Video game developer Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) is seeing stock gains Tuesday morning as Deutsche Bank analysts upgrade the stock to "Buy" on headlines of a December announcement for the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI.

Yahoo Finance Anchors Akiko Fujita and Rachelle Akuffo observe Take-Two's recent stock action and other trends in the gaming market.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Time now for our trending ticker. We are watching shares of Take-Two pop this morning after getting a boost to-- getting boosted to a buy rating by Deutsche Bank. The firm also raised its price target to $175 a share. The analysts are bullish on upcoming product announcements from the gaming company, including the highly-anticipated trailer for "GTA 6." They also say they expect the company to continue to deliver high-quality content into 2024 and 2025.

Take-Two has popped year to date amid consistent gaming demand throughout 2023. That stock up more than 3.5% today, Rachelle. This continues to sort of go with a broader trend we've seen in the gaming space, which is this optimism around, sort of, increased usage.

Remember, when you think about where things were after the pandemic, there's concern about demand pulling back. People were outside of their homes, they weren't on their couches playing. We've seen a lot of positive commentary coming through in this earnings season around gaming.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: It's true. But I will say when it comes to "Grand Theft Auto," that is just one of those titles that just really knocks the socks off of everybody. I mean, there were some tech experts at [? SecureCheats, ?] they analyzed Google search data after the announcement of that trailer for "GTA 6." The searches went up by 705%. That is how much interest a title like this generates.

And we did wonder what, sort of, the next evolution was going to be for gaming. We've seen more pushes into cloud gaming, mobile gaming, and then we also saw, of course, PlayStation come out with their own portable new device as well. So it really does show the evolution of this, but also the power of some of these very big titles that some of these companies still hold as well.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, I mean, Rachelle, the fact that I know "Grand Theft Auto" is probably an indication of how big this name is because I am not a gamer personally. I don't know if you play.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: I think I play a little. I dabble, but I'm not-- like, I've never played "Grand Theft Auto." But you can't help-- you can't help but hear about it. And you know, especially the way people drive in DC and Maryland, "Grand Theft Auto" is a theme for how we drive around here. That does tend to come up quite a bit.

AKIKO FUJITA: That's an interesting use case, maybe a primer. LA drivers too, I will say, a little crazy, but for a whole another conversation there.