Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar games, has argued it charges much less than its games are actually worth.
During a recent call with investors, CEO Strauss Zelnick weighed in on the ongoing debate around how much companies should be charging for games. In the case of Take-Two, Zelnick said he believes customers currently pay less than what the company's games are actually worth. That's not exactly the most encouraging thing to hear as head into a next-gen that's guaranteed to be a lot pricier.
"We deliver the highest quality experiences in the business, and we charge much less for them than we believe they are worth to consumers," Zelnick said (thanks, PC Gamer).
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Zelnick's comments came in response to a question about the increased popularity of free-to-play games. With the likes of Call Of Duty: Warzone, bringing in an eye-watering $1.2 billion in microtransactions alone for Activision in the last quarter, investors wondered if Take-Two would adopt a similar strategy in the future.
The CEO went on to note that Take-Two already provides similar services through "free" online modes available via GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, though you do need to own the base games to access these titles in the first place, so calling them free could be described as a bit of a stretch.
"We deliver, typically, an ongoing component that is free. And that is already a great deal of value. Any monetization is of course totally optional," he said. Zelnick also reminded investors that GTA Online will be free-to-play for "about three months" when it launches on the PlayStation 5 in 2021.
"So, as you can see, we're open-minded about our business model, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that, at some point, certain experiences can become free as a matter of the entry point," he finished.
During the call, Zelnick also expressed his concerns in regards to the viability of of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and EA Play. He said that he's "highly skeptical that subscriptions will be the only way or primary way that interactive entertainment is distributed" going forward.
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"That's because of the way people consume it, and the price point for owning a title, which is very reasonable and very low, actually, on a per-hour basis," he added. "So I think it's unlikely that subscriptions supplant frontline video game sales as the primary business model."
GTA V and GTA Online will see individual releases in 2021, and both will be "expanded and enhanced" to take advantage of next-gen hardware. We're still not entirely sure how much Take-Two and Rockstar intends to charge us for these re-releases, but these latest comments suggest that it might not come cheap. Watch this space.
Topics: Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, Red Dead Online, News, GTA V, Grand Theft Auto