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| © Rockstar Games |
By Brian Crecente, Variety
“Red Dead Redemption 2” has now sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, helping to bump Take-Two Interactive net revenue to $1.25 billion in the third quarter, up from $480.8 million in the same period last year, the company announced Wednesday.
The Rockstar developed game was the best selling title of 2018, selling in its first eight days what it took “Red Dead Redemption” eight years to sell.
The game’s meteoric success seems to echo the powerful launch of Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto V,” which sold roughly 11 million copies in its first 24 hours. That game’s online component, “GTA Online,” helped to give it a longtail of sales, which still continue to bring in money for the company. As of November 2018, more than 100 million copies of the game had been sold.
Take-Two founder, president and CEO Strauss Zelnick called “Red Dead Redemption 2’s” launch “breathtaking” and said that the engagement for “Red Dead Online” looks solid, but he told Variety it was still hard to predict whether the game will have the same long-term trajectory of “Grand Theft Auto V.”
“It does seem that we are having more traction with ‘Red Dead Online’ compared to ‘GTA Online,” he said.
Other major contributors to Take-Two’s strong quarter were “GTA Online,” “Grand Theft Auto V,” “WWE SuperCard,” “Dragon City, “Monster Legends,” “Sid Meier’s Civilization VI,” and “NBA 2K19.”
Sales of already launched titles, like “Grand Theft Auto V,” accounted for $243.9 million in the quarter.
Another strong driver for the quarter was “NBA 2K19,” which the company expects to exceed the sales of “NBA 2K18.” A big part of that success is how well the game is doing online, with more than 50% growth in multiplayer games per day. On average, nearly 12 million games of “NBA 2K19” are being played daily, according to Take-Two.
