ok hear me out on ttwo. been digging into this for a few months and i think theres something obvious nobody is actually talking about.
gta vi launches nov 19. rumored budget is 2-3.4 billion. konvoy estimates 2B, dan dawkins from gta 6 oclock newsletter argues 3.4B based on payroll math over 6 years. for context gta v cost 265m total. so this is 8-13x more expensive.
heres the thing nobody addresses. at 80 retail and \~48 net to publisher after platform fees, gta vi needs to sell 42m units on launch alone to break even on 2B budget. 71m on 3.4B. no aaa game has ever sold 70m+ year one. gta v did 32m year one and that was record breaking.
so one of two things has to be true. either the budget numbers are wrong (possible but multiple analyst sources converge here) or rockstar built revenue infrastructure that recovers the spend OVER YEARS not at launch.
that second one is the platform thesis. august 2023 rockstar acquired [cfx.re](http://cfx.re), the fivem team. fivem had 270k peak concurrent users on a 10 year old game running custom roleplay servers. rockstar SUED these guys in 2015 and sent private investigators to their homes. eight years later they bought them. thats not a defensive acquisition.
if gta vi online integrates fivem tech persistent worlds + ugc + creator economy youre looking at roblox style platform with adult content and aaa quality. roblox trades at 30B market cap on 3B revenue. ttwo is at 45B.
bofa target 320 uses 26x p/e. ttwos own 5 year historical p/e is 40.8x. just reverting to its own historical multiple gets you 370-400 without any platform credit. platform thesis is gravy on top.
position: over 100 shares at 213
anyone else following ttwo into the launch?