Take-Two revealed its latest quarterly financial report.

You can read here that Grand Theft Auto V has shipped NINETY MILLION copies by this point, and in 2017, 15 million were sold! The game still sells as if it was new. No wonder that Grand Theft Auto Online reported its best „recurring customer spending” period. (In other words: the microtransactions and DLC sell well.) The company also got net profit, which wasn’t the case a year ago – indeed, they LOST money back then, possibly due to Mafia III. Back to this recurrent consumer spending, it grew 64% year-on-year, accounting for 32% of total net revenue. The digitally-delivered net revenue also grew 8%, and it accounted for 54% of total net revenue. (Think about it for a second: 86% of the publisher’s net revenue came from digital sources, whether it was a game or DLC/microtransactions for it!)

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, emphasized that while their recurrent spending will remain a focus, he also stressed that they are „focused on players, not payers.” The publisher hopes that Red Dead Redemption 2 will not be delayed once again, and they expect a lot from Rockstar’s game – by the end of March 2019, 1.8-1.85 billion (!) dollars of revenue, and 123-133 million dollars of profit. Gigantic numbers…

Take-Two also refers to a „highly anticipated new title” in its report, which could either be Borderlands 3, or a new BioShock game. (Our money is on Borderlands.) The new, Private Division label was also mentioned – it has Patrice Desilets’ (Assassin’s Creed!) Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, an unannounced Obsidian (Fallout: New Vegas!) RPG, another unannounced RPG by The Outsiders (formed by ex-DICE developers), and a sci-fi FPS. The last one on the list is being worked on by Marcus Lehto, co-creator of Halo, and creative director of Halo: Reach.

Karl Slatoff, the president of Take-Two, is impressed and is „very sanguine” about the Nintendo Switch and the rapid growth of its user base, but they have nothing to announce for this platform. He followed up with the usual PR talk about the development costs and „what’s right for the platform,” when porting games to the Switch was brought up.

About the battle royale phenomenon (all we have to say is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds…), Zelnick said that while it’s interesting to see that the genre has taken off recently, they want to follow their route and be as innovative as possible. (Then why did we write yesterday about the rumors of Red Dead Redemption 2 possibly having a battle royale mode?) He also added that if there’s a demand for a PUBG-style game, they will get to it.

So, Take-Two is swimming in money, and we’re waiting for them to finally announce that this „highly anticipated title” is Borderlands 3. We’d appreciate a new BioShock as well, though.

Source: Take-Two, edge.media-server.com, DualShockers, VG247