Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, isn’t really happy about the comments of the president of the United States.
Zelnick told Barron’s that the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, should be named as uniquely American issues. „We’re just sickened and saddened by these senseless tragedies. That said, blaming entertainment is irresponsible. Moreover, it is highly disrespectful to the victims and their families. The fact is entertainment is consumed worldwide…but gun violence is uniquely American. So we need to address the real issues.”
„Numerous scientific studies have established that there is no causal connection between video games and violence. More than 165 million Americans enjoy video games, and billions of people play video games worldwide. Yet other societies, where video games are played as avidly, do not contend with the tragic levels of violence that occur in the US,” the Entertainment Software Association, the organizers of E3 (who ended up leaking several thousand journalists’ private information), told GameSpot.
Zelnick – at the financial earnings call of Take-Two – talked positively about Private Division, the new, indie publishing arm of the company: „The structure of those titles economically is as we — if we are able to create hits, they have the same pound for pound economic benefit than any of our other titles around here. So, there is a great opportunity. But that opportunity would be delivered to the extent that we deliver hits. And we never claim success before we have it, ever. That said, our expectations are high. The buzz is very strong. The team there at Private Division, led by Michael Worosz, takes the quality part of our strategy exceedingly seriously. They are very disciplined, they are very, very selective. And we’re grateful that we get to work with some of the best creators on earth.”
Private Division has several unannounced projects already: „[…] for Private Division, we’ve announced three titles to date. Private Division has been in existence for quite some time and we tend to only announce things when we are ready to announce things about games themselves. We have a lot of other activity that we haven’t talked about with Private Division. But those are the three games that we’ve announced. Ancestors with Patrice Désilets, Panache Games; we have The Outer Worlds with Obsidian; and we also have we just announced recently of Disintegration with V1, which is Marcus Lehto’s studio. So, that’s all we have to say at the moment, but you should expect more in the future,” Karl Slatoff, Take-Two’s president said.
So Take-Two – as always – is hopeful.
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