GTA 6 pre-orders are ‘far above initial expectations’ but NBA 2K27 was ‘below our forecast’, Take-Two says

Take-Two says pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 are “far above initial expectations”, but its other recent major release NBA 2K27 hasn’t met its forecast.

Despite delivering “the second highest net bookings performance in the history of the series” and selling more than 4 million copies since its release in early September, NBA 2K27 “was below our forecast for the period”, according to the publisher.

It expects big things from GTA 6 , however, stating: “Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI are tracking far above our initial expectations, and we know that the numbers will speak for themselves soon enough.”

Despite this claim, Take-Two has only modestly revised its forecast for the financial year, adjusting its range from $7.9 – $8.1 billion up to $7.98 – $8.18 billion.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said the company was not yet adjusting its guidance because the game is so close to release.

“[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,” Zelnick said.

“We’re maintaining our guidance, because the release is only 10 days away and we’ll know a lot more after the release.”

When asked whether the decision to keep the guidance at around $8 billion for the year was a sign that Take-Two wasn’t predicting a bigger than expected launch, Zelnick reiterated: “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.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Zelnick was asked whether he felt the wave of live service games had passed. He replied that the vast majority of Take-Two’s income still comes from live service titles (such as GTA Online, NBA 2K or WWE 2K), the upcoming release of GTA aside.

“We’ve said all along that free-to-play titles are very challenging, whether that’s in mobile or PC or console,” Zelnick explained. “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 live services and what we call recurrent consumer spend. It’s the vast majority of our business today.”

He added: “The business basically runs on live services, punctuated by, we hope, some huge releases.”