Take-Two CEO Says He’ll Take ‘Delays Over Flops Any Day’ While Lowering Earnings Forecast
Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K publisher Take-Two is lowering its revenue projections for the 2023 fiscal year, as the company faces delays and mobile gaming drops.
As part of Take-Two’s FY Q2 2023 results, the company revealed it is lowering the expected revenue by $320 million for the current fiscal year. Previously, Take-Two expected between $5.73 and $5.83 billion, but those numbers have been lowered to $5.41 and $5.51 billion. The company is blaming lowered expectations in its mobile business and shifts in the upcoming release schedule for the reduced projections.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said “there have been some modest pipeline shifts” for some games in development, but that “the good news is that those games are still coming.” The CEO added that “I’ll choose delays any day over taking some flops. That’s really the key in this business,” saying delays in the past have always been worth waiting for.
Those changes to Take-Two’s release schedule include a mobile title from 2K, Marvel’s Midnight Suns delays on both PS5/Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch/last-gen consoles, and Kerbal Space Program 2 shifted to early access. In total, Zelnick said 87 games are on the way from Take-Two Interactive’s various studios.
Many of those games are coming from the recently-acquired Zynga. In fact, 38 of the 87 games in development at Take-Two are set to be Mobile titles, another sign that the publishing giant is pushing harder into its mobile future. The rest of the software lineup is as follows:
- 24 “Immersive Core” games
- 10 Independent games
- 28 Mobile games
- 7 “Mid-Core” games
- 8 New Iterations of Previously Released Titles
Take-Two defines “Immersive Core” games as titles with deep gameplay and hours of content, like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and NBA 2K. “Mid-Core” games are defined as arcade titles like WWE Battlegrounds, or games that don’t feature the same volume of content as Immersive Core games, like New Tales from the Borderlands. And, it’s worth noting that some of the 87 games have already released this fiscal year, like The Quarry, New Tales from the Borderlands, and NBA 2K23.
The company did report some successes from the last quarter, reporting $1.39 billion in revenue revealing that Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption passed 170 million and 70 million units sold, respectively.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
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