After 15 years churning out hit titles like
Grand Theft Auto,
Red Dead Redemption, and
NBA 2k, Strauss Zelnick knows what makes a hit—even if he doesn’t play video games himself.
Zelnick, who has been CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software since 2011, has helped skyrocket the company’s stock price from about $12 per share when he took charge to $216 per share as of Tuesday’s close. He also quintupled the company’s net revenue during his tenure, to $5.6 billion for fiscal 2025.
Zelnick is now preparing for potentially the biggest game launch of the decade as Take-Two prepares to release
Grand Theft Auto VI this fall amid broad economic uncertainty.
It doesn’t help that the competition in games has exploded over the past decade or so. Some 19,000 games were released in 2023 for consoles and PC, compared to just under 2,000 in 2014, according to data from Bain & Company.
And let’s be honest: Expectations for any new
Grand Theft Auto title are high. The series’ previous installment,
Grand Theft Auto V, racked up $1 billion worth of sales in three days in 2013—the fastest any entertainment release has ever reached that milestone—and has persisted as the bestselling in the U.S.
There’s little doubt that
GTA VI has been pricey to develop, as Zelnick himself has acknowledged. It has also experienced delays. The title was originally scheduled to launch in the fall of 2025, and then in May 2026. It is now scheduled for release on Nov. 19.
But the game development process is a marathon, not a sprint. “It’s sort of like when I was in college. I never pulled an all-nighter because I was good about doing my homework,” Zelnick
recently told Business Insider. “You do your homework, you don’t pull an all-nighter.”
—Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez