Take-Two cutting costs again as Q3 sales dip 3%

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Take-Two today released its financial results for its third fiscal quarter, covering the three months ended December 31, and while it reported slightly sagging sales and bookings, the company did beat its guidance and posted its smallest quarterly net loss since the May 2022 acquisition of Zynga.

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Some of the usual suspects for Take-Two did well in the third quarter, with Grand Theft Auto 5 and Online, Red Dead Redemption, and Zynga's lineup beating the company's expectations, but one of its usual mainstays, NBA 2K, missed a step, with the company reporting "softness" in NBA 2K24 sales, which in turn hurt recurrent consumer spending.

NBA 2K24 has now sold-in 7 million units, compared to about 8 million for NBA 2K23 at this point in its lifespan.

"Remember, this is still a very good news story," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz in a briefing call on the earnings. "This is the number one-selling sports title in North America, obviously the number one basketball title. We've sold-in over 7 million units, and in the fullness of time, NBA 2k24 will generate net bookings in line with NBA2K23. So this is largely a timing matter."

Zelnick pointed to slower sales for the game on older systems contrasted with enthusiasm on the newer generation of systems, suggesting it is "a reflection of consumers transitioning to the new hardware."

Elsewhere in the catalog, Grand Theft Auto 5 hit 195 million units sold-in to retailers, with the largest ever increase in new Grand Theft Auto Online accounts driven by the game's holiday Chop Shop update.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has now hit 61 million units shipped, and Zelnick was particularly upbeat about the company's mobile performance and the quarter's debuts from Zynga: Top Troops and Match Factory.

Given how much had been made about the difficulty of launching new games in mobile in recent years, we asked Zelnick if that