GTA 5 Publisher Closes Strong Financial Year

Take-Two Interactive has posted its earnings report for the last quarter of fiscal 2018 and, as always, Grand Theft Auto 5 was monumental in bringing significant revenue and profits to the company. Some interesting news about an upcoming game from 2K was also revealed.

CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke about the achievements of Take-Two. Since you, the average player, likely doesn't care about about how much money a huge company like Take-Two made over the course of these weird non-calendar years, suffice to say they made a lot. All that revenue in turn ensures Rockstar's employees get paid, so Take-Two doing well is also good for you.

Among the highlighted achievements was the release of the GTA 5 Premium Online Edition and the consistent free content support GTA Online has been getting throughout the year.

GTA Online continues to be a huge contributor to Take-Two's finances, offering a plentiful and steady source of revenue through both game sales and microtransactions — to which Zelnick refers to as "recurrent consumer spending", a term used by Take-Two officials in the past.

Though GTA 5 is still top-dog, Zelnick expects that fiscal 2019 will be a record year due to the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in October. The highly anticipated Wild West epic was delayed twice, with its current projected release date putting it in a financially beneficial period of time.

Another interesting tidbit of news is that a "highly anticipated" title from 2K was delayed from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2020. Zelnick cited the need for more development time as a cause.

While no official word on the nature of the game has gotten out, the prevailing theory is that this title is Borderlands 3. The existence of this new installment in the crazy, cel-shaded co-op shooter franchise hasn't been confirmed, but pretty much everyone knows it is inevitable.

GTA 5's burgeoning sales propelled it past the 90 million shipped copies mark recently and we don't doubt that the mythic 100 million will be hit before long in early fiscal 2019.