Grand Theft Auto V Ships 32.5 Million Copies, Makes Take-Two Number One

Grand Theft Auto V shipped more than 32 million copies in 2013, making Take-Two Interactive the top video game publisher of the year.

There was a time, many years ago, when Electronic Arts attempted to acquire rival publisher Take-Two Interactive for nearly $2 billion, a significant premium over its value at the time but not enough to convince T2 to bite. Fast-forward to today and things appear to have changed rather dramatically: EA is floundering and Take-Two is on top of the world.

Take-Two reported today that its GAAP net revenues for the third quarter of the 2014 fiscal year hit $1.86 billion, a monstrous increase over the $405 million earned during the same period last year. It’s not hard to figure out why: Grand Theft Auto V launched in mid-September last year and has since shipped 32.5 million copies.

But the company also got strong results from NBA 2K14, the fastest-selling release in franchise history, which has shipped five million units since its October 2014 launch, and Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition, which helped make Borderlands 2 the best-selling title in 2K Games’ history with more than 8.5 million units shipped. The strong combined results of those and other franchises made Take-Two the top game publisher of 2013, according to the NPD Group Retail Tracking Service.

“As a result of our third quarter performance, we have once again raised our revenue and earnings outlook for fiscal 2014, which is poised to be a record year for Take-Two,” Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “Looking ahead, we firmly expect to deliver Non-GAAP earnings in fiscal 2015 and every year for the foreseeable future.”

Take-Two previously increased its non-GAAP net revenue expectations for the 2014 fiscal year from $1.775 to $1.875 billion after the first quarter to $2.2 to $2.3 billion after the second. The newly-increased outlook calls for $2.35 to $2.38 billion for the year.