Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors on August 7, 2026 that rising hardware costs will not slow the company's business or hurt sales of Grand Theft Auto VI, and that cloud streaming could make expensive consoles matter less within three years.

Speaking during a briefing on Take-Two's first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, Zelnick said a lower price point for gaming hardware would be preferable because it puts more devices in people's hands. He also said the world continues to move toward open systems — platforms that let players buy and play across different devices rather than being locked to one (GameSpot).

The numbers behind that shift are striking. Zelnick said the PC platform accounted for around 2% of Take-Two's sales roughly 20 years ago. Today, PC represents up to 50% of sales.

On cloud streaming — playing games over the internet without needing powerful local hardware — Zelnick said he believes Take-Two will be in "commercial cloud-streaming mode" within three years, which he defined as reaching low latency, the minimal delay that makes a game feel responsive. He said streaming could multiply the effective installed base tenfold, though he cautioned this would not mean a tenfold increase in revenue, because avid consumers already had access to gaming machines (GameSpot).

The briefing accompanied Take-Two's Q1 fiscal 2027 earnings release, which reported net bookings — a measure of digital and physical sales booked in the period — of US$1.39 billion (Take-Two IR). The company reiterated its full-year fiscal 2027 net bookings guidance of US$8.0 billion to US$8.2 billion, a figure it described as a record. That forecast came in below analysts' average estimate of US$9.10 billion when it was first issued in May 2026 (Reuters).

Grand Theft Auto VI, whose development has cost Take-Two an estimated US$1 billion to US$1.5 billion so far, remains on track for release on November 19, 2026, Zelnick confirmed (GamesHub; Yahoo Finance). The game is set for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar Games opened pre-orders on June 24, 2026. On the earnings call, Take-Two said it expects Grand Theft Auto VI net bookings to range from US$1.32 billion to US$1.37 billion.

Take-Two has had a busy release calendar around this period. Mafia: The Old Country launched worldwide on August 8, 2025, followed by Borderlands 4 on September 12, 2025, which later arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 3, 2025. The company also revealed NBA 2K27 cover athletes — Victor Wembanyama, Caitlin Clark, and Derrick Rose — on July 22, 2026.

For Zelnick, the broader message to investors was that Take-Two's future does not hinge on any one piece of hardware getting cheaper. The PC's rise from a sliver of sales to half the business shows where players are already going. Cloud streaming, if it arrives on the timeline he predicts, would extend that reach further — to anyone with a screen and a connection, no console required.