GTA 6 Online Likely Won't Be There at Launch, While Pre-Orders Hit Levels Take-Two Calls Unprecedented

Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar are not planning to talk anytime soon about what the new GTA Online will look like, even as Strauss Zelnick described GTA 6 pre-orders as reaching levels the company, and the industry, had never seen before. Both details came out of Take-Two's latest earnings call and the coverage around it, along with a new look at how Zelnick framed the Netflix extended look and one line about the physical disc that I think is going to make a lot of players mad.

Take-Two isn't ready to talk about the new GTA Online

Everything about GTA 6 right now, from the marketing to the Netflix event, is pointed at the single player. According to Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, who interviewed Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two and Rockstar are not planning to talk anytime soon about what the new GTA Online is even going to look like.

This is the part a lot of people are misreading. Schreier also pointed out that Zelnick did not give a launch time frame for the online mode. So this is not Rockstar confirming that online is years away. It is Rockstar not being ready to talk about it yet.

Realistically, that means two things. First, the online mode is almost certainly not a day one feature, which we already knew. Second, we are probably not going to get a proper reveal of it until well after launch. If you are wondering whether that means weeks, months or longer, look at last time. GTA 5 launched on September 17, 2013, and GTA Online did not go live until October 1, about two weeks later. Even in the best case, Rockstar has a history of holding online back from a single player launch.

This time they are in even less of a rush, because the current GTA Online is still one of the most profitable things in gaming and it is not slowing down. They have zero pressure to cannibalise it.

My worry: the new GTA Online could wait for the PC version

There is a possibility that actually worries me, and I want to flag it as speculation, not confirmed. There is a real chance that Rockstar holds the new online mode until the PC version is out. GTA 6 is a console only launch, and the PC port is not even confirmed yet. Last time, the GTA 5 PC version did not arrive until about a year and a half after the console release. If they tie the big online launch to PC, we could be waiting well into 2027 or beyond.

In my honest opinion, this is where you should set your expectations. Don't count on online at launch. Expect it weeks to a couple of months after at the earliest, and don't be shocked if the new GTA Online reveal doesn't land until sometime in 2027. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

Take-Two beat its own guidance with $1.39 billion in net bookings

Take-Two reported net bookings of $1.39 billion for the quarter, which beat its own guidance that topped out at around $1.37 billion. The Grand Theft Auto series itself grew 3%, which is kind of wild for a game this old.

The number that matters most is the full year outlook. Take-Two reiterated full year guidance of around 8 to 8.2 billion dollars, roughly a 20% jump year over year.

I have to flag something I have seen people on Twitter getting wrong. The $1.39 billion is total quarterly net bookings across everything Take-Two does. It is not a GTA 6 pre-order number. Take-Two didn't give a specific, clean pre-order figure, so don't let anyone tell you GTA 6 already made $1.39 billion in five days, because that is not the case.

Zelnick called GTA 6 pre-orders "unprecedented and astonishing" but refused a victory lap

On the pre-orders themselves, Zelnick described them as "unprecedented and astonishing" and said they were at levels no one had ever seen before at Take-Two or in the industry. Then he pumped the brakes: "We are allergic to victory laps, but one thing that we certainly do not do is take a victory lap before we run the events."

He also said the news was great so far, that the company was incredibly excited, and yet realistic and at best cautiously optimistic. So the GTA 6 pre-orders are enormous, big enough to lead the entire call, but he refused to celebrate before the game shipped, which makes sense to me.

Zelnick said the Netflix extended look would feel like watching a Netflix show

In his interview with Zelnick, Jason Schreier confirmed that pre-orders vastly surpassed Take-Two's own internal forecast. That is not just good; it blew past the company's own projections. The reporting also pointed to the extended look offering a "meaty" look at the actual gameplay, so anyone bracing for another cinematic tease was told to expect the opposite.

The line that popped out for me was Zelnick telling Schreier that when the extended look goes live, people will finally understand why Take-Two picked Netflix, calling it "a must-see event." Schreier then asked him point blank whether it was going to feel like watching a Netflix show, and Zelnick answered with one word: yes. That is not how you describe a gameplay trailer. That is how you describe a produced TV series.

