Take-Two pumps 7% as GTA 6 die-hards lose hope

Take-Two stock is pumping following news from Rockstar about Grand Theft Auto VI but gamers might not even be able to afford the next instalment.

Credit rates are so high and inflation so rampant that many gamers who completed GTA 5 back in 2013 now have 2.5 expensive kids, a painful mortgage, and crippling debt.

“I waited three years, then four, for GTA 6. It’s already been 10 years. I’ve got $150k student debt, a 7% mortgage, and two kids,” said a former gamer who also lost a fortune trading meme stocks.

“I don’t know who’ll play GTA 6, but it won’t be me, and it won’t be my ungrateful kids.”

Take-Two Interactive (TTWO), the company behind gaming giant Rockstar, has rallied nearly 7% since Wednesday following a mere mention of GTA 6, the publisher’s flagship title.

Rockstar announced that the first trailer for the much-anticipated title will be released next month, ending more than a decade’s wait for a first glimpse of the latest instalment of the open-world franchise.

How much longer? Really.

Ten years since its predecessor was released back in 2013, many hardcore gamers took the news with a pinch of salt. After all, GTA 5 was released on PlayStation 3 – two generations of consoles ago.

Speculation suggests a GTA 6 release window between April 2024 and March 2025. But at the current rate of inflation, when the game eventually gets released, it might cost as much as a monthly debt repayment.

“This means we’ll see it in 2026 if we’re lucky, I won’t get excited,” one gamer quipped. 

“It’s kinda hard to be excited after how GTA 5 turned out,” said another. “I miss single player Rockstar and they spent the last decade releasing nothing but multiplayer DLC [downloadable content].”

GTA 6 = Cash Money

Yet Wall Street is drooling. The DLC strategy rakes in bags of cash for Rockstar, whose net bookings totalled $5.3 billion in the last financial year without any talk of Grand Theft Auto, the best-selling video game franchise of all time.

GTA 5 remains the best-selling single game of all time, and has consistently sold around five million units per quarter for the last several years. Total sales stood at 185 million units as of August.

And after Take-Two’s extremely bullish forecast earlier this year which promised to roughly double earnings over the next two financial years, confirmation that GTA 6 is on track is something of an ‘all-in’ signal.

Fringe traders caught by surprise by Take-Two’s latest move now await a bearish Jim Cramer prediction to confirm higher price levels to come.

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