“Rockstar Has Completed the Development of GTA VI”: What Take-Two Told Investors Ten Days Out

Earnings calls are not where GTA news usually breaks, and Monday’s was no exception until an analyst from B. Riley asked about attach rates. Strauss Zelnick brushed the modelling question aside, then said the thing: “So right now, Rockstar has completed the development of GTA VI. That may not come as a surprise to you since we’re 10 days away from the release.” The studio has “done their very best work”, the marketing campaign is “fully baked”, and the remaining job is “to make sure that we do an A+ job technically in delivering this product to consumers”. After that, “Rockstar will focus on what comes next, and we’ll announce that in the fullness of time.”

It is the first time anyone at Take-Two has described the game as finished rather than on track. Nobody at Rockstar has said it, which fits; the studio talks through trailers and Newswire posts, and the 30 fps statement it published the following morning is the closest it has come to a technical sign-off. Pre-loading is already putting a version 1.001.004 build on consoles, so the words and the files agree.

The pre-order line came in the prepared remarks and then got repeated in four different ways under questioning. Zelnick’s version: “Preorders for Grand Theft Auto VI are tracking far in excess of our initial expectations, and we know that the numbers will speak for themselves soon enough.” Lainie Goldstein’s: “the level of preorders generated is extraordinary.” The press release itself used “unprecedented levels”. What none of them did was attach a figure, and when UBS asked why none of that strength had found its way into guidance, the answer was almost sheepish: “we’re days away from the launch of GTA VI, and we tend to avoid claiming success before it occurs.”

Asked by StoneX what was driving it, Zelnick credited anticipation and the press. “All the press so far has been universally positive. So I’m, makes me nervous even saying those words, Mike, but they are true, and we still aren’t ready to declare victory.” The one outside estimate in circulation, cited by Reuters from Sensor Tower, is about 7.71 million digital pre-orders worldwide as of November 3. Treat that as a tracker’s model, not a Take-Two disclosure. The company has promised to talk once it has “some experience post launch”, which points at the February call.

The quarter being reported, July to September, is the quiet one. Net bookings were $1.60 billion, down 18 percent from $1.96 billion and just under the company’s own $1.62 to $1.67 billion range, with NBA 2K27 the stated reason: a strong launch, the second best in series history, but below plan. The GAAP net loss was $54 million, narrower than last year’s $133.9 million. Operating expenses rose on marketing, and Goldstein confirmed where that is heading: “The majority of the marketing will be around the launch in Q3, but we will still have some ongoing marketing into Q4.”

The guidance is the quiet headline. $3.35 to $3.5 billion for a single quarter is roughly double the same period last year, and Goldstein said recurrent spending in the GTA series should see “significant growth” driven by the Ultimate Edition, whose add-on content is booked as recurrent revenue rather than a game sale. That accounting quirk means the Ultimate Edition upgrade is doing work in two lines at once. Full-year revenue guidance did tick up to $7.98 to $8.18 billion, but the headline bookings range stayed where it was in August.

Two marketing figures were new. The Extended Look “became the platform’s most viewed title for the week, drawing in 31 million consumers in just its first 4 days”, Zelnick said, the first audience number anyone has put on the Netflix premiere. And GTA VI: The Album “included 3 tracks that debuted in the top 10 of their respective Billboard charts”, which matches what Atlantic had already claimed for Last Thing You Need on the Hot 100, Macacoa 2000 on Hot Latin Songs and Sexy Magic on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. He also name-checked the Heat’s Night in Vice City and the Miami activations.

Then Citi raised the budget. Three weeks ago Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, told Bloomberg Businessweek the game had not cost more than the Burj Khalifa, a building with a reported $1.5 billion price tag, and the number has been treated as a budget ever since. Zelnick dismantled it without giving another: “We haven’t spoken about budgets at all. Obviously, we’ve invested heavily in Grand Theft Auto VI. I would like to point out that someone saying something is not more than something does not mean it’s close to something, half of something, 1/4 of something or 1/10 of something.” So the ceiling stands and the floor is anyone’s guess.

PC got the usual non-answer, sharpened. Asked whether rising console prices might accelerate PC or streaming availability, Zelnick said “any information about new SKUs and the like will always come from our labels”, which is the same line he gave the Wall Street Journal last week. Later he described console and PC capabilities as not “materially” different today, which is an argument for a port without being a promise of one. The platforms guide still has 2027 as the earliest sensible window.

GTA Online is not being wound down for the new game. The series grew double digits in both recurrent spending and GTA+ members in the quarter on the back of the Kortz Center Heist, NoPixel V launched in September as “a professional version of the RPG business that we purchased with FiveM”, and Zelnick committed Rockstar to supporting Online “with new content and ongoing events for its vast community”. On modding he was relaxed, “we’re just not religious on the topic”, and said FiveM is profitable. On AI-assisted decompilation he was not relaxed at all: the business has been “largely immune to piracy concerns forever because of file sizes”, but “it’s going to become more of a challenge”, so Take-Two is “utterly focused on enhancing our technical defenses and enhancing our legal activities appropriately”. Anyone following the pre-load datamining will know what prompted that question.