The first official preview of the hotly anticipated “Grand Theft Auto 6” caused such a surge in demand that streaming platforms buckled under the weight, and parent company Take-Two saw its shares tick higher in premarket trading on Friday, according to analysts.
Netflix — in a rare move — was the first to show an extended look at the game on Thursday. Some viewers hit error messages and had to refresh the page, a sign of intense usage. “Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered,” the company told CNBC.
Over on Twitch, where gamers posted reactions, bandwidth issues also cropped up when the trailer dropped, per analysts at Wells Fargo. The analysts said the early read on player reactions was “largely positive.”
The sixth installment in the franchise is scheduled for release on Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Expectations are high that it could rival its predecessor as one of the most profitable entertainment products ever.
Global preorders have already reached an estimated $260 million, according to analytics firm Newzoo, which signals the potential for $4.5 billion in sales by launch week.
“I’ve never seen Netflix do anything where they put a game on display, and it just shows the power of this particular title, it’s in a league of its own,” Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.
Dring noted that GTA 5 remains a top-five bestselling video game every year, even though it debuted 13 years ago. He added that Thursday’s gameplay reveal indicated the leaks that surfaced earlier would not hurt the launch commercially. Rockstar Games, the developer behind the franchise, had described those leaks as “heartbreaking.”
Take-Two’s stock rose about 2.5% in premarket trading Friday.
Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan analysts both said they were “bullish” on the stock in notes published Friday, pointing to heightened interest in gaming publishers from institutional and retail investors as the launch nears.
Wells Fargo, however, cautioned that Take-Two shares would need some “positive news” on the new version of its separate multiplayer game, GTA Online, to achieve a sustained rerating higher. The successful trailer release only modestly lifted unit sales expectations, the analysts said, while risks remain that sales could miss estimates or the launch could slip.
The preview comes after a mixed reaction to news that GTA 6 would be released exclusively as a digital download, with no physical disc. The alleged source of the leaks has said they were a protest over Rockstar’s release strategy and Sony’s plan to end new PlayStation disc production in 2028.
During Take-Two’s last earnings call on Aug. 7, CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to consumers, noting that its business was “well over 90% digitally distributed.” Data from Circana shows U.S. physical game disc sales have fallen to their lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million.
The industry is hoping GTA 6 will give a lift to the struggling console market, which has faced higher prices due to rising memory and storage costs. A standard Xbox Series X now retails at $800, well above its $500 launch price in 2020, bucking the usual trend of price cuts later in a console’s life. U.S. console hardware sales fell in July to their lowest level since the pandemic, hitting $282 million, according to Circana data.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/28/gta-6-preview-netflix.html
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