GTA 6: Karl Slatoff, Take-Two's president, on the earnings calls

Karl Slatoff has been president of Take-Two Interactive, the publisher that owns Rockstar Games, since May 2013. On Grand Theft Auto VI, out November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, he speaks on the quarterly earnings calls, right after CEO Strauss Zelnick: he places the game in the company’s release slate and takes the questions on subscriptions and AI.

He joined Take-Two as executive vice president in February 2008 and became chief operating officer in October 2010. His career has tracked Zelnick’s since 1998, when he joined BMG Entertainment, then run by Zelnick, and he is a partner at ZelnickMedia. Before that he worked in strategic planning at Disney and in corporate finance at Lehman Brothers, and he holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

What he has said about GTA 6, call by call

Date	Earnings call	What he said
August 7, 2025	Q1 of fiscal 2026	Games go into subscriptions only when it is “a good economic deal”
November 6, 2025	Q2, the day of the second delay	The pipeline “includes the release of Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19th, 2026”
February 3, 2026	Q3	Google’s Genie “is not a game engine”
May 21, 2026	Q4	“Fiscal 2027 is set to be a milestone year, led by the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 19th”
August 7, 2026	Q1 of fiscal 2027	The November 19 launch “will usher in a new era of growth for our company”

The three answers about the game

On August 7, 2025, asked about subscription services: “In many cases, we wouldn’t do it unless it was a good economic deal, and the platforms wouldn’t do it either.” Take-Two does it “if the time is right, if the math makes sense.” That answer still frames the question of whether GTA 6 will be free on a subscription.

On February 3, 2026, Raymond James analyst Andrew Marok asked him about Genie, Google’s tool that generates worlds. Slatoff said it “looks to me more like a procedurally generated interactive video,” and set out what a studio such as Rockstar builds instead: “There’s the storyline, there’s emotional connection, there’s vibe, there’s mission structure. All of those things you cannot capture through AI and certainly not through a world builder.”

On August 7, 2026, the same analyst asked whether the heist Rockstar added to GTA Online on July 14 was bringing lapsed players back before GTA 6. No figures. “We typically don’t give specific details about how releases are doing, but I can tell you that right now we’re very pleased with how things are going.”

What he leaves to Zelnick

On these calls, questions about marketing the game go to Strauss Zelnick. On May 21, 2026, Zelnick said Rockstar would start its marketing campaign that summer, while Slatoff counted 29 titles through fiscal 2029, six more of them in fiscal 2027. On August 7, 2026, both questions on Netflix’s head start with the Extended Look went to Zelnick, whose GTA 6 quotes have their own page.