As GTA 5 passes 205 million units sold, publisher Take-Two says hit titles "decay" and if they're not making new IP, they're "burning the furniture to heat the house"
Nov. 7, 2024“Everything degrades”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Publisher Take-Two is best known for GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and its various sports games, but CEO Strauss Zelnick has emphasized in an earnings call last night that if the company wasn’t willing to make new IP, “well then none of us would be sitting here today.”
For a company so invested inGTA 5and its yearlyNBA 2K, it can be easy to forget thatTake-Twoand its main publishing arm, 2K, have fingers in many pies and don’t just rely on sequels.
WhileGTA Onlineand NBA 2K are colossal sources of income, and Zelneck acknowledges “most of our franchise sequels tend to do better than the prior release,” he adds that “we have teams delivering new hits all the time in mobile and in console.” You never know what the next GTA will be.
The list of games worked on by Take-Two is broad. Titles you’ve definitely heard of likeBioShock,Civilization, andXCOM, are all huge, but it’s also part of many smaller projects. One of my own personal favourite forgotten gems isThe Darkness. This was a strange experience where you played as a mafia member with snake-like, heart-eating tentacles who had to traverse city blocks in the modern day as well as a World War One-inspired Hell. It was out there.
More recently, it’s also played a part in publishing or distributing the rougelite hitHades, the charmingRollerdrome, and the overlookedMarvel’s Midnight Suns.
While the company has an impressive roster, this strategy isn’t without its shortcomings. “It does mean the risk profile is higher,” Zelneck says. “It does mean that when we get it wrong, and we will get it wrong now and then, we take a hit, and that affects our operating margins.” Earlier this year,Take-Two laid off nearly 600 people.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Zelneck does also say that “The good news is, frankly, our hit ratios are really high for this industry,” so hopefully it keeps investing in interesting titles likeSpec Ops: The LineandThe Quarry.
While Take-Two isn’t only interested in sequels, we all want toknow everything about GTA 6, so check out what we’ve learned so far.
I’m Issy, a freelancer who you’ll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I’ve always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you’ll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I’m currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.
Open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki is serious business – so serious its devs have already banned over 80 accounts for cheating: “We implore all Stylists to adhere to the game rules”
Hideo Kojima seems to be testing Death Stranding 2, but it’s not going well: “I fell asleep twice while on a delivery and ran the vehicle into a cliff”
Get hundreds of hours of RPG goodness for $30 with this bundle of 8 games that includes the first two Baldur’s Gate games, which are absolutely worth playing
