The rapidly increasing cost of hardware globally, largely attributed to the proliferation of AI data centers and the ongoing RAM shortages, is "not a good thing," admits Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, but the issue could be mitigated by the takeover of low latency game streaming, he predicts.
Take-Two held its quarterly earnings call Friday morning (thanks, Kotaku), and Zelnick was asked to comment on the rising prices of hardware. He started by saying it isn't good for business, naturally, as the publisher's games still need machines to be played on, but he used the opportunity to transition into a somewhat bold prediction which, if proven true, would make expensive gaming consoles a premium option rather than a requirement to play games.
"With the advent of streaming – which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that's low latency, and really works well for consumers – machines that weren't game machines before will become game machines," said Zelnick. "So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially."
"And if you believe in streaming," he says, "to be clear, we really do, and I'm happy to put a timeline on it. I think we'll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency."
In Zelnick's view, game streaming isn't just a natural progression driven by exorbitant hardware costs, it's an opportunity for a publisher with some of the most financially profitable intellectual properties to expand even further into the mainstream. If one day, dedicated video game hardware isn't the necessary and expensive barrier to entry to most big games that it is today, Take-Two could touch markets that otherwise wouldn't be accessible.
"That can 10x the effective the install base," said Zelnick. "That doesn't mean we're going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn't project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously."
Xbox, PlayStation, and PC already have plenty of dedicated cloud streaming apps, but they remain a relatively niche alternative to traditional hardware-reliant gaming primarily due to latency and stability issues. It remains an open question whether the tech will scale alongside inevitably bigger, more demanding games, but Zelnick is characteristically bullish. Ironically, Take-Two's own GTA 6 would undoubtedly be among the most challenging games to cram into the cloud format as it exists today, but we'll see how that changes in three years' time.
