Take-Two earnings and GTA 6: bookings fall 18% to $1.60 billion, guidance holds at $8 billion with launch ten days out

Take-Two earnings and GTA 6: what the Q2 filing actually says

Take-Two earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 2027, a GTA 6 launch-week snapshot, filed with the SEC on November 9, 2026, are a snapshot of a company one week from the biggest launch in its history. The quarter ended September 30. Net bookings, the figure Take-Two uses for the value of what players buy, came to $1.60 billion ($1,601.3 million), down 18% from $1.96 billion ($1,960.5 million) in the same quarter last year.

The headline is not a surprise so much as a pause. Take-Two did not change its full-year net bookings outlook, which stays at $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion for the year ending March 31, 2027. Nearly all the growth that outlook implies sits in the second half, and the most obvious piece of that is Grand Theft Auto VI, which Rockstar's own site lists as 'Coming November 19, 2026' for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

This piece sticks to what the filing states and what Rockstar's site confirms. We did not have access to the earnings call transcript when we wrote it, so reactions from analysts and any call-only remarks are left out rather than guessed.

The numbers: a smaller quarter, a smaller loss

GAAP net revenue was $1.50 billion ($1,497.0 million), against $1.77 billion ($1,773.8 million) a year earlier, a drop of about 16%. Recurrent consumer spending, the in-game purchases and live services that Take-Two counts separately, was $1,302.1 million. That is 81% of all net bookings, and it fell 9% year on year.

The bottom line moved the other way. Take-Two posted a GAAP net loss of $54.0 million, or $0.29 per share, compared with a loss of $133.9 million, or $0.73 per share, in the same quarter a year ago. The loss is roughly 60% smaller even though revenue fell, so the cost side improved. Non-GAAP EBITDA, a measure that strips out several accounting items, was $92.2 million against $116.7 million a year earlier, a fall of about 21%.

Those two measures point in different directions, which is why a single headline can mislead. Bookings and EBITDA are down; the GAAP loss is smaller. A reader should treat the quarter as a low-activity stretch before launch, not as evidence about how GTA VI will sell.

The guidance: a December quarter more than twice as big

The clearest forward signal in the filing is the third-quarter outlook. For the quarter ending December 31, 2026, Take-Two guides net bookings of $3,350 million to $3,500 million and GAAP net revenue of $3,270 million to $3,420 million. GAAP diluted earnings per share is guided to $1.30 to $1.44, with net income of $250 million to $276 million.

Set against the September quarter, the midpoint of that bookings range, $3,425 million, is about 2.1 times what Take-Two booked in Q2. The quarter that holds the November 19 launch is the one the company expects to carry the year. For the full fiscal year, Take-Two guides GAAP net revenue of $7,980 million to $8,180 million, GAAP diluted EPS of $0.57 to $0.75 and net income of $109 million to $142 million.

Guidance is a forecast, not a result. It rests on a launch date holding and on players buying at the pace the company expects, and the filing itself, like every earnings release, carries forward-looking caveats.

Zelnick on GTA VI: ten days away, pre-orders 'unprecedented'

Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chairman and CEO, framed the quarter around the launch. In the release he said 'The launch of Grand Theft Auto VI is ten days away', described pre-orders as being at 'unprecedented levels' and said the company expects 'an historic year'.

Take-Two did not attach a pre-order unit count or dollar figure to that language in the release we read, so 'unprecedented' stays a description, not a number. Third-party estimates of pre-order revenue circulated earlier in the year, but we did not verify them against a primary source for this article and do not repeat them here.

The date itself is not in doubt as of today. Rockstar's GTA VI page reads 'Coming November 19, 2026' and offers pre-orders, and Take-Two's filing repeats the same date and the same two console platforms. No PC version is mentioned in either place.

The rest of the slate: what else Take-Two listed

The release also named the rest of the publisher's picture. NBA 2K27 launched on September 4, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 and PC. Grand Theft Auto Online's Kortz Center Heist summer update arrived on July 14, 2026. Borderlands was listed among the largest contributors to second-quarter net bookings and net revenue, with no new release news.

Upcoming titles in the filing all carry no date: Top Goal and CSR 3 on mobile, PGA TOUR 2K27, WWE 2K27, Project ETHOS, a next BioShock and Judas from Ghost Story Games, which lists PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. For readers tracking Judas, that is the same 'to be announced' status we reported in October, with no new date.

The takeaway for a reader who only follows games is simple. Nothing in the filing moves any other release date, and everything in it that matters for the next quarter points back to one game.

What it means for players and for the next report

For players, the filing changes nothing about the game: no new price, edition or feature is stated in it, and Take-Two's release does not describe the game's content. What it adds is a measure of how much weight the business places on a single date. A company that guides roughly $3.4 billion of bookings for one quarter, up from $1.6 billion, has little room for a slip.

For the next report, the questions are concrete. Take-Two's third-quarter results, covering the quarter that ends December 31, will show whether bookings land inside the $3,350 million to $3,500 million range, and whether the full-year $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion holds. That is the number to watch, not the soft September quarter.

We will update this article if the company changes its date or guidance. Until then, the verified position is narrow and clear: a weaker quarter, an unchanged outlook and a launch on November 19.