Weekend Highlights (August 8-9)

GTA VI has shown "unprecedented" levels of pre-orders, Blizzard has become the most successful studio within XBOX for the past fiscal year, and ReStory’s revenue has reached $2 million — we share the main events in the gaming industry from the past weekend.

• Simultaneously with the publication of the quarterly report at the end of last week, Take-Two Interactive held a teleconference with investors and analysts. During it, CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on the situation with GTA VI pre-orders. He did not provide specific numbers, but boasted that the game is selling "unprecedentedly" well — no other project in Take-Two Interactive's history has experienced such high demand. Amid this excitement, Zelnick also noted that the company could have chosen a higher price point for GTA VI and still come out ahead, but they are satisfied with the current pricing. For reference, they currently ask $80 for the standard edition and $100 for the ultimate edition.
• Zelnick also stated that he expects significant growth in the global cloud gaming market due to a crisis in the memory and storage segment. In his opinion, over the next three years, a spike in console and PC component prices will drive many gamers towards using such services. Ultimately, Zelnick predicts this will positively impact Take-Two Interactive, providing an opportunity to expand its game audience by about ten times.
• Windows Central reviewed a copy of a letter from Blizzard Entertainment President Johanna Faries to employees. According to it, during the last fiscal year (July 2025 - June 2026), the studio became the "most successful" in Microsoft's gaming division in terms of financial performance. Moreover, it was Blizzard's third-largest revenue year in its history, thanks to strong performances from Overwatch and the Lord of Hatred expansion for Diablo IV. At the end of the year, Overwatch achieved its best quarterly results since 2022. The exact earnings for Blizzard were not mentioned in Faries' letter.
• Devolver Digital announced that sales of the pixel horror RPG Look Outside have surpassed the 500,000 copies mark. The game reached this milestone a year and a half after its release on March 21, 2025, on Steam. Look Outside is the creation of solo developer Francis Coulombe.
• Also over the weekend, new data emerged about the success of ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs — a retro gadget repair simulator by Mandragora studio, released on August 6 on Steam. The developers boasted that within the first 24 hours, more than 100,000 copies were sold. Shortly after, tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik added that by August 8, the gross revenue of the new release had already exceeded $2 million, significantly surpassing its budget.