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Take-Two Strauss Zelnick CEO says the GTA series can last as long as James Bond

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Speaking during the Jefferies Virtual Global Interactive Entertainment Conference this week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked whether the publisher’s core franchises have a shelf life, or whether they can live on permanently through broader industry changes and technological advancements.

“If it’s really, really great it will keep going,” he responded (transcribed by VGC). “I don’t know if you saw it, I just saw the new Bond film, that was great. And you would like every franchise to be James Bond.

“There are precious few entertainment franchises of any sort that fall into that category, but they do exist. And I think GTA is one of them, I think Red Dead is one of them, NBA is obviously one of them because the game [of basketball] will continue to exist.”

Zelnick said he thinks that Borderlands, BioShock and Civilization can fit into the same category, but that the “gating factor” to entry is the quality of the products.

“It also requires you to be thoughtful and be willing to rest a title so that you have a sense of ‘wow, this is a rare event’,” he said.

“I’ve always said that annualising non-sports titles runs the risk of burning out intellectual property even if it’s good, so we take the time to make something that we think is incredibly phenomenal and we also rest titles intentionally so that there’s pent-up demand for that title so that it’s a special event.

“I go and see a Bond film because there isn’t another one in two months – I’m going to see every Bond film.”

Continuing his Bond analogy, Zelnick said building fan demand for new franchise entries is only a good strategy if the product hits the anticipated quality level.

“If it’s bad I’m going to be really upset, you know like a personal affront, because I believe that that IP is always just beyond.

“And that’s the compact Rockstar has with its consumers and that’s the compact 2K has with regard to NBA 2K, that’s the compact that Gearbox and 2K has with Borderlands consumers, and Firaxis has with Civilization consumers, and I want to have more of that.

“It is so hard to deliver on that basis, it is so difficult to do that over and over again, but that’s our goal and that’s our job, that’s what we aim to do.”

He added: “And yes, to answer your question, if you do that, are these franchises permanent? Look, nothing’s permanent, but they can be very, very long-lasting.

“That said, we don’t bet on that, which is why we’re launching new intellectual properties, it’s why of our release schedule over the next three years, 56% of it is new intellectual property. That’s super risky, our hit ratio will be much lower than it would be if you went and did the franchises, it has to be, but we have to do it because our franchises are not permanent.”
 

nush

Gold Member
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jigglet

Banned
I don't see it, not in it's current form anyway.

A game like GTA needs to be able to poke fun at everything and everyone. I don't see that lasting much longer.

GTA will continue to exist for a long time sure, but not in the form that made it so great in the first place.

I think it will focus more on going up against very clearly defined "bad" guys and it'll lose a lot of the humor and indiscriminate violence. I think it was Watch Dogs 2 where aim assist didn't even work on civilians? I think it's going to be that but amped up over time (maybe one day you'll only be able to shoot criminals or something).
 
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lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
well hes not wrong though, people will eat up GTA like they eat up COD or battlefield.
 

Kagey K

Banned
The fun in GTA is the satire, and while I think there is more than enough satire to go around now, nobody has the balls to give it to certain groups.

GTA used to be about poking everyone a bit, I don't think there is anyone left there with the lamb fries to continue in that tradition.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
“I don’t know if you saw it, I just saw the new Bond film, that was great.
Lmao.

Of course a CEO will say that, they never say "our product will eventually fail to find an audience ".

GTA is/was fun due to its random goofing off nature. It doesn't have the instant dopamine hit that games like COD do, so it isn't nearly as resilient to poor direction like those games.
 

Superwave

Banned
The franchise has become bloated and greedy and worthy of satirical lampooning itself. It's not fun and it's just a money making machine.

What we need is a young pretender like GTA and Rockstar once was. Too bad Sleeping Dogs was killed off.
 

nowhat

Member
What we need is a young pretender like GTA and Rockstar once was. Too bad Sleeping Dogs was killed off.
I'd absolutely love a sequel to Sleeping Dogs, and was quite gutted to learn one was in the works but was cancelled. I need my pork bun fix dammit!
 

Fake

Member
'Let's use someone else's work as our own.'. Good luck trying to mimic the original GTA.

Companies are just name. The group of people that made those games in the first place are the folks that matter.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Yeah because there gonna release a new GTA every 10years or so.
But I have a feeling GTA6 will be the downfall. Rockstar got away with bs for too long
 

*Nightwing

Member
Apparently he didn’t have anyone around him to tell him Bond was a franchise well before the Daniel Craig movies. He fell victim to ceo mistake #1: opening his mouth outside of the company where people will actually hold him accountable for whatever stupid shit he will inevitably say as is the natural state of any CEO in its natural environment.

GTA doesn’t have legs to last 70 years
 

Kuranghi

Member
Thats pretty funny when they appear to be trying to remove James Bond and make it just "007".

So from this I take it that the next GTA won't have car jacking, crime or violence.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
I wish we had a gta game day 1 new generation now we have to watch saints row have a field day with the genre.
 

Kabelly

Member
After seeing the recent leak and sorry state of GTA i think he's sort of right.

The names' Bland, Games Bland
sorry state? all that leak told me was that they're spending a lot time on tiny ass details people like you won't appreciate or notice in the final release.

i think if they still keep the somewhat arcadey nature of GTA some of the deeper systems from RDR2 but more fleshed out I think this will be a great damn game.
I haven't even played RDR2 on my PC yet, only PS4, and I think it's probably the most beautiful game I have ever played. The graphical leap from GTA 5 to 6 will be big.
 
sorry state? all that leak told me was that they're spending a lot time on tiny ass details people like you won't appreciate or notice in the final release.

i think if they still keep the somewhat arcadey nature of GTA some of the deeper systems from RDR2 but more fleshed out I think this will be a great damn game.
I haven't even played RDR2 on my PC yet, only PS4, and I think it's probably the most beautiful game I have ever played. The graphical leap from GTA 5 to 6 will be big.
1. It was a joke
2. The leak showed us a game running on the previous gen (ps4/xbone). If GTA 6 releases on last gen, then yes, that is a very sorry state.
 
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