From the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises to the 2K sports titles, Take-Two Interactive has some of the most-desirable games in the industry. However, the company has largely kept its marquee titles away from Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. Now, Take-Two President Karl Slatoff has explained why the company hasn’t embraced lending more of its games to subscription services.
“We do put our titles occasionally into some of the subscription services,” Slatoff said earlier this month during a Take-Two investor call (via The Motley Fool). “They’re great partners for us. And in many cases, they’re great … We wouldn’t do it unless it was a good economic deal. The platforms wouldn’t do it either. So we do take advantage of that, and it’s been compelling much from an economic standpoint. As it relates to NBA, we have done it in the past. We don’t really talk about whether we’re gonna do anything in the future. But when you do put something into a channel like that, it generates obviously, engagement. It generates income for us. And it’s something that we consider, and we do it if the time is right, if the math makes sense.”
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has previously weighed in on the subject by stating that it doesn’t make sense to put any of the company’s new titles on Game Pass or PS Plus. He also said that high-profile day-one games like Call of Duty will only drive up Game Pass subscriptions for a short period of time.
Raccoon Logic studio head Alex Hutchinson recently argued that launching titles day one on Game Pass can devalue games and hurt the industry. Hutchinson has first-hand experience with the subject: Raccoon Logic launched Revenge of the Savage Planet as a day one title earlier this year, and the company didn’t get the response it hoped for.
