Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke to investors at an MKM Partners event and spoke once more about annualizing the company’s franchises. Essentially, Zelnick believes that it would lead to an eventual quality drop and the franchises being burned off like with the competition.
“I suppose, conceptually, if we took all [of our franchises] and we just turned it into an annualized schedule – leaving everything else to the side–the math says you would be in a better place.
“But what would it imply? It would imply doubling our development teams. It would imply calling into question our quality. And it would imply the risk that consumers tire of these franchises. One of the things that’s best about Take-Two is our franchises seem to be permanent. They’re beloved and permanent. Whereas our competitors burn off their franchises, which means they have to create new ones, which is incredibly difficult to do.”
With eleven franchises in Rockstar and 2K Games, Zelnick noted how each individual title across these sold more than 5 million copies. Of its 54 games overall, each has sold two million copies on average and Zelnick says, “That’s second to none in the business. We can have a really powerful release schedule without burning off the IP and that’s our goal.”
Thoughts on all this? Let us know below.
