The cost of their global distribution network is ”too high” without GTA. Zelnick says more releases but they’ll ”stop short” of annual cycles.
”We have a worldwide distribution and publishing footprint, and in a GTA year that cost basis is fine, but in a non-GTA year it’s too high,” the Take-Two president, Strauss Zelnick, told the L.A. Times, reports VG247. ”We need to get bigger.”
T2 is contractually locked into a deal with Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Assn. that will lose them between $30m to $35m this year. Some Wall Street types are still nursing wounds from the failed EA takeover bid.
The buyout was worth $2bn but Zelnick and the director’s board staunchly opposed the move; as of Monday Take-Two is worth $919m.
”We can make quality video games and release them in a somewhat more orderly fashion than we have done historically. We’ll stop short of a strictly annual schedule, however, because I think that is the enemy of pushing the envelope creatively,” he said.
This year is a rather hot one for Take-Two as Rockstar Games deliver a bumper crop of goodness to very eager fans: Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3, Agent and L.A. Noire are all due before 2011 hits us in the chops. Do any make your must-have list?
2K Games has Mafia II and Civilization V coming later in the year also.
