Take-Two is paying dearly for delaying Grand Theft Auto 6, but it might be the right thing to do. And we mean for their shareholders too.
While some fans were ready for and even expected the delay, it was no less damaging for Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive.
As reported by CNBC, Take-Two’s shares sank 7 % after the announcement in after-hours trading. This happened even after Take-Two confirmed that they still made a profit this quarter overall.
Some gamers would argue that investors don’t understand video games, unless these are the gamers who are also mired in the same FUD these investors are in.
We should not dismiss the idea that investors know what they’re doing. From their point of view, this game was expected to not only be profitable for Take-Two, but to reverse the fortunes of the game industry as a whole.
So there may be some level of resentment here that Take-Two isn’t helping with their other investments in the game industry. It actually is understandable if the investors are also pessimistic about these repeated delays.
But we found one opinion that argues for Take-Two’s big bet with Grand Theft Auto 6.
Aakash Gupta made this tweet:
Take-Two just vaporized $3.2B in market cap to buy 6 months of polish.
The math here is wild. They’re essentially paying $17M per day of delay to avoid shipping a game that might underperform a $7B launch window.
This tells you everything about how Rockstar views execution risk. They’re not optimizing for time-to-market. They’re optimizing for a single variable: launch quality.
Because in their model, a flawed GTA 6 doesn’t just underperform. It destroys 15 years of franchise equity and tanks the entire live service roadmap.
The interesting part? Every other AAA publisher is watching this and thinking “we can’t afford to do that.”
Rockstar can. And that gap is only getting wider.
Now, we have to push back a bit on one thing Gupta said here. Ubisoft has been holding back development on Beyond Good and Evil 2 for over a decade now. EA has also spent undisclosed millions, potentially billions, on the recently released Battlefield reboot.
The specifics may be different but Rockstar is hardly the only AAA willing to lose millions to make even more.
Of course, no company should be sweating any fall in market cap like its irreversible. When Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out, that number is sure to go back up. And if Take-Two played their cards right, they could reach a new bar in their stream of successful games.
