Take-Two Interactive is one of the very few companies that, when selling four million units of something, can still get up and say that this was below forecast somehow. This was the case with NBA 2K27 upon its launch last quarter. And according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, one major reason for it missing internal expectation was…GTA 6.
In an interview with IGN, Zelnick was asked why NBA 2K27 came in below expectations as reported in the company’s quarterly earnings today. In response, Zelnick said the following:
I think the key point is that while below our forecast, NBA 2K27 is our second best release of NBA 2K in history. It’s an immensely successful title. It sold 4 million units. And in launching more content than ever before for the rest of the year, we have expectations that the title will do even better than it already has done.
I do think that this timing may have affected performance so far. It has been a crowded period, and we do think that GTA 6 coming has had an influence on the consumer. That said, we’re thrilled with how NBA 2K27 is performing.
This issue was addressed further in the earnings call by president Karl Slatoff, who added that the company has “seen this before on a number of different occasions” and that “it’s really hard to know exactly” why NBA 2K27 didn’t sell quite as well as Take-Two had predicted. He said that such things can be influenced by “other things going on in the market both inside and outside the gaming media,” but stopped short of naming GTA 6 as a factor.
With so much stress over the economy right now, it’s not surprising that those who might otherwise purchase NBA 2K27 might be saving their money for GTA 6 just a few months later. Zelnick also mentioned in the earnings report that GTA 6 pre-orders were coming in “far in excess” of what the company expected.
NBA 2K as a franchise has sold over 175 million units globally.
