Following an FY25 that landed at the upper end of guidance, Take-Two Interactive has entered FY26 with GTA 6 having shifted out of it. Take-Two CEO and chairman Strauss Zelnick caught up with GamesIndustry.biz on the year ahead, including game pricing, Borderlands 4, and Civilization 7’s post-launch.
The interview below has been edited for brevity and clarity.
2K has a number of Switch 2 ports on the way. What do you see as the opportunity with that console for both new releases and catalogue titles?
We feel very good about it. We’re supporting Nintendo’s Switch 2 at launch with four titles. This is our broadest, most robust support ever for a Nintendo launch, so clearly we believe.
What was the strategy behind announcing the GTA 6 release date as early as you did?
Our labels will typically announce dates when they believe that’s the date they’re going to deliver the product, and it meets within a marketing window, [so] all the stars essentially align. But that’s always resided with our labels.
Civilization 7 got a mixed community response at launch, but the results note that updates are ongoing and a long sales cycle is expected, as with previous entries. Can you talk about how you see the journey of that game playing out?
I think you actually captured it pretty well. We definitely had some challenges at launch. Every time we’ve come out with a new platform iteration of Civilization, there’s been some consternation on the part of consumers who love the franchise and are beholden to its prior iteration. Then, we will occasionally do updates, make changes, address concerns, and the sales cycle ends up being very long, and people – once again – fall in love with it. I see that happening right now. We’ve addressed some of the initial changes, we probably have a bit more work to do, but sales are strong and we’re really happy with how it’s going – and I think in the fullness of time, it’ll be just great.
I was wondering if you could talk about game pricing and the decision to make Mafia: The Old Country a $50 product. What was the strategy there, and what are your thoughts about where pricing is at more generally?
We’ve always had variable pricing here, and our job as an entertainment [company] seeking to bring the biggest and best hits to all consumers around the world is always to deliver more value than what we charge. Always. We think Mafia: The Old Country is absolutely extraordinary – it looks just great. We wanted to get it into as many hands as possible. This was one way to do it. Our job is not to turn a consumer upside down, shake them, and see how much change comes out of their pockets. Our job is to create the very best entertainment. If we do that, the revenue will take care of itself.
What about the upper end of premium game pricing? Obviously we’ve seen Nintendo and Xbox increase pricing on their side – what do you make of the response to that, and where do you see Take-Two going with future premium game pricing?
Look, undoubtedly on a real basis, that is to say adjusted for inflation, topline pricing has been coming down for years. Probably two decades. Which is to say, on an inflation-adjusted basis, every year topline pricing has been further and further discounted. Consumers look at their entertainment through a lens of, ‘how much time am I going to spend with this, and how much am I going to like it?’ The more time they spend, and the more they’re going to like it, the more value is being delivered to those consumers.
Again, our job is to maximise the value being delivered, and then offer that value at a meaningfully reduced cost, so that the experience of consumption is optimised across both how it feels when you’re actually playing our games, as well as how it feels when you’re paying your credit card bill. That’s our job. I do think that the value that is offered is massive and growing, and that is our job.
Borderlands 4 has huge Steam wishlist numbers. What’s kept that franchise so evergreen over almost two decades now?
Randy Pitchford and the team at Gearbox do amazing work. It is a phenomenal property, and I think the most recent trailer shows that no matter what you think, Gearbox has always been a step ahead of you. They capture that tone. They’re not slavishly devoted to what came before. What came before informs what they do, and then they [ask], ‘how do we take this to the next level?’ Or the next planet, as the case may be.
It was a great year for Zynga. What’s the key to that level of performance in such a competitive market?
I’m so proud of what the team at Zynga has been able to accomplish, because really, Zynga is the only mobile company out there that’s generating multiple new hits in the marketplace. We have Match Factory, which is now profitable, we have Color Block Jam which has been enormously successful in a short period of time. Toon Blast, which is a legacy title that’s booming.
We have Empires & Puzzles which is a huge title that’s stabilised, and is now poised for growth. What’s special? Honestly? Take-Two aims to have among our colleagues the very most talented people in the business, on the creative side, and on the executive side. It’s self-serving, but I believe that’s the case. Match Factory comes to us from Peak, Color Block Jam comes to us from Rollic. These studios are phenomenal, led by phenomenally talented people.
In the results, you mentioned the massive success of GTA 6’s second trailer. In the short term, what kind of effect has that had on the existing Rockstar catalogue of titles?
In the quarter we just announced, GTA Online and Red Dead Online both did better than expectations. As for the trailer, it generated 475 million views in the first 24 hours, setting a record. So I think we’re in a pretty good place.
What’s exciting you about the year ahead?
We have a great release schedule coming up, I’m really looking forward to Mafia: The Old Country, Borderlands 4, both of which we’ve discussed. We’ve a lot of other great releases coming, of course our annualised titles WWE and NBA. Across the board, there’s a lot of very exciting titles coming. We have our live-ops titles we just discussed.
Zynga has new releases coming. It’s always hard to say what a mobile title will do, but I feel really good about a number of those titles. And we have our catalogue. This company has the opportunity to perform all of its various divisions, all of its various business channels, and our recent results reflect the fact that we’re doing so.
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