Take-Two CEO doesn’t want new games on Game Pass

Once again, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has reacted to the financial situation surrounding subscription services like Game Pass, and once again, GTA fans who are hopeful that a future game will launch on the service from the start should not hold their breath. His views remain unchanged: Subscription services make sense for catalog games, but not for new ones. This is a point on which he has been insisting for years. He also wonders if it’s possible for everyone in the chain – developers, publishers and consumers – to get by.

“Our views remain unchanged. We believe that a subscription model may make sense for in-depth catalog titles. But it doesn’t really make sense for frontline titles. For a business model to make sense. makes sense in the entertainment industry, it has to work for entertainment creators as well as entertainment consumers. I think the catalog can make sense for publishers, it can make sense for consumers who are greedy, who really want to access a lot of products, but if you’re going into a front-line product, then the economics are a lot harder to figure out, ”he said on Take-Two’s earnings conference call.

Zelnick observed that the “consumption models” for a streaming service like Netflix – which offers linear entertainment (for now at least) – are different from interactive entertainment.

“Consumers involved in interactive entertainment have different consumption patterns from those involved in linear entertainment. Linear entertainment consumers consume approximately 150 hours of programming per month. That’s probably well over 100 different titles. In the case of interactive entertainment, consumers consume something like 45 hours per month, and it can be one, two, three, four titles. But it is certainly not 100 titles. So from a consumer perspective, it’s not clear that a subscription model really makes sense, for most consumers, ”he said.

Overall, however, Zelnick said he was not married to any idea.

“It remains to be seen. We have an open mind. We have made catalog titles available for subscription services. Very occasionally, we have also made frontline titles available. But we see it more as a catalog offering than a frontline offering, ”he said.

A high-profile example of a title developed by Rockstar Games that entered a subscription service is Grand Theft Auto V. It was added and then removed from Xbox Game Pass originally, and the same is happening again. There are plans to take it out of service again very soon.

For more on Take-Two’s revenue report today, check out the stories below.