Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said that the company doesn’t want to “burn off” its franchises with yearly releases, and he believes that’s what sets Take-Two apart from its competitors. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz ahead of E3 2015, Zelnick said that the strategy of resting IPs is paying off.
I think the biggest distinction between us and some of our competitors is we don’t annualize our non-sports titles, and that’s for a couple reasons. One is we want to have the highest quality in the business and that takes time, and two, we like to rest our IP in between releases because we believe that’s what keeps it fresh and permanent. We don’t want to burn off our franchises. It’s an unusual strategy, I think we stand alone with that strategy, but it’s really paying off.
Zelnick went on to compare Take-Two’s profits in 2007 with profit earned in the past fiscal year, explaining that it’s all “organic.”
Obviously it takes a while because creating a new IP takes some time, and then you don’t always have the biggest success initially as you would with a subsequent release. It’s a long-term strategy but history says we’re doing well. In 2007 we had net revenues of $700 million and this past fiscal year it was $1.7 billion, all organic.
Speaking of the recently released Evolve, Zelnick says that he sees it as a profitable title and a permanent IP.
We were just talking about the initial release. The good news is we’ve had 27 million game sessions already, and we certainly see it as a profitable title and a permanent IP for us.
The full interview is quite lengthy, and can be read here.
Take-Two will be coming to E3 2015, which kicks off soon.
