Take-Two Interactive has released its financial results for the first fiscal quarter. The documents reveal that there are currently more than 70 games in the Take-Two development pipeline, and that doesn't include hypercasual titles or "new iterations of previously released titles".
The Take-Two slate: a Marvel's Midnight Suns delay, more GTA, and lots of mobile games
Take-Two calls its current development pipeline "the strongest...in the company's history". Between the 2023 and 2025 financial years, Take-Two has more than 20 "immersive core" games in its pipeline, with this category including games like Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto. Specifically, the company points to Marvel's Midnight Suns, Kerbal Space Program 2, and WWE 2k23 as "immersive core" titles; these are big-budget affairs with "the deepest gameplay and the most hours of content", according to Take-Two. Marvel's Midnight Suns was recently delayed yet again, but Take-Two is still estimating the game will arrive this fiscal year.
As well as the "immersive core" lineup, there are also ten "independent" games in development, which Take-Two defines as anything being externally developed. This includes upcoming shooter Rollerdrome, which lands next week. There are a whopping thirty-eight mobile titles on Take-Two's upcoming slate, including mobile versions of the much-maligned Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy remaster and the recently-delayed Star Wars Hunters. Seven "mid-core" games, including a new Tales from the Borderlands entry, are also on their way this year, along with eight new iterations of previously-released titles (so that's your ports, your remasters, et cetera). It isn't entirely clear how the GTA Trilogy remasters escape being "iterations of previously released titles", but there we are.
What else is in the Take-Two financial documents?
The Take-Two documents reveal a company in a pretty strong position, which you'd expect given that the studio acquired mobile giant Zynga earlier this year (in a sale that was, until Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition, the biggest gaming deal of all time). Indeed, Take-Two reveals a desire to push forward with more mergers and acquisitions in the future in its investor presentation, so we could well see more companies being "taken" in the near future, as it were. Naturally, given that the hypercasual market is a big part of Take-Two's business model, the company also wants to keep expanding in that area, as well as building on its live-service prospects and testing "new business models".
Unfortunately, it looks like those new business models might extend to Web3 and the blockchain. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has expressed both guarded optimism and skepticism regarding NFTs and Web3 technology in the past, but in the company's investor presentation, it lists Web3 as an "emerging opportunity" that's worth looking into. I suspect the developers who are strongly opposed to the tech, as well as the companies that have had to give it up because of a strong player backlash, would disagree. Still, it makes sense that an investor presentation would emphasize potential profit routes, and it doesn't necessarily mean that Grand Theft Auto NFTs are imminent. Be sure to take a look at the Take-Two documents in full for more nerdy info on financials and other corporate stats.
