Take-Two Interactive is seeing even more of its money coming from in-game purchases. The company said that “recurrent consumer spending” — which is its name for microtransactions and downloadable content purchases — made up 62 percent of its $388 million in revenue through the first quarter of its fiscal 2019.
Take-Two is the parent company of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games and NBA 2K publisher 2K. It said that the biggest contributors to its Q1 revenue were GTA Online, Grand Theft Auto V, and NBA 2K18 (which has surpassed 10 million copies sold). It also saw significant revenue from its WWE wrestling games.
“Fiscal 2019 is off to a solid start, with first quarter operating results that exceeded our expectations,” Take-Two chief executive officer Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “This performance was driven by better-than-expected recurrent consumer spending on Grand Theft Auto Online and NBA 2K18, as well as robust ongoing demand for Grand Theft Auto V, which is now approaching 100 million units sold-in to date.”
Take-Two’s digital sales continue to take a bigger share of its business. The publisher saw $315 million of its total revenue come from digital channels. That’s 81 percent of its total for the quarter. In Q1 of fiscal 2018, digital sales were 64 percent of Take-Two’s total revenues.
The strength of digital and Grand Theft Auto V in particular have convinced Rockstar to raise its outlook for the rest of the year. Take-Two now expects to earn an income of $1.45 to $1.70 per share for the 12-month period ending March 31. That is with revenues of $2.5 to $2.6 million. With Red Dead Redemption 2 still due out in the fall, the company is feeling confident.
“We are incredibly excited about the October 26 launch of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2,” said Zelnick. “[We’re also looking forward to] the upcoming releases of NBA 2K19 – which marks the 20th anniversary of the series and the 30th anniversary of the Visual Concepts development team – and WWE 2K19. Fiscal 2019 is poised to be another year of profitable growth for Take-Two, and we expect to deliver record operating results. Looking ahead, we have a strong development pipeline across our labels and are exceedingly well positioned for long-term growth and margin expansion.”
Now, let’s wait and see how Rockstar and Take-Two implement some of that “recurrent consumer spending” to print money in Red Dead 2 as well.