Take-Two CEO Explains Why There’s No GTA 6 In Sight

You may remember back when GTA was young (or at least on its third sequel, when people started to care about it), it didn’t take long for new games in the series to show up. Gradually the pace of those releases has been getting slower and slower. GTA IV was kept alive through storyline expansions, but there has been no such thing with GTA V. And GTA 6 might as well be vapor for all we know. What’s the deal?

The CEO of Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, spoke at the MKM Partners Investor Day in New York City to explain his company’s current strategy. To make GTA games more frequently, Take-Two could restructure Rockstar into several different studios from around the globe, similar to how Activision puts out a Call of Duty every year, or how Ubisoft releases annual Assassin’s Creeds. But, as Zelnick explained, that’s the problem. If you got a new GTA every year, he said, due to the expense and labor involved the series would be forced to turn into a string of impersonal factory games. He’s not wrong about this.

“The market asks us, ‘Why don’t you annualize your titles?’ We think with the non-sports titles, we are better served to create anticipation and demand,” he said “On the one hand to rest the title and on the other hand to have the highest quality in the market, which takes time. You can’t do that annually.” He went on to say he believes the brand of properties like GTA, Red Dead or Max Payne will only remain strong if the games that bear their name are carefully made.

Besides, Zelnick has no reason to rush out new titles in the GTA series when he’s making plenty of cash off the existing one. As we reported earlier this month, DLC add-ons and special events, as well as GTA Online subscriptions, are keeping the company profitable to the tune of 32.7 million dollars last quarter alone.