GTA publisher Take-Two, in a quarterly chat with investors today, forecast slightly lower sales for the current fiscal year, $5.4 billion to $5.5 billion, rather than the $5.8 billion to $5.9 billion previously expected. However, the company is "very optimistic" about its future growth, largely because of its confidence in its upcoming game releases. [Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, responding to mild pressure from investment bankers during a question-and-answer session on the conference call, said the decline in revenue projections is primarily because people are spending less money on mobile games now. According to Zelnick, the recession has no impact on Take-Two's outlook for future "immersive core" games.

"Immersive core" is the label that Take-Two uses in place of the more common "triple-A" designation from analysts. According to the company, it refers to games with "the deepest gameplay and longest content duration. "2K Sports, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 fall into this category, and Take-Two has announced that its April 2022 through March 2025 The lineup will include 24 "immersive core" games.

The list includes already released games like The Quarry, soon to be released games like Marvel's Midnight Suns, the postponed Firaxis strategy game, Kerbal Space Program 2 and 2K's NBA, WWE, and golf games. Zelnick said he believes the lineup is strong enough to predict "record performance over the next three years."

When asked why this "strong" pipeline seems to be taking so long to start putting out games, and whether it is due to increased pressure from investment bankers, Zelnick said Take-Two has no "productivity issues." According to him, the company is just focused on producing hits.

"We definitely have very high quality expectations and demands, and that is reflected in the fact that we are performing across the board," Zelnick said. This company is a hit maker." As long as I can remember, there has not been a disappointing release.

Either Zelnick meant that Take-Two hasn't had a financially disappointing release as long as I can remember, or he's already forgotten about NBA 2K23 and GTA Remastered, but, well, I agree with the toned-down version of this statement: Take-Two doesn't release many duds. Evolve and Battleborn come to mind as two 2K-published games that disappeared before they burned as much as the publisher would have liked, but neither felt like an "Anthem"-grade bomb. Also, Rockstar and Phylaxis, developers under the Take-Two umbrella, are bona fide hit makers. (One tends to think of a factory as a place where things are produced at an ever-increasing rate.)

And Zelnick presented his version of the (misguided, Shigeru Miyamoto-derived) industry wisdom, endlessly repeated, that "games that are delayed eventually become good games, but games that are rushed become bad games forever."

"If I had to choose between the two, I would rather choose the situation we are in. I mean, we've had (some) delays and we've had to revise our guidance downward," Zelnick said, referring to lower projected sales for the current fiscal year. I would choose that any day over making some mistakes." That's what's important in this business. We have had delays in releasing titles in the past, but the end result has always been worth the wait. I expect that will be the case this time as well. "

"GTA 6" is arguably one of the biggest titles contributing to Take-Two's positive outlook for the future. Rockstar announced earlier this year that the next installment in the series was "well underway" and then distributed a large number of details about it following a hacking incident. Regarding that hack, Zelnick said in a conference call today that while the incident was "terribly unfortunate," there was "no evidence that any significant assets were taken."

Another place to find hints about Take-Two's upcoming games is the list of game titles leaked from Nvidia's servers last year; Nvidia dismissed the list as test material, but many games on it have since been released for the PC. Nvidia dismissed the list as testing material, but many of the games on the list have since been released for the PC. The Take-Two related games on that list were Bioshock 2022, BioShock RTX Remaster, and XCOM 3.

I somehow doubt that a new BioShock game will be released this year, but 2K has confirmed that a new BioShock game is in development for 2019; "2022" may just be someone's wishful thinking, but like Firaxis' "XCOM 3", 2025 could well be part of a game that is released by the beginning of early 2025. If there is such a thing, it could be something announced next year after Marvel's "Midnight Suns" gets some attention.

And speaking of Phylaxis, Civilization 7 could also happen around this time. Though not announced or even announced at this time, Take-Two's Strategy Studio has recently been looking for a scenario lead with "a knowledge and passion for world history."