Take-Two Interactivehas been very busy lately, and its Fiscal Year 2021 is off to a fantastic start. Between whispers and rumors aboutGrand Theft Auto 6andsubsidiary Private Division signing a deal with three indie game studios, the company far outpaced its own expectations.
Net revenue for Quarter 1 of the Fiscal Year 2021 (January 1st to March 31st) reached $831 million dollars, and more than half of that was attributed to recurrent consumer spending in the form of game subscriptions, among other things. That’s nearly half again as much profit compared to Q1FY2020. In a fiscal first-quarter record, Net Bookings grew 136% to $996.2 million.
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Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick said, “Our outstanding results were driven by the performance of NBA 2K20, Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online, and Social Point’s mobile games.” Breaking it down game by game, it’s easy to see how Take-Two Interactive’s profits took off this year.
NBA 2K20did very well right out the gate, especially with its promise to donate 5% of its revenue from certain microtransactions to charity. Even more surprising,Take-Two Interactive raised over $15 million for COVID-19relief this way. It seems that microtransactions are very lucrative, accounting forover half of Take-Two Interactive’s total revenuelast year. With so many players spending more time indoors with their video games, the revenue bump is no surprise there.
Grand Theft Auto 5is easily one of the most played games this year, with SteamCharts reporting an average of about 250,000 players logging in daily over the course of the quarter. During that time,Red Dead Redemption 2actually saw a significant drop from an average of about fifty thousand players to almost half that. And that’s not even taking into account players who are logging in via Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, or mobile devices.
The company may be feeling good right now, but it is not above criticism. Some players still have a bad taste in their mouths from when Take-Two Interactive started getting litigious earlier this month, demanding the trailer for a fan-madeSan Andreasremake be taken down as well as suing a rapper over dance moves. There is also evidence that it took steps tosabotage and dismantle theKerbal Space Program 2development team.
Whether this good trend continues into Q2 2021 onward depends a lot on whetherXCOM: Chimera Squad, BioShock: The Collection, andNBA 2K21, among others, are as enticing to players old and new as the company is hoping. Until the numbers come in for Q2 (April 1st through June 30th), the video game rat race continues.
