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In This Edition,
GTA 6 reviews
Zelnick defends 2K
Console price concerns
Plus! Future’s Dan Dawkins joins us on the Show
The Game Business Live will take place in Los Angeles on Monday, June 8. We will be interviewing EA’s Laura Miele, Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin and Xbox’s Matthew Ball live on stage. Tickets are available now.
Hello and welcome back to The Game Business.
We are very busy getting ready for The Game Business Live on June 8 in Los Angeles, where we will be doing on-stage interviews with Matthew Ball (Xbox Chief Strategy Officer), Laura Miele (EA Entertainment president) and Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder). We’ve got some surprises planned and it should be a special event. Tickets are still available (and paid subscribers can come at no extra cost), but we will be sold out before June 8. So if you’re interested, do sign-up!
Today’s edition sees us dive into Grand Theft Auto 6, featuring comments from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick and data from the ESA. Meanwhile, on the Show we’re joined by Dan Dawkins, who is content director at media giant Future, and also runs the GTA 6 O’Clock newsletter and podcast.
As always, you can listen and watch it all above, or read it below. Enjoy!
Do review scores matter for GTA 6?
Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick insists review scores are as important as they’ve ever been ahead of the release of GTA 6.
Speaking to The Game Business, Zelnick said “of course” the critical reception was important for the upcoming blockbuster action game, and that it matters as much today “as it has in the past.”
“Rockstar’s scores are typically in the mid-90s, sometimes high 90s,” he said. “Not many games can say that. And that’s a reflection on Rockstar’s commitment to quality.”
Rockstar’s last two games, 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 and 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, both managed a 97 Metacritic score. But Dan Dawkins, content director at games media giant Future, said that repeating such a result will prove harder in 2026.
“We are 13 years past the release of GTA 5. The media and cultural environment has completely transformed,” he said on today’s edition of The Game Business Show.
“At that point in time, let’s say 2014, it was easier - not easy, but easier – to handpick the journalists you wanted to review that game ahead of time. I was one of those journalists.
“Social media is so noisy. And someone has to be first to say the thing you like is rubbish. Someone will do that. All narratives are available at once now about everything. Rockstar are going to get, from the gates, some dissenting voices. Does it mean the game is any more or less brilliant? I don’t know. But there is going to be dissenting voices.”
Nevertheless, new data reveals that professional reviews are not even in the Top Five sources of information for gamers considering a new game.
According to the ESA 2026 Essential Facts About the US Video Game Industry report, which launches next week, 42% of gamers sometimes read or watch professional reviews when considering a new game (while 11% always read or watch professional reviews). Official trailers, user reviews, forum/social media posts, family and friend recommendations, gameplay videos, and trial versions all came out higher when it comes to where gamers seek out information around new titles.
Strauss Zelnick defends 2K following 2025 missteps
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick insists 2K is “crushing it” despite recent missteps.
The label has delivered strong results in sports with the likes of NBA 2K, but it’s had mixed fortunes when it comes to its other titles. Last year’s Borderlands 4 had a disappointing launch on PC, while the new Civilization game fell flat with players.
“I take responsibility for any missteps anywhere in our company,” Zelnick said. “The responsibility is with me. That’s my job. Borderlands 4 was highly successful. It will be a very profitable lifetime title. [Civilization] 7 was very successful and it will be a very profitable lifetime title. Both did face some challenges in their initial release, and those are being addressed. We have just released a very significant update for Civ 7. We’ve released updates for Borderlands 4. There is more content coming for both games.
“I definitely can acknowledge missteps with both releases, but at the same time, these are great franchises, these are great iterations, and we couldn’t be more thrilled of how the business is going broadly. I think 2K is crushing it across the board. If the worst you can say in a year when you’ve had this kind-of [financial] performance is that a couple of titles did slightly less well than you would have hoped, and you’re addressing whatever challenges you face and you’re still generating profits with both titles… that’s a high-class problem. I’ll take those problems any day of the week.”
Two upcoming 2K Games titles, Project Ethos and BioShock 4, have taken a long time to arrive due to various development issues. Meanwhile, GTA 6 and Ken Levine’s Judas (which are not part of 2K) have also taken longer-than-expected to build. So, we asked Zelnick if it’s a priority for Take-Two to speed up the development process.
“I wouldn’t confuse long development cycles with a lackadaisical approach to development cycles. Everything we do is in the context of milestones, budgets and delivery dates,” he responded.
