31 million views and a falling stock: the week after "An Extended Look"

One week has passed since Rockstar showed GTA VI in motion for the first time. The numbers since then tell two stories that seem to contradict each other: the video was the biggest thing on Netflix worldwide that week, and Take-Two's stock still fell almost nine percent. Here is how both can be true at once.

First the viewing figures, and these are official. According to Netflix's weekly Top 10 for 24–30 August, "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look" drew 31.1 million views and 14 million hours viewed — in four days, since it only arrived on the Thursday. It was number one in 87 of the 93 countries Netflix tracks, and top of the overall weekly list. Rockstar itself posted on the Newswire on 1 September that the video had "soared to number one". For a 26-minute advertisement for a video game, this has no precedent.

On YouTube the video had reached around 17 million views by 1 September, per TweakTown. Traffic to Netflix's website rose 125 percent on premiere day, per Forbes. And TechPowerUp reported that combined live co-stream viewership passed four million — a figure we have not been able to trace to a primary source, so treat it with caution.

Then the stock. Take-Two closed at 235.39 dollars on Friday 28 August, the day after the premiere. On Monday 31 August the share fell 6.67 percent to 219.70, and kept sliding all week: 214.69 at the close on 4 September. That is a fall of nearly nine percent in one week, on the heels of the best marketing beat the company has ever produced.

Why? Three things coincided. First, Paul Tassi at Forbes published a piece on 29 August floating the idea that GTA VI's online component could arrive one to two years after the game. That is a columnist's speculation, not reporting, but markets read headlines. Mike Hickey at Benchmark replied that it was pure guesswork and pointed out that GTA Online launched fourteen days after GTA V. Second, the analytics firm M Science estimated on 2 September that the video had added only "a couple hundred thousand" pre-orders on top of the four million already in place — too few, in some investors' view. Third, markets were broadly down that week on oil prices and yields, which had nothing to do with Rockstar.

Note our wording: "estimated", "speculation", "in some investors' view". None of these are confirmed figures from Take-Two. The company has published no pre-order numbers and has not touched its fiscal-year guidance, which has stood at 8.0–8.2 billion dollars since 7 August.

What makes the story interesting is the contradiction. Sensor Tower — a different analytics firm, with a different estimate — said pre-orders jumped 436 percent day-over-day at the premiere and that the total was approaching five million. The same firm says roughly nine in ten buyers are choosing the 100-dollar Ultimate Edition, a share it has "never seen". M Science says the bump was small. Sensor Tower says it was large. Neither is Take-Two. We will dig into that on Saturday.

For those of us in Iceland the lesson is this: when you see a headline saying GTA VI "disappointed" or "broke every record", look at who is saying it. The Netflix figure is measured and official. The stock fall is real. Everything in between is interpretation.

Rob Nelson of Rockstar North, meanwhile, answered the biggest question himself in a Famitsu interview that surfaced over the weekend: the game "will be released on time". 19 November stands.

Sources: Netflix Top 10 (week of 24–30 August), Rockstar Newswire, TweakTown, Forbes (Paul Tassi), stockanalysis.com (TTWO closing prices), TIKR, Benchmark (Mike Hickey), M Science via RockstarINTEL, Sensor Tower via GTA BOOM, TechPowerUp, Famitsu via Notebookcheck.