Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who once said that Google oversold the promise of cloud gaming, doesn’t usually mince words. In an interview with Protocol, he made his feelings on cloud gaming very clear, and they’re not unlike those he had on VR. “Any new distribution vehicle that offers high-quality, efficiency and a reasonable price is good for our business because broader distribution is always better in the entertainment business,” Zelnick said. “That said, there was all this hype for years about VR, and I wasn’t very compelled by that. Thankfully, as a result, we didn’t waste any money on it,” the longtime CEO revealed. Take-Two had indeed invested very little in VR, with the only notable releases being Borderlands 2 VR, and the NBA 2K VR experience.
As part of the same interview, Zelnick went on to reiterate his thoughts on the potential for cloud gaming to expand the user base, arguing that anyone who cares about video games enough already has a console. “There were some parties who were saying there are 130 [million] to 140 million current-gen consoles out there. You know, if you can make in a frictionless way console video games available to everyone who has a PC or a tablet or a phone, then your market size automatically would be 20x just mathematically,” he said. “Of course that doesn’t make any sense at all. Because the implication is you are super interested in video games but you were just unwilling to buy a console. I mean, I’m sure there were people like that, but if they are so interested that they want to pay $60 or $70 for a front-line title, it’s hard for me to believe they were unwilling to spend $250 on a console to be able to do it ever in their life.” Elsewhere in the interview, Zelnick defended his company’s decision to raise the price of games to $70 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
