Take-Two CEO predicts photorealistic graphics will be common in 10 years

Red Dead Redemption 2
(Image credit: Rockstar)

The big boss of the parent company for Rockstar Games and 2K Games thinks some games will be indistinguishable from live-action entertainment within the next decade - visually speaking, anyway.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick shared his predictions for the future of the games industry during a presentation at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference this week, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz. He explained that the company's business model has changed a ton in the last ten years through mobile games and in-app purchases, and one of the only safe guesses to make for the next decade is that it will change just as much.

"And I can't quite say what that will involve, but I think what you're going to see is technology will allow our creative folks to do things they've never been able to do before, including make games that look exactly like live-action," Zelnick explained.

"Some of what we do now looks a lot like live-action, but it's still animation. In 10 years, you'll have the option if you want to make things that look completely realistic, all done inside a computer, never mind all the other advances technology will enable."

Photorealism has been the end goal for advances in gaming visuals for decades, and like Zelnick said, we do find moments of it in modern games. It's exciting to think of the possibilities that games which are visually indistinguishable from live-action movies or TV would give to developers - though I'm even more excited to see what artists can do when they have all that power and all those tools, and no compunction to make the final result look like anything like reality.

Check out our guide to the best graphics cards if you want to get a little closer to the photoreal. 

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.