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Take-Two Interactive's (TTWO) Rockstar Games released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI early after it was leaked. Now, it's already set to break records on YouTube.
Oppenheimer Senior Analyst of Emerging Technologies and Services Martin Yang joins Yahoo Finance Live to take a closer look at what the response to the trailer could indicate for the stock. Hang notes that there is no direct point of reference to suggest potential sales, but there are “indirect signals” such as likes, which have far exceeded past trailers.
However, the game will not be released until 2025. Is it too soon to buy Take-Two now? Yang says no, "we're happy to hold a stock and buy the stock now,” noting that this is just the first trailer. As there is more promotion for the game and details released about gameplay, investors will be able to get a better idea of how the game will deliver long-term results for Take-Two Interactive.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Video Transcript
JARED BLIKRE: Martin, this trailer and I watched it too, and I love it because I'm from Miami. And lots of local references there. I was just wondering, is there any way to extrapolate what this could mean in terms of sales? Any historical correlation between a trailer going viral or any of the detailed statistics and maybe something that translates eventually down the line into sales?
MARTIN YANG: It's hard. But we can only get maybe more indirect signals coming from more of a response to the trailer. The trailer, I think, is breaking multiple records as we speak. In a less than 24-hour period, it's already the second most viewed game trailer of all time. And some of the other highly ranked trailers by views are at least four or five, six, seven, eight years old. And nothing has garnered this much attention in such a short period of time. And also more importantly, everyone loves the trailer. In terms of if you count the likes, the likes are, you know, three, four times multiple of the second highest.
So in terms of historical precedence, I think there's very few, because it is building on a solid foundation built by GTA V. We could only speculate that this GTA VI will be much bigger than GTA V on that initial release window in terms of unit sales.
JULIE HYMAN: How important is GTA VI to the future of Take-Two? And considering it looks like it's not coming out until 2025 at the earliest, do you buy a stock now when something that important isn't coming for a while?
MARTIN YANG: Yeah. We're happy to hold a stock and buy the stock now. Because when you think about the-- the marketing cycle works for GTA VI, trailer one is just a beginning. And over time, we'll get incremental information regarding gameplay, character design, and eventually, maybe a online live service portion of the game, which is really more important to-- for investors to build a long-term model, a long-term view for Take-Two's overall growth.
So you know, timing wise, we're happy to buy stock at this moment. But I would say overall, this franchise is a success. GTA VI's franchise is the most critical as investors for Take-Two.