While it is no secret that Grand Theft Auto 6’s upcoming November 19th launch will impact the entire gaming industry in some ways, Take-Two Interactive has confirmed that it has even affected the sales of NBA 2K27. Speaking to Bloomberg, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed that the basketball game had sold around 4 million copies so far, making it the second-best-selling title in the NBA 2K franchise.
More details were revealed through the company’s most recent earnings report, where it confirmed that the NBA 2K franchise has sold more than 175 million copies as a whole. Zelnick noted that the latest entry missed sales expectations and indicated that it was likely due to Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders cannibalizing its sales. In the Bloomberg report, Zelnick said that he wasn’t too worried about this.
“If your lunch is going to be eaten, I’d rather be the one eating it,” he said, indicating that he is happy that the sales cannibalization of NBA 2K27 happened at the hands of another Take-Two Interactive outing rather than a competitor. The report itself has also noted that NBA 2K27 has managed to do better than other sports games released this year.
Looking to the future, Take-Two Interactive is forecasting $8 billion to $8.2 billion in net bookings for the current fiscal year that will end in March 2027. While analysts believe that the company’s bookings will likely be higher thanks to its high-profile releases, Zelnick has said that the company is still cautious about how GTA 6 will do on launch, and has thus decided not to change its forecast.
“We chose not to change our guidance because we’re just ten days away from release,” he said. “We’re going to know a whole lot more after that occurs.”
While Take-Two Interactive hasn’t yet offered any solid numbers on the pre-order performance of Grand Theft Auto 6, analytics firm Sensor Tower had estimated last week that it had sold around 7.71 million copies, generating around $751 million in revenue. More recent data from the firm indicates that pre-orders have continued to rise, and at the time of publishing, it sits at 9.69 million sales so far with an estimated revenue of $942 million. Interestingly, the platform split doesn’t seem to have changed much, with PS5 still seemingly in the lead, accounting for 75 percent of the pre-orders, while Xbox Series X/S sits at 25 percent.
On the subject of PS5 dominating pre-order sales for Grand Theft Auto 6 when compared to Xbox Series X/S, as reported by The Verge’s Tom Warren back in September, Xbox’s chief strategy officer Matthew Ball has said that the company has been “very happy” with the game’s performance on its platform so far. He even went on to say that Xbox’s internal analysis “shows our share of pre-orders to be matching our share of the console market.”
Pre-loads for Grand Theft Auto 6 went live today. In the meantime, Rockstar has announced a music festival to celebrate the game on November 21st – just two days after the title is out.
