During the Jefferies Virtual Global Interactive Entertainment Conference which was held this week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has inquired “whether the publisher’s core properties have a shelf life” or can be sustained indefinitely due to larger industry developments and technological improvements.
Zelnick replied (transcribed by VGC):
“If it’s really, really great it will keep going. I don’t know if you saw it, I just saw the new Bond film that was great. And you would like every franchisee to be James Bond. There are precious few entertainment franchises of any sort that fall into that category, but they do exist. And I think GTA is one of them, I think Red Dead is one of them, NBA is obviously one of them because the game [of basketball] will continue to exist.”
Zelnick further added that he believes that Borderlands, BioShock, and Civilization can be put together into the same category. However, that the “gating factor” to the entry he holds is the quality of the products.
“It also requires you to be thoughtful and be willing to rest a title so that you have a sense of ‘wow, this is a rare event’. I’ve always said that annualizing non-sports titles run the risk of burning out intellectual property even if it’s good, so we take the time to make something that we think is incredibly phenomenal and we also rest titles intentionally so that there’s pent-up demand for that title so that it’s a special event. I go and see a Bond film because there isn’t another one in two months – I’m going to see every Bond film.”
Between September 2-13, Grand Theft Auto had launched. According to various genuine and reliable sources, GTA 6 possibly can still be four long years away from its release. Moving forward with the Bond analogy, Zelnick also said that increasing and building the fan demand for the upcoming franchise entry is only a good tactic if only the product meets its highly anticipated level of quality.
“If it’s bad I’m going to be really upset, you know like a personal affront because I believe that IP is always just beyond. And that’s the compact Rockstar has with its consumers and that’s the compact 2K has with regard to NBA 2K, that’s the compact that Gearbox and 2K have with Borderlands consumers, and Firaxis has with Civilization consumers, and I want to have more of that.”
“It is so hard to deliver on that basis, it is so difficult to do that over and over again, but that’s our goal and that’s our job, that’s what we aim to do… And yes, to answer your question, if you do that, are these franchises permanent? Look, nothing’s permanent, but they can be very, very long-lasting. That said, we don’t bet on that, which is why we’re launching new intellectual properties, it’s why of our release schedule over the next three years, 56% of it is new intellectual property. That’s super risky, our hit ratio will be much lower than it would be if you went and did the franchises, it has to be, but we have to do it because our franchises are not permanent.”
Rockstar Games’ parent company had declared that they have shipped around 155 million units. This is way ahead of the release of the next-gen version in March 2033. Take-Two had further claimed that the wider series has shipped more than 355 million units. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition had arrived this Thursday. Sadly, this new release suffered some untimely and notable launch issues on PC.
The company also shared its quarterly earnings. The presentation this month showed that the RDR franchise has shipped nearly 62 million units since its May 2010 launch. This includes over 39 million copies of Red Dead 2. It is the second best-selling title in the US over the past three years based on dollar sales.
Furthermore, questions on how the decisions to rest franchise were made. If the developers had approached Zelnick and they expressed their desire to work on other projects or if the decisions are led by the publisher, or was it a combination of both were posed to Zelnick during the event.
Zelnick responded to this question by clarifying that:
“We don’t operate that way around here. First of all, no one comes to me because we’re in a constant dialogue as a company. And secondly, smart people who have the same goal generally arrive at the same conclusion. You can disagree about the tactics, but you generally don’t disagree about the strategy.”
“And we’re aligned around here, we’re aligned culturally and we’re aligned economically. We have economic alignment with everyone who can move the dial by rewarding people based on our actual success on an annual basis, and that’s success including the cost profile.
“Therefore, we’re all aligned economically, that pulls people very magnetically in a particular direction, and then the culture is consistent with that magnetic pull. And now we’re just saying to each other, ‘ok, well like how do we achieve this?’ And undoubtedly, we could have disagreements or debates about what the best way to achieve that is, but I think a lot of what you do isn’t that complicated, like the notion of creating consumer anticipation – to me that’s sort of a no brainer.”
SOURCE: Video Game Chronicles
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