NBA 2K27 Sold 4 Million but Missed Sales Target Because of GTA 6

Grand Theft Auto VI may already be eating the competition, including games from the same parent company. Take-Two Interactive's NBA 2K27 sold a strong 4 million copies this year after launching on August 25 but the game missed the company's own sales forecast. CEO Strauss Zelnick thinks the looming release of GTA 6 is part of the reason why this happened. Players, it seems, may prefer to save their money for Rockstar Games' upcoming title.

NBA 2K27 was Take-Two's second-biggest NBA 2K launch ever, but it still came in under target, dragging second-quarter net bookings to $1.6 billion against the roughly $1.65 billion Wall Street expected. For a basketball series that usually prints money, a miss is unusual.

Speaking to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Zelnick said he believes some consumers skipped the basketball game to save up for the next Grand Theft Auto. He also pointed to a crowded September that got busier as rival publishers shuffled releases to avoid sharing the same month as Rockstar's juggernaut. Because of this, Take-Two found itself in a strange and enviable spot of competing with itself, and Zelnick is choosing to see the upside.

"If your lunch is going to be eaten, I'd rather be the one eating it," he told Bloomberg. He called the quarter a "good news story," noting that sports titles across the industry are down this year, so NBA 2K27 is hardly the only one suffering if that's what you call it. In a separate interview with IGN, he said Take-Two is "thrilled" with how the game is performing and expects it to do "even better" as it rolls out more content.

He was just as direct with IGN about the cause. "We do think that GTA 6 coming has had an influence on the consumer," Zelnick said, while stressing that NBA 2K27 remains "an immensely successful title" and his "second best release of NBA 2K in history."

This is an example of how huge the shadow GTA VI is casting before it is even out. Zelnick believes the coming launch is nudging some buyers to hold their cash. We've watched this gravity build for months, from pre-orders blowing past the company's own forecasts to analysts treating the game as a test of monetizing an entire audience.

At the end of the day, the math could still work in his favor. If those same players spend bigger on GTA VI after passing on NBA 2K27, the money would stay in the same house.

Rockstar is pulling out all the stops this month, with a concert confirmed for November 21 three days after the Miami Heat suits up as Vice City on the eve of the game's launch. If Zelnick is right, competition with one of Take-Two's own games shows how little is safe.