Strauss Zelnick must have been in a somewhat philosophical mood during the publisher’s quarterly financial report, because he used a strange analogy…
Nothing lasts forever, and Zelnick knows that, even though he was the one under whom more than 205 million Grand Theft Auto sales took place. This makes the franchise one of its biggest and most consistent hits: successful episode after successful episode. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Rockstar (a subsidiary of Take-Two) is known for Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, it is already preparing that in the future these two IPs will not be as big of a behemoth as they are now…
“We know that releasing a sequel is less risky than new intellectual property, but everything degrades. And while most of our franchise sequels tend to do better than the previous release (and we’re very proud of that, because that’s unusual in the industry), the truth is, there’s this thing called decline and entropy. It is a feature of physics, human life and everything that exists on Earth. And so everything ultimately perishes, including hits.
So, if we don’t try new things and create new IPs, then if we say that we are resting on our laurels, we are underestimating the situation. We risk burning the furniture to heat the house and it will not end well. If we hadn’t been willing to create new intellectual property when we came here 18 years ago, when the risk profile of business was much higher than it is today, well, none of us would be sitting here today, and you wouldn’t be listening to this call. It’s just a fact,” Zelnick said.
Take-Two also has other IPs: Civilization, Borderlands, BioShock and Mafia are among them, and the latter two of these are struggling with the very degradation that Zelnick hinted. But among the new IPs, we can mention Judas, which BioShock creator Ken Levine is currently working on at Ghost Story Games.
However, in the meantime Take-Two sold Private Division, which relies on indie titles…
