Way back in September 2020, NBA 2K21 arrived asthe very first game to be priced at $70 USD. At the time,Take-TwoCEO Strauss Zelnick said that gamers “were ready” for the higher price, and since then, pretty much every other major publisher has increased prices on their triple-A titles to follow suit.
A little over two years later, Zelnick said in a recent earnings call (transcribed byVGC) he’s “not seeing a pushback on frontline price” from angry gamers.
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“What we’re seeing is consumers are seeking to limit their spending by going either to the stuff they really, really care about, blockbusters, or to value, and sometimes it could be both,” he said. “And the good news is, we have a bunch of blockbusters and we have a wonderful catalog.”
A slowing economy, high inflation, and largely stagnant wages have meanta general slowing of discretionary spending, with gamers holding off on purchases for sales or skipping games entirely. Zelnick recognized the current economic situation but said that it won’t be this way forever.
“We think that will change. This is a growth business, and this is a unique market, and nothing that’s going on now is inconsistent with the view that we outlined during the pandemic. We said at that time that we were benefitting greatly from people being at home due to an odd turn of events.
“And we set out expectations that post-pandemic, we as an industry would be at a better place than pre-pandemic, and at a worse place than during a time when people were sheltering at home. And that’s exactly what’s happened, exacerbated by a challenging, mixed economy, and what I believe is a recession, at least if you look at it through the lens of people who purvey digital entertainment consumed at home and e-commerce suppliers, there’s a lot of pressure in those markets.”
As for those blockbusters, we might have recently learned just what Zelnick means. Take-Two’s annual earnings report projected a windfall to arrive in the 2025 financial year beginning on April 2024. Take-Twoexpects net bookings to skyrocket to $8 billion dollars that year, which has some fans speculating that it might be the release window for GTA 6.
Of course, inflation and other economic pressures will need to have disappeared in order for Take-Two to realize an $8 billion gain on the back of GTA 6, otherwise, players will do just as they’re doing now: waiting for a big sale or just skipping it altogether.
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