Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says Borderlands 4 sales were weaker than expected due to PC performance issues, though he remains confident the game will recover as Gearbox continues to address technical problems.
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has acknowledged that Borderlands 4 sales have been “softer” than expected, attributing the shortfall to performance issues with the game’s PC release.
In an interview with IGN following this week’s Grand Theft Auto VI delay announcement, Zelnick praised the game’s critical reception, but admitted that the technical state of Borderlands 4 launch hurt its commercial performance.
He said: “The critical acclaim was superb, and we’re really happy with the release.
“Equally, there were some challenges with the Steam release. Gearbox has been addressing those challenges and will continue to do so.
“So, in terms of units sold out of the gate, the numbers were a little softer than we would have liked.”
Released in September, Borderlands 4 debuted to strong reviews but quickly drew heavy criticism from PC players.
Within days, the Gearbox Software game’s Steam rating dropped to Mostly Negative, with widespread complaints over stuttering, memory leaks, and poor optimisation.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford dismissed the backlash at the time, describing the PC build as “pretty darn optimal” and claiming only a “very, very small percentage” of users were affected.
Nonetheless, he confirmed that “significant work” was underway to improve performance across systems.
Analysts at Digital Foundry also reported “big performance issues” on all platforms, though the problems appeared most severe on PC.
Gearbox has since rolled out several patches, with more planned before the end of the year.
Despite the rocky start, Zelnick remains optimistic about the game’s long-term success, saying he expects Borderlands 4 to “do great in the fullness of time”.
Gearbox recently postponed the Switch 2 version indefinitely, citing a need for “additional development and polish time”.
Borderlands 4 sales ‘softer’ than expected due to PC issues, Take-Two boss says
