Borderlands 2 Ships 5 Million Units, Surges Take-Two’s Sales for the Quarter

Take-Two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar Games and 2K Games among others, has revealed its earnings report for the quarter ended on September 30. The publisher has posted surging revenues for the the three months buoyed by sales from Gearbox's Borderlands 2.

For the second fiscal quarter, Take-Two Interactive posted net revenues of $273.1 million, which is more than double the $107 million amount it earned for the same time period last year. Although, last year's biggest retail release was Civilization V: Game of the Year Edition; which, was no match for this year's release — Borderlands 2.

The publisher has revealed that Borderlands 2 has now shipped five million copies to date and has deemed the franchise a "breakout success." Note that it's five million shipped and not sold, but still impressive numbers nonetheless.

While Take-Two's financials for the second quarter was well beyond what they expected, the publisher has slashed its full-year forecasts to "reflect its revised assumed release scheduled," or in other words, it's because Grand Theft Auto 5 is set for the next fiscal year. Take-Two originally pegged sales of $.17 to $1.8 billion for its full-year. Now, the publisher has now scaled that back to $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion.

For reference, Grand Theft Auto 5's "Spring 2013" release window falls into Take-Two's fiscal for 2014, which begins in April, 2013. 

Hopefully, Take-Two has a "stop-gap" game before Grand Theft Auto 5 ships that does as well as Borderlands 2. 

I take it, we can really expect Borderlands 3 to be a reality at some point, no? Congats, Gearbox!

Thanks, GamesIndustry