Take-Two CEO Wants to Bring Legacy IP to Mobile - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 June 2024 / 1,643 Views
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick in an interview at a TD Cowen conference this week was asked if the publisher had made any progress in releasing new entries in its biggest IPs on mobile or whether it was still even part of its pipeline.
The mobile company Zynga was acquired by Take-Two in January 2022 and at the time Zelnick said the acquisition could help in the creation of new titles based on Take-Two’s core intellectual property."
Zelnick this week (via VideoGamesChronicle) stated, "You’re kind to ask it that way. What you’re really saying is, 'you haven’t done that, what happened?' And the answer is, and I said it at the time, I said, 'listen, that is one opportunity to create revenue synergies, but arguably it’s not the best one because even mobile titles based on traditional core established IP can fail, and the biggest titles in mobile are of course native.'
"Now, what people are really saying, they didn’t say it this way, is, 'why don’t you just do what Call of Duty Mobile did?' But the answer is, Call of Duty is a superset, never mind a subset, a superset of one. Basically everything else has paled by comparison in our space.
“So, we understood then, and still now, that the biggest hits in mobile tend to be native to mobile, Match Factory being a great example.
"That said, I would love to be able to announce a successful mobile title based on legacy Take-Two IP, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to do it, but you’re right that it has been backburnered a bit in service of a bunch of other opportunities.
"So, the biggest revenue synergy created among the organisations now we’re one, but we were two, is our direct to consumer platform for mobile, which has become really important to us. That was essentially a joint venture between Zynga and Take-Two like day one, and now it’s a very significant business.
"The incremental margin driven by our direct to consumer business in mobile, in and of itself, basically ticks the box of our expected revenue synergies, because revenue you don’t care about, it’s margin you care about, so basically the margin driven by that has ticked that box."
He added, "Would I like to do exactly what you said? Absolutely. Have we done it yet? We have not done it yet. Is it in our multi-year pipeline? It is in our pipeline, but that doesn’t mean it will succeed, it could fail, in which case it would be irrelevant. No, worse than irrelevant, it would actually cost us money because failures cost us money."
Zelnick concluded, "But we have to try and we will try."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Lemmings and Space Station Silicon Valley here we go!
Any DMA Design game (pre-Rockstar North) would be nice. Smuggler's Run also. Probably other Angels Studios to what they are now games.
I'd love to see Space Station Silicon Valley on there I mean testing with N64 phone emu is something.
Lemmings for sure would be great to see. It's like when I questioned Activision Anthology on Xbox when it was only on PS2 and other platforms but no Xbox or GameCube. Then again Pitfall Lost Expedition Xbox BC when? So many games I could go where is this IP for competition (Pitfall with Uncharted, Indy, TR, Tad, other explorer action adventure IPs insert here).
Some games probably work well. I mean as eh as the Borderlands 2 port is of working I still have fun with it on Vita. Let alone PSVR1.
People got the old GTAs on mobile before the PS3/360 mobile to console port that 'worked' apparently.
So many studios old games and old IPs we'd love to see yet we will just see the most safe games offered. Which isn't a bad thing they will sell, there is appeal for them no doubt but I mean it would be nice to see others if they don't offer them on console.
I mean I'm still waiting for Piko Interactive to give us Glover on modern consoles the PC Steam port was years ago now. 40 Winks got it's N64 cart years ago too. Antstream got Glover on it whats the excuse to port (even if emulated) an N64 game to modern consoles at this point.
I know most 3rd party publishers only offer their PS3/360+ games to services or mobile anyways as they are the IPs they are mostly focusing on but one can dream for their older IPs they barely focus on, don't renew the license or IPs they focus on a lot these days get the mobile/service treatment and while that's fair I mean additional sales for other games that appeal to people then IPs people don't that are a certain group will buy the other games not the ones they offer and 'expect' us to just buy because they won't offer the others we clearly seek/also allow for a new audience and if the games hold up well which some do of their ideas not always controls then by all means.
I still think about Silicon Valley, it gave me inspiration of ideas for Biomutant lacking. So do many other 5-6th gen games in modern games for ideas, not carbon copy ideas but new ideas because of their experimentation gets me thinking up ideas that could suit the aspects a modern game isn't pushing.
Wow this is so cool to hear. Reminds me of when Borderlands was on mobile and even half life 2 I believe
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