Viral interview: GTA 6 boss Zelnick dismantles unprepared reporter
Shortly before the release of GTA 6, an interview with the head of Take-Two Interactive is attracting attention. An editor accused the publisher of having too few hits. The CEO’s reaction speaks volumes.
Interview question causes amusement
Two weeks before the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick is on a PR tour. While the industry mainly talks about the game’s gigantic world or the sometimes crazy detailed gameplay, Zelnick was now confronted with an unusual situation during an interview. At a technology conference, he was asked by a seemingly ill-prepared interviewer how he was dealing with concerns that the company didn’t have enough hits in its catalog outside of GTA 6. Right at the beginning, journalist Jessica Toonkel from the Wall Street Journal said that the company might be too dependent on a single stock. The audience responded to the claim with giggles, while Zelnick initially looked confused.
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Zelnick points to “the facts”
But the manager didn’t let himself be disturbed. Zelnick simply replied dryly that Take-Two had 15 different game series, each of which sold at least five million units upon release. He asked his counterpart to check “the facts”. In reality, a look at the publisher’s portfolio reveals one of the most valuable collections of franchises in the entire industry. Even the development studio Rockstar Games, which is responsible for Grand Theft Auto and has sold over 230 million copies of Grand Theft Auto 5, released in 2013, to date, has an enormously successful catalog with other brands such as Red Dead Redemption and the online offshoots of the two game series.
Further games catalog
Take-Two Interactive also publishes sports games such as NBA 2K and WWE 2K every year. The former is the second largest sports game franchise in the world and the largest in North America, according to Zelnick. The other catalog also includes established brands such as BioShock, Borderlands and the strategy series Civilization. Take-Two is also represented in the mobile sector with titles such as Words with Friends, Empires and Puzzles and Good Poker.
The assumption that GTA 6 must be something like a lifeline for Take-Two shows that not only was the wrong person chosen for the interview, but that Toonkel subsequently did not research even the most basic information about the publisher. 30 seconds on the internet would probably have been enough to know that GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 are two of the biggest and most successful games of all time. At the same time, Zelnick’s answer shows how calm you can remain when you have “the facts” and over a billion games sold in the last 20 years.
Priti Rajpoot is a technology journalist and contributor at ResearchSnipers, covering the latest in tech news, innovation, and digital trends across the world. From startups and AI to cybersecurity and consumer gadgets. She can be reached here: priti.r@researchsnipers.com
