Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors on November 9 that Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders are running well ahead of what the company expected, in the publisher’s last earnings call before the game launches on November 19.
“Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI are tracking far above our initial expectations, and we know that the numbers will speak for themselves soon enough,” Take-Two said in its Q2 fiscal 2027 results release. In the same release, Zelnick said pre-order interest kept climbing to levels the company had never seen before, and that Take-Two expects the strongest year in its history.
Take-Two did not publish official pre-order figures. The company is standing by its forecast of about $8 billion in net bookings for the full fiscal year 2027, a number that leans heavily on how Grand Theft Auto VI sells once it is out. On the call, Zelnick framed the game as the launch that will reset expectations for Take-Two’s business going forward.
“Hit creation remains the purview of human beings”
Asked by an investor about AI-powered compilations and decompilations raising piracy worries, Zelnick said Take-Two is strengthening both technical and legal protections. He said every entertainment business faces some level of piracy, that Take-Two expects the issue to be manageable, and that games have been largely shielded so far because of large file sizes, closed console ecosystems and online requirements.
Answering that same question, Zelnick argued that recent AI tools have made building assets easier without making the core job easier. “Making a big hit was hard then, and it’s hard now, and it’s going to be hard in the future. And hit creation remains the purview of human beings,” he said, adding that the creativity behind Take-Two’s success is human creativity harnessing technology. In March 2026, Zelnick had rejected the idea that AI could handle a project on the scale of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Nine days to launch
The remarks come at the end of a long ramp for a game that was originally slated for earlier release before developer Rockstar Games pushed the launch back. Grand Theft Auto VI has been widely expected to be the biggest video game launch ever, and Zelnick’s comments are the last official read on demand before release.
Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19, 2026 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