Zelnick also called the Netflix premiere one of the hors d'oeuvres, saying there are appetizers, a main course and a dessert still to come. So this is the opening course, not the finale, with more marketing stacked up between now and launch, which we kind of expected. The extended look was scheduled to premiere on Netflix on August 27, then hit Rockstar's own YouTube page about six hours later and then everywhere else.

Why Netflix, and why Zelnick isn't worried about aging consoles

From Take-Two's point of view, the Netflix move is actually kind of smart. The entire point is to reach people who are not us: a broader audience outside gaming, people who vaguely know GTA 6 exists but were not planning to buy it day one. Put the trailer in front of hundreds of millions of people scrolling for something to watch, and your game sits next to prestige television as a cultural event rather than being buried in a gaming feed. Zelnick even told Variety that Netflix has over 200 million members, and said he was guessing all of them would watch.

Schreier also asked whether Zelnick was worried about selling to a smaller audience, given that GTA 6 is a console only launch on hardware that is already aging. Zelnick was not concerned at all. He said the install base at launch will be roughly the same as it was for GTA 5, and that it will reflect Take-Two's original expectations. The only concern, he said, would be if that number looked smaller than originally thought, and that is not the case.

Schreier then asked whether Zelnick had any big plans for November 19, whether a party, a break or anything else. Zelnick said it was ultra top secret for now, but that at some point before then he would be happy to talk about it. You would think on November 19 he would be playing the game or doing something related to it, so this is almost Zelnick saying something is going to happen. It is hard to speculate what, though. Only time will tell.

Zelnick's defence of a GTA 6 box with no disc

This is the one Twitter has already exploded over. Somebody on the call asked Zelnick about Sony killing off disc production in 2028, and he used it to defend GTA 6 shipping with no disc, just a download code in a box. He didn't soften it even a little: "Our business is well over 90% digitally distributed. It is already a digital business."

He said that for big games especially, physical discs do not genuinely make sense for the consumer, and then came the line getting clipped everywhere: basically, if you are already connected online to play anyway, who cares if you download it digitally? He added that this is where the world is going and that Sony understands that, and in another interview he compared physical discs to vinyl records, a collector's format.

While the 90% digital number is technically true, I'm sure, it is also a bit of trickery. When most of your revenue is Shark Cards in GTA Online and NBA 2K microtransactions, of course your business skews digital, because you literally cannot buy that stuff on a disc. The honest question is what percentage of people bought GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2 physically, especially outside the US. I think that number would be a lot friendlier to physical media than 90% makes it sound. The stat is probably real, but the way he is wielding it is a bit slippery, and it is kind of annoying to hear when so much of the business is Shark Cards, 2K and a brand new GTA roughly once a decade.

My take: a disciplined Take-Two, a patient GTA Online and a disc I'll miss

On the cautious tone, I think it is pretty smart. This company is not nervous at all; it is disciplined, and the November 19 date feels more locked in than ever after this call. On GTA Online, this is what I expected. I had a feeling we wouldn't see it for quite a while, and that makes sense. GTA 6 is going to be a colossal release, but the online component is going to be even bigger, so I'm sure they want all the time in the world to get it right, and I look forward to seeing how they do it.

I am still a bit skeptical about the Netflix situation, though I was looking forward to the reveal event. It is unfortunate that they are putting the reveal behind a paywall, but I get it: Rockstar has to make its money, and if this means employees get bonuses, I say let them have it. On the physical disc, I can't get behind it. As a collector of certain games, specifically Rockstar games, not being able to own a GTA 6 disc is going to be pretty unfortunate.

Still, I have GTA 6 pre-ordered in the Ultimate Edition and I look forward to playing it at launch. I try to keep an objective, measured approach with most games, but this is Rockstar and the new GTA, so there is no way I can here.

Do you agree with Zelnick that physical discs no longer make sense for a game as big as GTA 6?