Take-Two Interactive‘s CEO believes the gaming industry is heading towards PC dominance, despite the company’s upcoming publishing juggernaut GTA 6 so far only slated for Xbox and PlayStation.
Strauss Zelnick made the comments earlier this week, while chatting with CNBC’s Squawk Box. “I think [the industry is] moving towards PC, and business is moving towards open rather than closed,” Zelnick said.
“But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen – that’s never going away,” the CEO furthered.
Zelnick’s comments come one week after Valve announced its own range of gaming hardware, notably the Steam Machine, which is a console/PC hybrid which will be able to run PC games on a television or as a normal gaming computer.
Zelnick also touched on the mobile gaming market, which he said is growing more rapidly than the console market. “Mobile, of course, is taken with you, it’s repeatable, and it’s enjoyable,” Zelnick said. “And I do think because it appeals to the broadest possible audience, it will probably continue to grow more rapidly.”
During an earnings call, Zelnick stated Take-Two expects the mobile business to increase by roughly 10 percent in the next quarter.
Many publishers have moved to release their games on PC as well as consoles. PlayStation, for example, has steadily been making its once-console exclusives available via the likes of Steam over recent years. Earlier this year, former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida admitted porting PlayStation-exclusive games to PC is “almost like printing money”, and provides an opportunity to invest in further games.
There is still no word on a GTA 6 PC release from Rockstar and Take-Two, though. Earlier this year, Zelnick teased a PC release of GTA 6 will be on the way, but added the company tends not to “go across all platforms simultaneously”. At this time, Take-Two’s head noted the PC version of a multiplatform game can generate 40 percent of overall sales.
