Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors on November 9 that hit creation “remains the purview of human beings” days before Grand Theft Auto VI arrives. The remark came on the company’s Q2 fiscal 2027 earnings call, ten days before the game’s launch.
An AI question, answered with a human answer
One caller raised the spread of AI-powered compilations and decompilations, tools that can reconstruct or reverse-engineer game code and assets, which have unsettled publishers in recent weeks. Zelnick said Take-Two is “utterly focused on enhancing our technical defences and enhancing our legal activities appropriately,” adding that every entertainment business faces some piracy and that he expects it to be manageable. He argued the games business has been largely protected so far by file sizes, closed console ecosystems and the online requirements of modern titles.
Pressed further, Zelnick drew a line between what technology can do and what it cannot. Recent advances have made it easier to create assets, he said, but not to create hits: “Making a big hit was hard then, and it’s hard now, and it’s going to be hard in the future. And hit creation remains the purview of human beings.”
He added that the creativity behind the company’s success is human creativity harnessing technology, and that he hopes the pace of technological benefit will accelerate. Zelnick has held this line before: in March 2026 he rejected the idea that AI could tackle games on the scale of GTA 6.
Pre-orders already past expectations
The call landed with Rockstar’s parent in an unusual position: GTA 6 marketing is in full swing and demand is outrunning the company’s own forecasts. In the results release published alongside the call, Zelnick said pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI are “continuing to reach unprecedented levels,” and that “we expect to deliver an historic year for our company.”
On the call he went further, saying pre-order numbers are well above expectations and that the game’s success will set a new baseline for the business. Take-Two is holding its forecast of about $8 billion in net bookings for the full fiscal year, a number that leans heavily on GTA 6. The company gave no official pre-order figures.
Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
