By Deborah Mary Sophia
Aug 7 (Reuters) - Take-Two Interactive said on Friday it is seeing "unprecedented" demand for "Grand Theft Auto VI", reinforcing investor expectations of a major boost to the company from the blockbuster title's planned release in November.
Shares of Take-Two rose more than 4% even as the videogame publisher stuck to its full-year bookings forecast, with CEO Strauss Zelnick saying the company was "cautiously optimistic" about demand.
Take-Two began taking pre-orders for "GTA VI"
on June 25, indicating the long wait for the game's release that has undergone several delays was over. The game is expected to rake in billions of dollars for the firm within days of its launch.
"Our pre-orders are exceptional. No one's ever seen anything like this before at Take-Two or in the industry ... the level of pre-orders is unprecedented and astonishing, but they are so unprecedented that we just don't know how it'll translate into sales," Zelnick said in a post-earnings call.
"One of the reasons we're not changing our guidance is, to be clear, we haven't sold one unit yet. And you can cancel a pre-order ... And we just don't believe in claiming victory before it occurs."
With "GTA VI", Take-Two is looking to top the success of predecessor "GTA V" - one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 230 million units sold since its 2013 launch.
Investors have been closely watching for any announcement around an online multiplayer mode for "GTA VI", hoping that Take-Two would replicate the success of "GTA V Online", which has been a consistent source of revenue long after the original release.
The live-service components of a title typically allow companies to generate more income through players' purchases of in-game currency.
"What's really important for Take-Two is some notion of the plan for how 'GTA Online' will evolve. It's pretty well understood that 'GTA VI' will do just fine, if not better than expectations. But it's more about the longevity of opportunity," MoffettNathanson analyst Clay Griffin said.
Take-Two left its fiscal 2027 bookings outlook unchanged at $8 billion to $8.20 billion, compared with analysts' expectation of $8.86 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
It projected current-quarter bookings between $1.62 billion and $1.67 billion, below market estimates, signaling continued weakness from the lack of fresh titles outside of "GTA" and tapering benefits from its mobile games such as Color Block Jam.
For the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, the company's net bookings stood at $1.39 billion, a touch above estimates of $1.38 billion.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
