Ahead of GTA 6's launch, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick says there's no need for the company to go private like EA because it's already successful enough.
Speaking on a new episode of Bloomberg's David Rubenstein show (below), Zelnick is asked if he has any interest in selling the Rockstar Games parent company like "two of the biggest competitors" in the business recently did – while they're not mentioned by name, EA and Activision Blizzard are almost certainly the competitors in question here. Clearly, though, that's not a consideration for the CEO.
"I think we've proven that we can do very well as an independent company," he begins. "And now we're, you know, a rather large company. We're at scale, and we're at a point where we have a terrific balance sheet. At the end of this fiscal year, we should be a net cash company again. We are not in a place where we need to be part of a bigger organization to be competitive."
Certainly, GTA 6's imminent release will help there – it's the most pre-ordered game of all time on both the PlayStation and Microsoft stores, and one market intelligence firm estimated that it's already reached $942 million in revenue, even before launch.
"In the entertainment business, scale matters once you aren't at a certain point," Zelnick continues. "Below about $1 billion in revenue, it's hard to field a competitive creative team, it's hard to field worldwide marketing and distribution, and it's hard to survive the inevitable flops that occur. But once you're well over $1 billion in annual revenue – and we're way beyond that point, our guidance is $8 to $8.2 billion this fiscal year – additional scale doesn't seem to help you succeed."
Zelnick is right to be confident – after all, he reckons that Take-Two has "the best collection" of IP in the games business, and between GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Borderlands, and BioShock alone, it's hard to argue there.
Acquisitions can bring in a lot of unwanted changes, too. Not long after EA was sold for $55 billion to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners earlier this year (taking on $20 billion in debt in the process), it announced the closure of Dragon Age and Mass Effect studio BioWare, and canceled Mass Effect 5. For fans of Take-Two and the studios it owns, then, it doesn't seem like a bad move to keep things as they are.
If you're getting ready to play Rockstar's big game next week, be sure to take a look at our recommendations for the best controllers and headsets to play GTA 6.
1. Best for PS5: DualSense
2. Best for Xbox: GameSir G7 Pro
3. Best pro PS5: DualSense Edge
4. Best pro Xbox: Nacon Revolution X Unlimited
See all the best controllers for GTA 6
