Take-Two believes that the GTA series developed by R Star can have the same long-term appeal as James Bond, which has been very popular since 50 years of the last century. At the Jefferies Virtual Global Interactive Entertainment Conference held this week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked whether the core series of GTA has a shelf life, or whether they can survive the broader industry change and technological advancement.
Zelnick replied: I don’t know if you watched the latest 007 movies. I just watched it. It was great. You would want every series to be James Bond. Few entertainment series of any kind achieve this. Levels, but they do exist. I think Red Dead Redemption is one of them, and of course, NBA is also, because this basketball game will continue to exist.
Zelnick said Borderlands, BioShock and Civilization also belong to this category, but the barriers to market entry are related to the quality of the products. It requires your thorough consideration, which can give a game a rest for a while, which makes people feel like [wow, this is too rare].
I always say that letting non-sports games become commercialized every year will destroy an IP. Even if it is very good, so I spend time on something that we think is very phenomenal, we will also deliberately rest some works, so that there is a suppressed demand for the subject matter, and it becomes a special event. The reason why I watched 007 movie is that there won’t be another one in two months. I will watch every 007 movie.
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Zelnick called the series of new works to create fan demand, and only after this product reaches the expected level is a good strategy.
If it sucks, then I will be very disappointed. You know it’s like a personal insult to me because I think the IP of GTA is always surpassing. This is the contract between the R star and the player, and it is also 2K in the “NBA The contract between Gearobx and 2K and the player in the “2K” game, and the contract between Firaxis and the player in the “Civilization” game. I hope there will be more such games.
On this basis, it is really difficult to achieve, and it is really difficult to do it over and over again, but this is our goal, our duty, and what we have to do. Yes, if you want to answer your question, if you really do it, will these series of IPs exist forever? Nothing is eternal, but they can exist for a long, long time.
Even so, we can’t bet on this. This is why we have to launch new IPs, and why 56% of our sales plans for the next 3 years are new IPs. This is a very risky move because our hit rate is much lower than when we did the existing IP series, but this must be the case because our series is not eternal.
Zelnick was also asked how to make the decision to rest the series-whether the developer approached him to say that they wanted to do other projects, or whether these decisions were led by the publisher or a combination of the two. Zelnick replied: We don’t do this here. First of all, no one comes to me because as a company, we have been in conversation. Second, smart people with the same goals usually come to the same conclusion. You can disagree. Tactics, but generally speaking you won’t disagree with strategy.
We are consistent here, both culturally and economically. We are financially aligned with everyone, and they can reward people with actual success each year, which is a success including cost.