Aug 7 (Reuters) – Take-Two Interactive maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date for its highly anticipated title “Grand Theft \u200cAuto VI”, bringing the blockbuster release one step closer to fans. <\/p>\n
Shares of the \u200ccompany were up marginally in volatile premarket trading. Take-Two projected current-quarter bookings below Wall Street estimates, signaling continued \u200bweakness from the lack of strong new titles ahead of the “GTA VI” release. <\/p>\n
The videogame publisher began taking pre-orders for “GTA VI” on June 25, but did not provide any material detail on demand trends. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick only said that pre-orders have had an “exceptional start” in \u200cthe post-earnings call. <\/p>\n
The game is \u2060expected to be a gold mine for the company this year, raking in billions of dollars within days of its launch, thanks to \u2060the franchise’s popularity. “GTA V”, the predecessor, is one of the best-selling games ever, and has sold nearly 230 million units since its 2013 launch. <\/p>\n
Investors have been closely watching for any announcement around \u200ban online \u200bmultiplayer mode for “GTA VI”, hoping that Take-Two would \u200breplicate the success of “GTA V Online”, \u200cwhich has been a consistent source of revenue for the company. <\/p>\n
The online version helped the company keep players engaged long after the release of “GTA V”. The live-service components of a title typically allow companies to generate more income through players’ purchases of in-game currency. <\/p>\n
“Some of the weakness (in shares) may be the lack of incremental detail about ‘GTA VI’,” said MoffettNathanson \u200canalyst Clay Griffin. <\/p>\n
“What’s really important for Take-Two is \u200bsome notion of the plan for how ‘GTA Online’ will \u200bevolve. It’s pretty well understood that ‘GTA \u200bVI’ will do just fine, if not better than expectations. But \u200cit’s more about the longevity of opportunity.” <\/p>\n
Take-Two \u200bsaid it expects fiscal \u200b2027 bookings of $8 billion to $8.20 billion. Analysts on average were expecting a 31.9% jump to $8.86 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. <\/p>\n
The company forecast second-quarter bookings between $1.62 \u200bbillion and $1.67 billion, below \u200canalysts’ average estimate of $1.85 billion. <\/p>\n
For the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, net \u200bbookings stood at $1.39 billion, a touch above market estimates of $1.38 billion. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Deborah \u200bSophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 7 (Reuters) – Take-Two Interactive maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[152953,247351,222336,47635,61,60,4025,199539,80],"class_list":["post-586025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-bookings","tag-grand-theft-auto-vi","tag-gta-vi","tag-highly-anticipated","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-launch","tag-take-two-interactive","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}