First-quarter fiscal 2027 results came on August 7, 2026; however, unlike other earnings reports by Take-Two Interactive, the report was released on Friday and early enough to catch pre-market attention, a unique choice by the company that cannot be found in history as the last quarterly report held after markets' closing hours. This timing was chosen on purpose, for it marked the beginning of the reporting period that included pre-order of GTA 6 game.
CEO Strauss Zelnick did not mince words on the topic in the call, saying that the company got a very good reaction to GTA 6 pre-orders and the figures are unprecedented and astounding in their magnitude and the fact that the company still struggles in finding how exactly they should quantify the success in terms of numbers. However, he refrained from claiming victory too early, stating that strong pre-orders do not guarantee strong final sales, for there had been no sold units at all and pre-orders can still be cancelled.
Although Take-Two does not share numbers specific for GTA 6, there are some figures from their total quarterly figures to give insight into what has happened.
The numbers of total net bookings for the quarter are expectedly high, with their value of $1.39 billion owed mainly to better-than-expected performance of the company's NBA 2K and GTA games, with GTA bookings growing by 3% compared to last year. Some independent estimates supplement this information as analytics company Newzoo has estimated roughly $180 million in digital pre-order spends in U.S. and five major European countries during the final week of June with the global total being estimated at $260 million mark.
The figure is impressive as the period of reporting only includes 5 days of pre-orders, for pre-order bookings started on June 25 while June 30 marked the end of the period.
In the letter to stakeholders, CEO Strauss Zelnick used the strong performance of pre-orders to cite as a reason for increasing the company's outlook for Net Bookings for the Fiscal 2027 from the $6.72 billion it achieved during 2026 fiscal year to $8.0 to $8.2 billion.
The reason for such an increase was the expected release date of GTA on November 19.
The price details for GTA 6, as well as the pre-order information, were revealed when pre-orders began in late June.
The regular edition costs $79.99 and is available for both physical purchase in a box containing a download code instead of a disk and for digital download.
In addition, there is a special "Ultimate" edition with extra content that costs $99.99 and includes premium cars, clothes, and some weapons.
Those who are willing to preorder or purchase the game by November 20, 2026, are informed of what they get for doing that; the Vintage Vice City pack comes with all preorders.
Some issues already arose in regard to logistics for early purchasers.
The support page for GTA 6 was updated by Rockstar and specifies that redemption codes of the PlayStation 5 are region-specific, whereas codes for Xbox Series X|S are not.
Fans of the video game series were wondering when they would be able to watch the trailer.
Rockstar answered this question directly: the "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look" will air exclusively on Netflix on Thursday, August 27, at 3 p.m. ET, after which it will also appear on Rockstar's YouTube channel and the GTA VI website.
Selecting an online platform rather than YouTube is different from what Rockstar did previously when releasing the first two trailers, demonstrating the company's willingness to attract attention with all the means.
Previews before the reveal were also quite heated. In the whole month of July, no sources could clearly state when and where exactly the third trailer will appear because the ex-Rockstar animator thought that the development of the game was done by "80 to 90 percent."
Everything else remains unchanged concerning the core parameters of the release. It has already been stated multiple times that Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026, while its release on the PC platform is set for some point in early 2027 and hasn't been revealed yet.
So far, the date of November 2026 saw two delays since originally the release was supposed to take place in 2025, then shifted to May 2026 and finally to November 2026.
As for each of these postponements, Rockstar claims that there is nothing about the quality of the production and that they simply need some additional time to polish everything to make it look even better.
There is another story behind the marketing efforts currently being conducted — labor-related one that seems to unfold simultaneously.
The workers at Rockstar Games located in the UK are currently in the process of starting the official negotiations about joining the trade unions; both sides claim that the initial meeting was productive, but there's yet no resolution of this problem only several months before the planned release date.
