Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) shares moved lower Monday following a weekend report that portions of its new Grand Theft Auto VI game were leaked online.
Bloomberg News reported Sunday that a hacker was able to gain access to several videos of gameplay from the new Grand Theft Auto VI release, which was made by Take-Two studio Rockstar Games, and posted them to a GTA-focused message board.
The hacker, known as 'teapotuberhacker', also claimed responsibility for last week's security breach at Uber Technologies (UBER), which compromised some of its internal communications systems.
The declines were pared, however, by a statement from Rockstar that indicated that the breach would not delay the release of the hotly-anticipated sequel.
Analysts had been looking for Grand Theft Auto VI to revive a muted near-term outlook for the video game industry after Take-Two cautioned that a pullback in discretionary spending was liked to keep full year revenues in the region of $5.8 billion and $5.9 billion and firmly shy of Street forecasts.
Take-Two shares were marked 1.9% lower in early Monday trading to change hands at $121.82 each, extending their six-month decline to around 16%.
Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang struck a bullish tone on the video game sector last month, however, when he spoke with analysts following the chipmaker's weaker-than-expected second quarter earnings.
Nvidia said revenues from its gaming chips-- which are also used in cryptocurrency mining -- fell 33% from last year to $2.04 billion, a figure that also matched the group's early August update and linked to Covid lockdowns in China and the impact of Russia's war on Ukraine in Europe.
Looking into the current quarter, Nvidia said it sees revenues of around $5.9 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared to the Street consensus of $6.95 billion, with gross margins of around 65%, plus or minus 2%. Gaming weakness, Nvidia said, would be partly offset by firmer demand in its automotive and data center businesses.
"The fundamentals of gaming are strong, and this medium is really doing well," he said. "Our Gaming PCs are being used for influencers, people sharing content, creating content, vloggers, VTubers, there's all kinds of new ways of engaging and spending time with video games."
"Our strategy is to reduce the sell-in, reduce the sell-in this quarter or next quarter, to let channel inventory correct," he added.
