One of the biggest stories in gaming this year is EA’s pending $55 billion deal to be sold to a investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia. The sale could have ripple effects across the wider industry, and now Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has weighed in with his thoughts about it all.
Speaking during Take-Two’s latest earnings briefing, Zelnick said he is “not sure” about how the competitive market could shake out if EA does indeed go private. This would leave Take-Two the last publicly traded company–of a certain scale–in the American video game business, an analyst pointed out.
Some have theorized EA going private could be a boon for Take-Two, but Zelnick isn’t keen to assume that will be the case.
“We’re always running scared around here. I’m fond of saying arrogance is the enemy of continued success. And I do think we’re in a terrific position. We’re performing much better than expected economically, and that’s because we’re performing better than expected creatively, and that’s always our story around here,” he said. “And if we can maintain that, then we have a wonderful future ahead of us. It is true that at year-end, we’re really very under-leveraged.”
Speaking to The Game Business, Zelnick said it may be true that EA going private could give Take-Two “a bit of room from a competitive point of view,” but that isn’t clear at this point.
“We wish our competitors well. A good business is well served by having powerful players, not just one powerful player. So, it’s possible that the competitor landscape shifts a bit; it’s also possible nothing changes at all. Either way, we have to do our job, which is make the very best entertainment on earth.”
EA’s sale to Saudi Arabia’s PIF, Affinity Partners, and Silver Lake has only been announced; the deal is not done yet and is not expected to close until 2026.
Take-Two’s biggest announcement from the earnings results was that Rockstar’s GTA 6 had been delayed yet again. The game was originally slated to release in Fall 2025 before it was delayed to May 2026 and now it’s been pushed to November 2026. “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve,” Rockstar said.
Rockstar has found itself embroiled in controversy, as the studio recently fired dozens of employees for what it called “gross misconduct.” Rockstar said employees were leaking company secrets, but a labor union says this is baloney and that the affected staffers were fired for attempting to unionize.
