Under the Spotlight: Take-Two Interactive ($TTWO)

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One game is holding up the global console market this year. 
The hugely anticipated release of Take-Two's ($TTWO) Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) is big enough on its own to flip the market from decline into 5.1% growth in 2026. That’s research firm Newzoo's estimate, not Rockstar's marketing.
The hype has spilled well past gaming. When leaked gameplay clips went viral in August, U.S. safety regulators hijacked the moment to remind people to change their smoke alarm batteries. 
Investors were less amused. Shares have since dropped around 10%, wiping billions from Take-Two’s market value, and Rockstar has subpoenaed Microsoft ($MSFT) and Discord, chasing whoever is behind it.

Take-Two has put its own number on the launch. It has guided FY2027 net bookings to US$8.0–US$8.2B against last year's US$6.72B, naming the 19 November release as the driver. That's around 20% growth resting on a single launch date.
Let's put the firm behind it Under the Spotlight.

GTA's real share

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is a smaller part of Take-Two than almost anyone assumes.

Grand Theft Auto products brought in 12.4% of net revenue in FY2026, down from 30.9% four years earlier. The five best-selling franchises fell from 84% of the business to 54%.

The change wasn't declining revenue but Take-Two's acquisition of mobile games firm Zynga in 2022. That bumped mobile – Toon Blast, Match Factory!, Words With Friends – to half of all revenue, four times what GTA brings in.

So GTA is a small share of the current base, but the piece Take-Two is banking its next leg on. The company expects Rockstar Games – the label behind GTA and Red Dead – to deliver around 37% of FY2027 net bookings.

The metaverse theory

The more interesting bull case is that GTA 6 becomes a platform rather than a product.

GTA Online already behaves like a metaverse – though Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick rejects the buzzword. Either way, GTA players keep an identity, socialise, buy virtual goods and role-play. And nearly 13 years after launch, it's still among Take-Two's largest revenue contributors.

The opportunity that comes with GTA 6 Online is scale. Rockstar is already giving players more control over what happens inside the world. Its new Mission Creator allows users to build their own GTA Online missions, while its 2023 acquisition of Cfx.re brought role-play servers, in-house. The Cfx Marketplace goes further by allowing approved creators to sell maps, vehicles and scripts, which is the skeleton of a Roblox-style ($RBLX) creator economy.

However, Rockstar's own store listing calls GTA 6 a single-player experience, and no online mode has yet been announced. 
Zelnick told investors in August that the company expects to keep supporting the existing GTA Online. Until a successor is announced and dated, GTA 6 is a premium one-off rather than an annuity.

What else is brewing?

Borderlands 4, Mafia: The Old Country and NBA 2K26 all landed in FY2026, while Civilization VII arrived in FY2025. NBA 2K also returns every year like clockwork. NBA 2K26 has sold more than 12 million units, up 9% on the last edition, and grew recurrent spending 7%.

Mobile advertising is another  growth lever. It grew 6% in FY2026 after falling 29% the year before, and management told Jefferies in June it sees room to keep going by monetising players who never spend anything. Non-gaming ads inside mobile games are the stated opportunity.

Meanwhile Zelnick has told analysts AI is producing gains in day-to-day functions, mobile level creation and ad targeting, while saying it won't make blockbuster games cheaper – better tools would raise what players expect.

The numbers

Take-Two trades near US$216 a share for a market cap around US$40B, on a forward P/E of roughly 30x. 

It hasn't posted a GAAP profit since FY2022 – four straight loss years totalling US$9.65B, driven by goodwill write-downs of US$2.34B in FY2024 and US$3.55B in FY2025 against what Zynga was booked at. 

That's why the market prices forward bookings rather than earnings, and the forward number is GTA 6. However, further delays  continues to be a risk. The stock fell about 10% when the launch date slipped in May 2025, and about 7% on the second delay that  November.

The offset to that volatility is Take-Two’s recurring revenue base. Recurrent consumer spending – in-game currency, expansions, in-game advertising – was 78% of FY2026 revenue, against 47% in FY2020. 

Analysts are broadly upbeat. The average price target from the eight analysts covering $TTWO on Stake Black is US$296.63 following the latest earnings, with a 100% 'buy' rating.

Is it a buy?

Bulls point to a launch Newzoo estimates could book between US$3.3B and US$5.2B of global sales in its first week and a franchise with a decade-long monetisation record.

Bears point at the FY2028  comparison, a multiple that already assumes the launch works, and the precedent. The last time Rockstar shipped a GTA, it was 68.9% of Take-Two's revenue. The year after, group revenue fell 54%. 

The answer to that is the diversification itself. In FY2015, Take-Two’s mobile and recurrent-spending businesses were far smaller than they are today. Mobile now generates half of revenue and recurrent consumer spending contributes 78%. That diversification should make FY2028 look very different from FY2015.

Which leaves the question worth doing your own work on: whether an online component arrives in time to turn a launch into an annuity.

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Kylie Purcell

Senior Markets Commentator

Kylie Purcell is an investments analyst and finance journalist with over a decade of experience covering global markets, investment products and digital assets. Her commentary has been featured in publications including the Australian Financial Review, Yahoo Finance and The Motley Fool. She has a Masters Degree in International Journalism from Cardiff University and a Certificate of Securities and Managed Investments (RG146).