GTA Franchise’s Revenue Down By $300 million In FY23, Take-Two Reveals

According to a recent Take-Two financial report, the Grand Theft Auto franchise significantly dipped in revenue this year. The series made $781 million in the fiscal year 2023, which is a $300 million decrease compared to last year. However, even with such a massive decline in gross, FY23 was still the franchise’s third-best annual year following the launch of GTA V.

In FY2023, the American company saw a decrease of $225.1 million in the net revenue of console games, mainly due to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. As mentioned previously, GTA grossed $302.6 million less this year as compared to Fiscal Year 2022, where it made $1.083 billion.

Consequently, Take-Two’s revenue from PC, physical retail, full game, and other channels dwindled substantially this year. For example, console games revenue only made 43.1% of the company’s total revenue in contrast to 72.2% last year. Granted, Borderlands grossing $70 million less in FY2023 also added to this, but the main contributor was the reduced revenue of the GTA franchise.

In addition, the lack of new content for the series is also cited as a big factor for the small decrease in Take-Two’s revenue outside the US. Rockstar only released the Los Santos: Drug Wars content update for Grand Theft Auto V this year. When you compare this to the multiple content updates and the GTA Trilogy remaster the franchise received in FY2022, this decline starts to make sense.

Even though Take-Two’s acquisition of Zynga offset the losses the franchise incurred this year, the company is still betting heavily on GTA for the future. As per the report, the American publisher’s future success is dependent on “hit” titles like Grand Theft Auto performing well. The franchise alone accounted for 14.9% of the revenue Take-Two made in Fiscal Year 2023.

Other tidbits:

GTA revenues are down $300 million in FY23, which coincides with the following chart.

Borderlands revenues are also down about $70 million YoY. pic.twitter.com/9SGetq3r5C

— Derek Strickland (@DeekeTweak) June 4, 2023

Hence, as the documents also mention, if the company fails to develop these “hit” titles and their sequels, its revenue will fall significantly. A bit further ahead in the report, Take-Two again emphasizes how important the Grand Theft Auto IP actually is. The publisher explains how the timing at which GTA products release heavily affects its quarterly and annual performance.

Therefore, Take-Two is probably working very hard to make sure Grand Theft Auto 6 releases on time. We only get a small sentence about the upcoming title in this report which mentions how Rockstar is actively developing the game. However, the documents do say that more details will be shared over time, which we hope is sooner rather than later.

In the Financial Report, Take-Two also acknowledged the infamous GTA hacking incident from last year. The publisher again mentions that the footage we all saw was from the “early development” of the next entry in the franchise. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about Grand Theft Auto 6 looking like the leaks we saw in 2022.

Overall, the GTA series has made over $8.33 billion in revenue since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V in FY2014. And, even with a $300 million decline, FY2023 was still the franchise’s third-best year in a decade. Hence, the IP is doing really well but if recent Take-Two predictions amount to anything, we might see the next installment hit the stores in a year or two.