The video game industry is currently feeling the “COVID-19 hangover”. After going through a massive growth spurt fueled by people staying indoors and spending inordinate amounts of time playing video games, several video game companies are now reporting net losses in the last quarter, including Sony and Activision Blizzard. While Take-Two’s earnings report all tell the same story across the video game industry, the development pipeline is more telling of what its plans are for the future. Back in May, Take-Two revealed that it had at least 69 games scheduled for between April 1 and March 31, 2025. Now, that number has increased to 87. According to Take-Two, its current development pipeline is the “strongest” in the history of the company. The main highlights remain unchanged from the previous report. Take-Two still has 24 “immersive core” games, which it says are the games that have “the deepest gameplay and the most hours of content.” At the moment, Take-Two has named Kerbal Space Program 2, WWE 2K23, PGA TOUR 2K23, NBA 2K23, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, which was recently delayed from an October launch to a vague “Fiscal 2023” release. If we assume that the pipeline includes at least one more iteration of the WWE 2K, NBA 2K, and PGA Tour 2K games, this still leaves plenty of room for other exciting unconfirmed projects that might be revealed within the next year. Who knows? GTA 6 could be part of the FY2025 pipeline. Moving on, Zynga is the main reason for the jump from 69 to 87 games. Take-Two acquired the mobile game development company earlier this year for nearly $13 billion. Something that we’d also like to point out is that Take-Two still hasn’t put one title up on the board, or so to speak, as part of the “New Iterations for Previously Released Titles” slate. Take-Two describes this as “ports and remastered titles” specifying that “sequels would not fall into this category.” But, if mobile ports aren’t included, this leaves plenty of possibilities of what kind of ports we could expect from Take-Two. For example, the publisher might be seriously thinking about releasing a remaster of GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption as well as a next-gen version of Red Dead Redemption 2. The most recent reports suggest that Rockstar has given up its plans to pursue a GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption remaster to focus on GTA VI, but it didn’t rule out Take-Two taking over. We could say the same about Red Dead Redemption 2. Speaking of GTA, a former Rockstar Games employee just dismissed the claims that the company will make GTA 6 more inclusive. The statement comes just days after fans spotted an actress that they believe might take on the role of the female lead in GTA 6.
