Rockstar games like GTA to make less than $1 billion this year
Take-Two Interactive predicts that Rockstar Games titles will make less than $1 billion in net bookings in Fiscal Year 2023, indicating no GTA 6 release.
Rockstar Games earnings are expected to dip this year and this signals GTA 6 won't release release until after March 2024.
Rockstar Games is expected to make less than $1 billion in net bookings during Take-Two Interactive's FY23 period, executive management for the company announced during a recent earnings call. While the numbers weren't clearly outlined, a quick bit of math gives us some figures.
Take-Two says it expects to make $5.8 to $5.9 billion from net bookings in FY23, and that Rockstar Games should make up roughly 17% of earnings. This puts Rockstar's share of net bookings in the range of $986 million on the low-end and $1 billion on the higher-end. What's interesting is that these are net bookings, not net revenues, and on average net bookings are typically higher because these figures include full online content revenues from games like NBA 2K, GTA Online, and Red Dead Online.
So what do these numbers tell us? Take-Two is expected Rockstar's titles to deliver lower earnings in FY23. Grand Theft Auto revenues are already at their pre-pandemic levels and GTA V is winding down after nearly 170 million copies sold. For reference, GTA alone earned $1.08 billion in net revenues in FY22 and likely earned even more from net bookings during the period.
This also strongly indicates GTA 6 won't launch in FY23, but this is to be expected considering Rockstar's silence and lack of announcements on the game. If GTA 6 would be released by March 2024, we'd likely already have an announcement and full-on reveal of the game.
I've predicted that GTA 6 is targeting a release during Take-Two's Fiscal Year 2024 period, which runs from April 1, 2023 through March 31, 2024.