GTA owner Take-Two to buy Gearbox Entertainment for $460 mln

Investing.com-- Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (NASDAQ:) said on late-Wednesday that it entered an agreement with Sweden’s Embracer Group AB (ST:) to buy U.S. game developer Gearbox Entertainment for $460 million.

Take-Two will fund the transaction entirely through newly-issued shares, the number of which will be calculated based on the five-day average price of its shares prior to the closing date of the transaction, the videogame publisher said in a press release.

Gearbox, which is known most popularly for its "Borderlands" series, will operate as a studio within Take-Two and will continue to be led by founder and CEO Randy Pitchford, along with his management team. 

Take-Two, which owns the wildly popular "Grand Theft Auto (GTA)" franchise through its subsidiary Rockstar, said that it and Gearbox were in “active development” over the next installment in the Borderlands series. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of Take-Two’s fiscal year 2025. 

Borderlands- which has a total of three main titles and several spin-off series, is published through Take-Two's 2K unit. The series is by far Gearbox's most successful franchise, and has sold nearly 80 million copies.

A film adaptation of the series is also in development by Lions Gate Entertainment (NYSE:), and is set to release in August 2024.

Take-Two's acquisition of Gearbox adds to the videogame publisher's stable of popular franchises, which include BioShock, Red Dead, WWE, and the NBA 2K series.

But for Take-Two, focus is largely on the upcoming release of GTA 6, which is slated for 2025. The game is a long-awaited follow-up to GTA 5, which is among the best-selling videogames of all time, and has been a key revenue stream for Take-Two for over a decade.