Outstanding Sales of Red Dead Redemption 2
The stores have already received 23 million copies of Red Dead Redemption 2, and Red Dead Online is very popular. Such information was given in the financial report of Take-Two Interactive for the last quarter of 2018.
The end of January traditionally brought many financial statements of various companies, which shared their results from the end of the last year. This is no different in the case of Take-Two Interactive, which published a financial report for the period October-December 2018. In the third fiscal quarter, the company achieved revenue of nearly USD 1.57 billion. This is a phenomenal result - in a similar period last year, the publisher could boast only USD 653.9 million of revenue. In other words, Take-Two managed to achieve more than double the result in comparison to the end of 2017. It even pierced the company's forecasts, according to which in the past quarter the revenue was supposed to amount to no more than 1.45 billion dollars.
You don't have to do an investigation to know why the company owes such a successful end of the year. Red Dead Redemption 2 was undoubtedly the biggest premiere last year in the gaming industry and even 17 million copies have been sent to stores at the time of the game’s release. Now this number has grown to an impressive 23 million copies. Strauss Zelnick, president of Take-Two, in a conversation with Games Industry mentioned that the second Red Dead Redemption found more buyers in just 15 days than the previous installment of the western series for eight years. He also added that although the success of the game was not surprising, the company did not expect such a good result.
Red Dead Online is doing just as well. According to Strauss Zelnick RDR 2 network module is more popular than Grand Theft Auto Online in the same period after the release. However, the president admitted that RDO is still an unfinished project and we can expect new content in the future, as was the case with Grand Theft Auto V online mode. Zelnick did not want to judge whether the game would do better than its predecessor in the long run, but he expressed his satisfaction with the results so far.
As far as network services are concerned, it is worth mentioning that digital sales also performed better than the publisher has predicted. Earnings from the category of 'recurring consumer expenditure’ (DLC and micro-transactions) increased by 31% year on year, although the company did not expect any growth. As a result, Take-Two's profits from the digital market increased by 85% compared to the third fiscal quarter of 2018 instead of the expected 70%. Apparently, the silent noise around micropayments does not interfere with their use.
In addition, the report mentions the very good results of two games: NBA 2K19 and Sid Meier's Civilization VI version for Nintendo Switch console. The first one had already gained the title of the best-selling sports production of 2018, and according to a recent report of the NPD group it was the third best earning title of last year. Slightly more surprising was the second of the above mentioned positions. The sixth Civilization for the Nintendo platform resulted "much above the expectations" of the publisher. As a result, Strauss Zelnick announced further support for Switch by Take-Two.
