Take-Two expects Call of Duty will boost Game Pass numbers 'for a period of time'

gamesindustry.biz:

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says that putting a game like Call of Duty into Game Pass will inevitably push consumers towards subscribing, at least for a bit.

Take-Two does support subscription services through its legacy titles, yet it has been sceptical around the idea of putting brand new AAA games into the service on the day they come out.

Zelnick told us in 2022: "That doesn't make any sense to us, because economically speaking, we don't think consumers are prepared to pay for that. And we can't afford to turn our business upside down in a way that doesn't make sense economically."

But with Xbox continuing to significantly push Game Pass with the inclusion of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 into the service this October, does Zelnick expect consumer habits to change?

"I think that offering a frontline title with a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time," Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz.

However, he added that this move by Microsoft doesn't change how Take-Two views the subscription opportunity. "No, it won't affect our decisions," Zelnick says. "Because our decisions are rational."

Zelnick was speaking to GamesIndustry.biz after the firm's latest financial results, which showed some modest growth during Q1. But it's ultimately a quiet year for Take-Two, and with some of its core properties like GTA Online and NBA 2K not delivering the growth we've seen in previous years, which have been offset by success in mobile, particularly around Match Factory and Toon Blast.

"We have narrowed down the pipeline to focus on the titles that we think will be the most successful"

The company had conducted three different sets of cost reductions (including redundancies) over the last 18 months, some of which was related to its $12.7 billion acquisition of Zynga and some due to the new realities facing the games industry post-pandemic (namely, slower growth, higher costs and a highly competitive