During a recent earnings call (courtesy of IGN), Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said that he was “reasonably sure” that the company wouldn’t be affected by the US tariffs on imported goods. He attributed this to the fact that there has been quite a bit of confusion owing to the tariffs being issued and then withdrawn. Despite this confusion, however, he said that the fiscal guidance for Take-Two Interactive has been decided for the coming year.
He also noted that, despite the tariffs, Take-Two already has a solid base of customers on all platforms except for the Nintendo Switch 2, which is slated for launch on June 5. Taking this into account, the company will likely not be affected by any changes to tariffs, according to Zelnick.
“Our guide is for the next ten months, essentially, that’s the part of the fiscal year that hasn’t elapsed yet, and it’s very difficult to predict where tariffs will land, given how things have bumped around so far,” said Zelnick when asked about the tariffs. “We feel reasonably confident that our guide wouldn’t be meaningfully affected, unless tariffs ran off in a very different direction than we currently expect. In any case, there’s already a very substantial install base for all of our target platforms except Nintendo Switch 2, which is pre-launch. So we have, I think, enough insight that we wouldn’t be affected by any changes.”
In its earnings report, the company has reaffirmed that it will be releasing a host of games on different platforms, such as Borderlands 4 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2, and Mafia: The Old Country on PC and current consoles. There are also games that are slated for release that don’t have confirmed platforms yet, including NBA 2K26 and WWE 2K26. With this in mind, it can be easy to see why Zelnick isn’t too concerned about the tariffs affecting the publisher.
Leading up to the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, Zelnick said that he was feeling “great optimism” about Take-Two’s relationship with Nintendo. In the same earnings call, Zelnick mentioned how well Nintendo has been supporting third-party publishers to ensure that the Switch 2 has a strong line-up of games.
“We’re launching four titles with Nintendo Switch 2, and that’s I think a bigger array of releases than we’ve ever offered before with a new Nintendo platform,” said Zelnick. “Historically, being a third party in the Nintendo business has been a bit challenging. I think Nintendo has been very forthcoming in addressing that. And we’re stepping up too, because we have great optimism for the platform.”
In an interview with IGN right before the earnings call, Zelnick also spoke about how the decision to push the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 back from Fall 2025 to May 26, 2026 pained him, but that it will ultimately be worth it to give developer Rockstar Games more time to work on the game.
“I feel really good about how fiscal 26 looks sitting here today,” he said. “And while of course, delays pain me — how could they not? — the most important thing to do is to support your teams in their search for perfection.”
