Take-Two announced its earnings today and it proudly reported that Grand Theft Auto VI is on track to launch on November 19, 2026.
I was able to interview Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, about the results for about seven minutes. I asked if he was happy that there was no delay to the launch date of GTA IV or if he had context for sticking to the date. But he gave me nothing. He didn’t celebrate. After all, there’s a lot of time to go before the game actually launches.
I also asked about how Take-Two’s outlook suggests that the company is expecting a higher scale of performance over the years, and not just because of GTA VI.
“I think one of the things we’re proud of around here is that we have a multi-dimensional company. Half of our net bookings comes from mobile, and the last year that we’re reporting on today demonstrates that we can have a situation when things go well, when our teams have done a great job, where every label is booming, every label is contributing — and in a different way, we have frontline releases, we have live services, we have recurring consumer spending,
we have catalog — and when you take it all together, it makes for a pretty powerful enterprise.”
He added, “This is what we set out to build many years ago. So, of course, it’s satisfying to see it come to fruition initially. Now we’ve established ambitious goals for fiscal 27 and then furthermore, we said we have got to create a new benchmark going forward. None of that will be easily accomplished, but we’re very excited about it.”
He said that the numbers for the year that Take-Two just guided to reflect across the board performance.
“We think we can achieve that,” he said.
I also asked him a broader question about the industry based on the analysis of games that Matthew Ball, who just became the chief strategy officer at Xbox, published in the form of a 165-slide Powerpoint deck. Ball observed that the addiction industries like online gambling and prediction markets are taking away attention from games and that poses a risk.
Zelnick replied, “According to Activate, a consultancy, the amount of time in American consumers’ media [consumption on a daily basis shows] the time devoted to interactive entertainment has actually grown about 15 minutes year over year, from about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes. So, there’s really evidence that more time is being spent with interactive entertainment than ever before. But at the end of the day, of course, anyone in the entertainment business competes with everyone else, and also competes with the opportunity not to engage in entertainment.”
He added, “You go to the grocery store to buy food, but you don’t have to consume entertainment.. When there’s a lot out there that people like, they’ll consume a lot. When there’s nothing out there that they want, they won’t consume any, which is a long-winded way of saying I think people can engage with TikTok and Polymarket and also engage with interactive entertainment if that’s what they want to do.”
And he said, “The media day continues to grow in a way that is surprising. It’s now over 13 hours. That reflects a lot of parallel processing, but I don’t think the world has become more competitive. It’s always been highly competitive, and so our approach is always to be the most creative, most efficient, most innovative company to try to make the biggest hits, engage consumers with something extraordinary — and everything else will take care of itself.”
I asked about the quarter’s strong performance and if there was a surprise in the results.
“Let’s talk more about the year. I think the surprise in the year is everything went so well. We’re in a business that has ups and downs, and this is a year where, even though we had a couple of things that didn’t go quite as well as expected, everything is profitable, everything is booming. Zynga had an amazing year, NBA 2K 26, Grand Theft Auto online, and the Grand Theft Auto franchise did better than expectations. Red Dead has sold in 85 million units after many years in market. Toon Blast, a 14 year old title, grew 25% year over year, and the news continues. And even when certain things fell a bit short of expectations, we’re enjoying great success. Our job is to make consumers happy with our work. That seems to be the case across the board.”
Finally, I saw that he expressed some frustration in an interview with Stephen Totilo, a game journalist, about the long wait for a new BioShock game.
He said, “There’s all kinds of things I want in life. We’ve had some frustrations in the development of BioShock. I believe that we’re going to deliver something just spectacular.”
In closing, he said, “We couldn’t be more thrilled, and that’s a result of this amazing team,
working really hard, sometimes against all odds and continuing to deliver. I want to express my gratitude to my colleagues around the world for these amazing results. They deserve all
the credit.”