Take-Two Interactive reported the earnings for its second quarter today, and GamesIndustry.biz had a chance to talk with CEO Strauss Zelnick about the results, as well as where the company is headed.
Naturally, all eyes are on Grand Theft Auto 6 right now, the launch of which next week could be not only the biggest game launch of all time, but the biggest entertainment product launch of all time in terms of revenue. Pre-orders are currently at nearly 8 million, according to Sensor Tower.
But what are Take-Two's goals beyond GTA? What's happening with BioShock 4, which was announced back in 2019, but seems to have hit a stumbling block, with redundancies announced last year at developer Cloud Chamber? What about the live-service extraction shooter Project Ethos, which was first announced in 2024? What about new IP and reviving old franchises?
And where does the firm see growth coming from in the future?
What are the things you're most excited about in this report?
We had a terrific quarter, obviously. We were at the low end of our net bookings range, but obviously in terms of profitability performance, we were very, very strong. We have an array of great releases. NBA 2K27 is the second most successful launch in the history of the NBA 2K franchise, and our pre-orders for GTA 6 outperformed our expectations. So we're feeling exceedingly positive for the rest of the year.
You said pre-orders outperformed your expectations. What were your expectations?
[We cannot] disclose the numbers, but the point that we're making is our prior expectations obviously were aligned with our guidance, and the pre-orders are far exceeding our original expectations. We're maintaining our guidance, because the release is only 10 days away and we'll know a lot more after the release.
Well, that was going to be my next question, because I noticed you kept your guidance at $8 billion for the year, so I'm presuming that you're not predicting a bigger than expected launch.
We're just not updating our numbers right now because we are so close to the launch. However, pre-orders are far exceeding our expectations.
I wanted to ask about a couple of other things mentioned in the report. I saw Bioshock is still in there. Can you give me an update on what's going on with that game?
It's still in development. We feel very good about how it's going.
It sounds like it's been through the ringer, though. There was a report in 2025 that there were around 80 redundancies and a change in leadership. Does that mean the game has been reset?
We definitely did face some development challenges. We feel like we're on the right track now, but you're correct, we did face some challenges along the way.
And what about Project Ethos? Again, that has been in development for a very long time. Will we be able to see that soon?
We did a public beta that was disappointing, and we made a bunch of changes. We think they've been very beneficial and feel exceedingly optimistic right now.
Well, I was going to ask, do you feel like the live service wave has passed now? I mean, we've already had quite a few high profile live service failures down the years. Do you think maybe the time for this game has passed?
We do not, although we've said all along that free-to-play titles are very challenging, whether that's in mobile or PC or console. But live service, I would say that's too broad a brush, because live services are extremely successful. The bulk of our business is represented by…
