During a Q&A call during the recent earnings report for Take-Two Interactive, CEO Strauss Zelnick offered some thoughts on EA’s recent announcement that the company would be going private as part of a deal with an investor consortium. As caught by GamesRadar, Zelnick was asked about EA going private, to which he responded by saying that the company is “always running scared around here.”
“Arrogance is the enemy of continued success,” he explained. “I do think we’re in a terrific position. We’re performing much better than expected economically, and that’s because we’re performing better than expected creatively, and that’s always our story around here. If we can maintain that, then we have a wonderful future ahead of us.”
While Take-Two Interactive has seen its fair share of victories, especially with the Mafia: The Old Country having beaten internal sales expectations, Zelnick also pointed out that the company doesn’t take the time to do victory laps. This, he said, is because there is always more work to be done. “Whenever we have good results, our approach around here is to take no victory lap,” he said. “It’s to get up the next day and try to do it again.”
Zelnick was asked similar questions about EA going private by The Game Business, asking how it would affect Take-Two Interactive going forward. To this, he responded that while the publisher has more breathing room in a competitive industry, it is also important for Take-Two to not take anything for granted.
“It’s hard to know. No longer having a big direct competitor that’s also a public company may give us a bit of room from a competitive point of view. On the other hand, we never take anything for granted […] We are always looking over our shoulders. We are always scared… so I’m not sure that’s really a difference that makes a difference.”
“We wish our competitors well. A good business is well served by having powerful players, not just one powerful player. So, it’s possible that the competitor landscape shifts a bit; it’s also possible that nothing changes at all. Either way, we have to do our job, which is to make the very best entertainment on earth.”
When it comes to Mafia: The Old Country’s success, Zelnick had noted in the same interview that it confirmed what he had “suspected”, that games that offer players “a great narrative experience” that is fun, contained, and priced fairly often tend to give companies “the perfect result.” However, it is worth noting that Take-Two Interactive hasn’t really revealed any hard data about how many copies of Mafia: The Old Country had been sold.
As for Electronic Arts, the company announced that it is being acquired by an investor consortium comprised of Saudi Arabia’s PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners as part of a deal valued at around $55 billion. The deal involves a leveraged buyout, which would involve putting the debt onto the company itself. The long-term ramifications of this deal are yet to be seen, as it closes in Q1 FY2027.
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