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Strauss Zelnick was repeatedly asked about the 2024 launch date for GTA 6 in a recent CNBC news segment, and the CEO of parent company Rockstar Take-Two said anything to avoid talking about GTA 6.
Zelnick appeared on the news channel’s Squawk Box show to discuss the company’s ambitious revenue projections, which are so over the top – about $3 billion to be exact – that the release of a highly anticipated game like GTA 6 is one of the most likely explanations. Co-host Becky Quick commented that the news “left people speculating that you should have Grand Theft Auto 6”.
We’ve already said we’re working on the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto, but Rockstar has yet to announce a release date. We’re working on this huge pipeline. IN [2025 и 2026 финансовом году] 36 games will hit the market, and we certainly have high hopes for them.
And you’re right, we don’t usually talk about future years. We usually give recommendations and try to go straight to the center, that’s what we have to do. In this case, we wanted to provide the industry with the transparency it has been asking for for a long time. Therefore, we basically gave a forecast for this financial year and subsequent ones. We have high expectations for [2025 финансовый год]but we also expect consistent growth in [2026 финансовом году].
Quick argues that Zelnick and Take-Two are usually “pretty conservative” in their forecasts – which makes this $3 billion surge even more unusual – and asks why Zelnick is so confident in this forecast.
We have been working on this pipeline for a long time. We have a pretty good ability to predict the performance of new iterations of existing franchises.
“Like Grand Theft Auto?” Quick wedges in.
Smiling, Zelnik continues:
In fact, we have 14 franchises, each of which has sold over five million copies. These are games like Red Dead, Borderlands, BioShock, Civilization and many more.
This is true; these franchises are big and successful in their own right, but even Red Dead Redemption isn’t a big $3 billion game.
As always, a 2024 launch for GTA 6 remains unconfirmed. The fiscal year that Take-Two planned technically stretches into the first quarter of 2025, for starters, and GTA came out both in the fall and in the spring, so we can’t rule out either period. GTA 6 isn’t the only explanation for Take-Two’s expected numbers either, though it’s becoming increasingly likely.
