One of the major publishers doesn’t want to hear that a big budget game (any game we’re talking about) should be on Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium the day it launches…

Gamesindustry interviewed Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two. Among the topics discussed was the bold move Microsoft has made: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day, but only if you subscribe to the Ultimate tier. The Redmond-based tech giant hopes this will encourage more people to subscribe to the service (and its most expensive tier).

But what does Zelnick think? Can Take-Two’s games follow Microsoft’s lead? “I think offering a frontline title at a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will drive consumers to that subscription service, at least for a period of time.” However, Take-Two would not immediately put new titles on these services because “rational decisions are being made”.

Zelnick’s position is understandable, because Grand Theft Auto VI will be released in a little over a year, in the fall of 2025, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, and they would be much better off buying the game. It’ll be on PlayStation Plus Extra and Xbox Game Pass later, but first they’ll want to get a few tens of millions in sales (that’s not an exaggeration, Grand Theft Auto V is well over 100 million), and they’ll no doubt have a lot of money lying around again in the new version of Grand Theft Auto Online. Except there won’t be any single-player content updates again; that’s what happened with GTA V.

Take-Two is not even going to make Borderlands 4 available like this (that game will be made by Gearbox, which was recently bought by the publisher), because they want more money right away.

Source: VGC, Gamesindustry