Take-Two is not allergic to subscriptions, as evidenced by the passage of games as important as GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 or NBA 2K in the PlayStation Plus and Game Pass catalogs. But Strauss Zelnick is not yet convinced of the economic merits of letting major titles slip away from the day of their release in these subscriptions, as he explains in a video interview with the Games Industry site.
“We have supported various subscription services and are happy to do so. We are skeptical about making important console games available the day they are released in these subscriptions. We cannot afford to disrupt our business in a way that does not make economic sense to us. This can be potentially interesting for securities that have been in the market for a while. If their price has been reduced, it may be economically interesting to offer them as a subscription“, says Strauss Zelnick.
“So there always has to be a middle ground between what the consumer wants and what the publisher is able to do, and it doesn’t make sense to do that for top-tier games, in our view. I think Sony tends to agree with us since they said the same thing“, adds Strauss Zelnick, referring to Jim Ryan’s reluctance to imitate Microsoft by depositing PlayStation Studios games in PlayStation Plus as soon as they come out of the oven.
But just like Jim Ryan, Strauss Zelnick is a veteran who saw how the certainties of a day could crack a few years later in an industry like video games. “This company does not operate on the opinions of any one person, including my own, and where it makes sense, we will support subscription services. If this is where the consumer wants to be, this is where we will be“, he takes care to add by wielding the art of half-opening the door.