 8 million ahead of the launch next week, according to Zelnick.

The figure far exceeded original expectations while the company declined to disclose specific numbers. Take-Two is holding full-year guidance at $8 billion because the game releases in only 10 days. Zelnick said Take-Two would not update its figures while so close to launch and would know more after Grand Theft Auto 6 releases.

During the Q2 2027 earnings call, he said the success of Grand Theft Auto 6 will set a new baseline for Take-Two’s gaming business. He repeated the point while discussing pre-order numbers that were well above expectations during investor questions on the Q2 2027 earnings call. He also called NBA 2K27 the second most successful launch in the NBA 2K franchise history.

Net bookings for the quarter landed at the low end of the company’s range while profitability performance was strong, he said. Zelnick cited NBA 2K27 alongside GTA 6 pre-orders as evidence of a strong quarter and positive outlook for the rest of the year.

BioShock 4 remains in development and Take-Two feels good about its progress, Zelnick said. The game faced challenges after around 80 redundancies and a leadership change reported in 2025 at developer Cloud Chamber. Take-Two announced BioShock 4 in 2019, and the game has faced setbacks since, including staff reductions at the developer.

Zelnick acknowledged the development difficulties but said the project is proceeding well now. Project Ethos had a disappointing public beta, after which Take-Two made changes Zelnick considers beneficial. The company is optimistic about the extraction shooter.

First announced in 2024 as a live-service extraction shooter, Project Ethos came up as Zelnick addressed whether the live-service trend has ended for Take-Two. Take-Two does not believe the live-service wave has passed, Zelnick said on November 9, 2026. He described live services as successful and central to its business.

Recurrent consumer spending accounts for about 81% of Take-Two net bookings, Zelnick said. The figure illustrates Take-Two’s dependence on ongoing player spending rather than one-time sales. The business runs on live services punctuated by major releases such as Grand Theft Auto 6, he said.

Zelnick distinguished live services from free-to-play titles, which he called challenging across mobile, PC and console. He said live services and recurrent consumer spending make up the majority of Take-Two’s business today, describing a business run on live services and major releases.

Take-Two is pursuing accretive mergers and acquisitions in interactive entertainment to add intellectual property, technology, talent and audiences, Zelnick said. Zelnick offered the definition while discussing Take-Two’s acquisition criteria, saying an accretive deal means Take-Two earnings per share rises rather than falls from the transaction.

The company generally does not discuss specific targets and announces deals only after completing them. Zelnick said Take-Two considers all areas of interactive entertainment if they make strategic sense. He cited Zynga and Gearbox as examples of accretive deals for the company.

Zynga closed in mid ’22, after which its mobile business immediately declined, creating major challenges now addressed. Zelnick called the deal accretive from the start. Take-Two’s more recent Gearbox acquisition was also accretive, he said.

He cited both deals as examples of transactions that increased earnings per share rather than decreasing it. The publisher has not specified which companies it pursues for mergers and acquisitions and announces deals when completed. Take-Two considers all areas of interactive entertainment to the extent that they make sense for the company, Zelnick said.

Fifteen Take-Two franchises have each sold at least five million units in an individual release, Zelnick said. He cited the franchise count and mobile performance as evidence of broad-based growth across Take-Two’s owned intellectual property. Explaining where growth will come from beyond Grand Theft Auto 6, Zelnick pointed to 15 franchises with individual releases selling at least five million units and a mobile business up 4 percent year over year.

The mobile business increased 4% year over year in the quarter and continues to launch new hits. The mobile segment is part of what Zelnick described as Take-Two’s powerful collection of owned intellectual property. He said mobile continues to perform and release new hits.

Take-Two believes it has the best collection of owned intellectual property in the interactive entertainment business, he added. Take-Two selectively invests in new intellectual property, the riskiest part of its business, though the company exists because of past new-IP investments, Zelnick said.

He said Take-Two always looks for new intellectual property despite its risks. He linked the company’s existence to its historical willingness to fund new IP. The publisher is working on legacy franchises and may revive older intellectual property it has not exploited in recent years.

Zelnick placed legacy-franchise revival on Take-Two’s to-do list after noting the company owns unused IP. He made the point while rejecting the idea that re-releasing old games is easy money.

“There’s no such thing as easy money in our business,” Zelnick said. He said this after an interviewer compared reviving older franchises to EA’s recent Wing Commander re-release. He insisted there is no easy money in the business.

Take-Two sees artificial intelligence as an industry threat even though its business has been immune to piracy over file size, console ecosystems and online game traits, Zelnick said on November 9, 2026. AI-powered compilations and decompilations have been raising piracy concerns for publishers over the past few weeks, according to Eurogamer’s report on the earnings call. Investors raised AI concerns after these tools raised piracy issues in recent weeks.

Every entertainment business is subject to some piracy, and AI-driven piracy is likely to invade Take-Two’s business to a greater or lesser extent, though it will be manageable, Zelnick said. He said Take-Two’s business has been immune to piracy but warned that every entertainment business faces some piracy.

Take-Two is enhancing technical defenses and legal activities against bad faith actors using artificial intelligence, Zelnick said. He told investors every entertainment business faces some piracy and Take-Two focuses on managing the risk. The company is scaling its countermeasures appropriately, he added.

An investor asked Zelnick on November 9, 2026, whether AI could give Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar a competitive advantage in the games industry. Technology has always benefited Take-Two, all advances have benefited the company, and Zelnick hopes that trend accelerates, he said during the call. Zelnick said Take-Two creates entertainment inside computers with technology.

Recent technological advances have made it easier to create assets, Zelnick said. He said recent technological advances have made asset creation easier, which he described as consistent with the story of Take-Two’s business. Creating an asset in a computer was really difficult when he started in interactive entertainment, while today it is a whole lot easier.

Still, creating a big hit was hard in the past, is hard now and will stay hard ahead, with hit creation remaining human work, he said. He argued human creativity harnessing technology remains central to Take-Two’s success. Technology advances make asset creation easier but do not make hits easier to produce, Zelnick said.

Zelnick outright rejected in March 2026, the idea that AI can tackle games on the scale of Grand Theft Auto 6, according to Eurogamer’s November 9, 2026 report. Eurogamer noted that Zelnick has shown AI skepticism before, referencing March 2026 comments in which he rejected the idea that AI can handle games on the scale of GTA 6. Take-Two wants to make the best entertainment on Earth and has more often than not succeeded, he said.