“Certain titles are so complex and so challenging to build, they take a long time. It is possible that recent developments in technology will allow us to compress some development timelines without comprising quality, and we will hope to do that. But everything that we do here is thought out and reasoned, we don’t just wait to hear how things are going. We make choices about how we are going to develop in the context of what our creative teams are trying to achieve and what we believe the market demands in terms of quality in order to deliver a hit. We are in the business of making hits. Everything we do is in service of trying to make a hit.”
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What else did Zelnick say?
Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 has just had its biggest sales year since launch, and has hit 85 million players globally. We asked Zelnick if he feels this is driven by the anticipation for Rockstar’s next game, GTA 6.
“No,” he said. “I do think Rockstar Games almost uniquely has a brand position in entertainment, because consumers tend to be interested in all of their offerings. But no, I think that stands alone. What we’re seeing with Red Dead Redemption 2 is that we have a very loyal and engaged audience. And they love the title. And by the way, I love the title.”GTA Online delivered another huge year, boosted by the ‘A Safehouse in the Hills’ update. But with GTA 6 looming, could we expect to see engagement fall for the hit live service game? “I don’t know where GTA Online performance goes after the release of GTA 6, I have no reason to believe that the performance will not continue,” Zelnick answered.
When we last spoke to Strauss Zelnick, he said he wasn’t concerned by rising component costs for video game hardware. Since then, PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 have both had price rises. So, we asked the same question again.
“I am sure the price increases will have some influence, and I don’t think it will be a positive one,” he said. “I do think consumers remain highly interested in interactive entertainment, and in the consoles that deliver that entertainment.”
Chief financial officer Lainie Goldstein added: “We do think GTA 6 will drive console sales.”Take-Two is not expecting an exodus of Rockstar staff once GTA 6 launches. The upcoming blockbuster has had a prolonged development, and so we asked Zelnick if he’s anticipating some turnover once the game is launched.
“We don’t see that in our company. We have a very low attrition rate at Rockstar. Take-Two’s overall attrition rate is about half that of the industry average. And we have a lot of work to do after the launch of GTA 6. I have no reason to believe that we’ll see any changes on composition of the team here.”
Meanwhile…
Sticking with Take-Two, the publisher reported a 19% increase in both net revenue and net bookings for its 2026 financial year. The firm reported that mobile made up 50% of its net revenue for the year. NBA 2K was a big hit, with revenue up 10%, and the game shipping 10 million units. Zynga also achieved its highest level of net bookings since Take-Two bought the company in 2022. Looking ahead, Take-Two expects to deliver 20% growth in its next financial year on the back of GTA 6.
Ubisoft reported a sharp 21.8% decline in revenue and 17.4% drop in net bookings for its 2025/2026 financial year. The firm also warned that its next financial year will be a ‘low point’ in terms of free cash flow. This is due to restructuring costs and a softer release slate. Its next big game is a remake of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, which is due in the summer. Ubisoft said it will deliver a ‘strong rebound’ in the 2027/2028 financial year, with new games in the Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon series set to launch before April 2029. The news follows the cancellation of six Ubisoft games and a delay to seven others earlier this year.
Epic Games has announced Unreal Engine 6, which will be used to power the next era of Rocket League. The reveal was made during the Rocket League Paris Major last weekend.
Bungie is ending updates to its hit shooter Destiny 2, and will now focus on developing new games. The studio confirmed that Destiny 2’s final live-service content update will take place on June 9. Bungie launched the extraction shooter Marathon in March.
Microsoft has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-Fonden AP7. The 2022 lawsuit contested Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and accused CEO Bobby Kotick of rushing the sale, and thus depriving shareholders of a better stock price.
A PlayStation State of Play showcase has been announced for June 2, 2026. It will feature the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine game from Spider-Man developer Insomniac.
Bitsummit set a new attendance record last weekend, with 68,208 visitors, a rise of 17% year-on-year. The indie event took place in Kyoto, in Japan, with an industry day on May 22, and public days on May 23 and 24.
Games services specialist Room 8 Group has appointed Juanita Draude as its CEO. She joins following leadership roles at Monks and Publicis Groupe, as well as NBC Universal. She replaces Anna Kozlova, who left the role after seven years last month.
The Game Maker’s Sketchbook has announced the selections for its fifth annual showcase, featuring artwork from Pragmata, Borderlands 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Monument Valley 3, Keeper, Absolum and more. The project, which highlights artistry in games, is supported by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), Iam8bit, and Fortyseven Communications. The works will feature in an online gallery, at Summer Game Fest: Play Days on June 6 – 8 in Los Angeles, and can be pre-ordered via the Iam8bit website.
That’s it for today. We’re back next week with a big Embracer interview, plus we get ready for a promising Summer Game Fest. See you then.
