GTA 6 preview signals blockbuster demand, analysts say

Streaming platforms struggled to handle huge demand for the first official preview of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 on Thursday, sending shares of Take-Two, the game maker’s parent company, higher in premarket.

In a rare move, Netflix was first to show an extended look at the game. Some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels. “Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered,” the company told CNBC.

Game streaming platform Twitch, where many viewers were posting their reactions, also experienced bandwidth issues when the trailer was released, according to analysts at Wells Fargo. An assessment of player reactions was “largely positive,” the analysts added.

The sixth instalment in the franchise is due to launch on Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is riding expectations that it could rival its predecessor — released 13 years ago — as one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time.

Global preorders totaled an estimated $260 million, according to analytics firm Newzoo, signaling the potential for $4.5 billion in sales by launch week.

“I’ve never seen Netflix do anything where they put a game on display, and it just shows the power of this particular title, it’s in a league of its own,” Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.

GTA 5 is still in the top five best-selling video games every year, despite being released 13 years ago, Dring noted.

The response to Thursday’s gameplay debut indicated that leaks of the content in advance would not impact the launch commercially, he continued. Rockstar Games, which makes the GTA franchise, had called the leaks “heartbreaking.”

Shares of Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two nudged 2.5% higher in premarket trading Friday.

Analysts at both Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan described themselves as “bullish” on the stock in notes published Friday, as they pointed to the increased interest in gaming publishers from institutional and retail investors in the run-up to a highly anticipated launch.

However, Wells Fargo analysts said that Take-Two shares also needed some “positive news” regarding the new version of its separate multiplayer game GTA Online in order to achieve a sustained rerating higher. The successful GTA 6 trailer release only slightly boosted unit sales expectations, they said, while there are downside risks that sales miss expectations or the launch is delayed.

The GTA 6 preview follows a mixed reaction from players to the news that GTA 6 would only be released as a digital download, with no physical disc.

The alleged source of the leaked content has claimed the leaks were a protest over Rockstar’s release strategy, and Sony’s plan to end to new PlayStation disc production in 2028.

Speaking on the last earnings call on Aug. 7, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to the consumer, adding that its business was “well over 90% digitally distributed.”

Data from Circana shows the sale of physical game discs in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million.

The industry is hoping GTA 6 could boost the struggling console market, which has seen higher prices due to the rising cost of memory and storage.

Recent price rises now see a standard Xbox Series X console retail at $800, well above its $500 launch price in 2020, bucking trends of price cuts further into a console’s lifecycle. Console hardware sales in the U.S. fell in July to their lowest level since the pandemic, hitting $282 million, per Circana data.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this story.