GTA 5 Still Top Contributor, Breaks 75 Million Mark

The scheduled quarterly earnings call from Take-Two Interactive to investors just ended and a few interesting numbers have come in, while others are absent. GTA 5 has made yet another major stride in terms of shipped copies since last time around, and the game continues to account for the most revenue.

Last time there was an earnings call like this, we learned that GTA 5 had crossed the 70 million shipped copies mark, a figure which does not entail digital sales. While large spans of time usually pass between two milestones are hit, we assumed a jump up to ~73-75 million would happen over the course of the quarter as the game was seemingly having a high time. For example, it regained the number one spot on the UK game sales charts once more, entering a rather roomy hall of fame.

Surprisingly, our upper guess turned out to be true. GTA 5 has officially shipped 75 million physical copies worldwide. Something about this game is just pushing it forward and forward unrelenting. While we've covered the topic of GTA 5's success in the market quite frequently, these kinds of sales must be the result of some kind of black magic.

We also learned a thing or two about the kind of revenue GTA 5 and Online are still bringing in. The gross quarterly revenue for the company was $476.5 million. Compared to last year's $414.2 million, this is a 15% increase. The biggest contributors to the income are usually names, and GTA 5 spearheaded the list once again alongside titles such as WWE 2K17, NBA 2K17 and the latest entry in the Civilization franchise.

Take-Two had a highly successful holiday quarter. Consumer demand for our new releases and catalog titles was strong throughout the period, and players continued to engage significantly with our games after purchase.

It seems people have been more keen on buying Shark Cards lately (meaning Rockstar's practice of jacking up in-game prices for new items in DLC is working. Curses!), leading to a sharp increase in revenue from digital sources. Digital content brought in $240.2 million, which is a whopping 64% increase compared to last year's $146.4 million. Just to clarify, but "last year" we do not mean the entirety of the previous fiscal year, but the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

While digital revenue as a whole also accounts for actual game sales, microtransactions like Shark Cards fall under "recurrent consumer spending", meaning stuff you buy more than once. Such products generated 39% of that $240.2 million digital revenue and accounted for 20% of gross revenue. Again, of course, GTA 5 is at the top of the contributor list.

As a result, we delivered better-than-expected bookings, including our best-ever quarter for recurrent consumer spending, along with double-digit growth in both net revenue and net cash provided by operating activities.

The company closed at a loss of almost $30 million this quarter, which is an improvement over last year's loss of over $40 million. The $250 + $25.9 million deal to acquire Spanish mobile game developer Social Point likely chewed into the company's coffers quite a bit, so it's not like Take-Two is doing poorly for itself.

A notable absence from the call was any new mention of Red Dead Redemption 2. It would have been interesting to see some numbers on how pre-orders are going, what with three different ways of securing the game already available to consumers even though a single cinematic trailer is all we have to go on.

A follow-up call will expand on future collaborative plans with Social Point will take place later today. Due to Social Point being the focus of the call, it's unlikely that any relevant new info will be revealed.