Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick acknowledged that Borderlands 4 fell short of the company’s initial launch expectations, citing PC performance issues as one of the contributing factors. Despite the rocky start, Zelnick emphasized that Take-Two remains proud of Gearbox Software’s work and the overall achievement of bringing the next entry in the beloved franchise to life.
“While we experienced some challenges with optimization of performance on PC, Gearbox has been addressing these issues and releasing updates to improve gameplay,” Zelnick said in the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call. “We’re confident that Borderlands 4 will achieve strong unit sales over its lifetime.”
Zelnick said Take-Two remains “immensely proud of Gearbox” and is excited about the “robust post-launch content” planned to keep Borderlands 4 thriving in the months to come.
Borderlands 4’s Steam user reviews at launch were heavily negative on performance: one outlet noted an “ugly ‘mostly negative’” rating around release. Later during the Q&A session, Zelnick addressed some of the issues the game has been facing on the PC, which included stuttering, crashes and poor performance even on high-end hardware.
“The release was a bit softer than we would have liked for the reasons that you said,” Zelnick replied. “Gearbox has been addressing the PC challenges. And I think in retrospect, we feel that there are things that we could have done better, but we intend to do better in the future. In the fullness of time, we think the unit sales on this title will be very solid, and the the economic results will be in line with our expectations.”
Despite the performance issues, Borderlands 4 has been a success for Take-Two and Gearbox thus far, with a “Generally Favorable” score on Metacritic (around 84 rating based on 66 reviews) and strong early sales, with 2 million units sold across platforms, generating more than US$150 million in revenue shortly after launch.
Borderlands 4 became the #1 selling game in the U.S. for September 2025 (outselling NBA 2K26, EA Sports FC 26, and Ghost of Yotei) and already ranks as the third-best selling game of the year so far according to tracking firm Circana.
According to analyst Mat Piscatella, “Borderlands 4 generated the highest launch month dollar sales of any title in franchise history, nearly 30% higher than the previous best, Borderlands 3.”
Given all this, Borderlands 4 is currently a success, especially for the launch window. Whether it will be a smashing long-term hit (on par with the very biggest titles in the genre) depends on how well it sustains player engagement, handles the performance/optimization legacy, and how its post-launch roadmap unfolds.
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