While Chile has just started its investigations, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King is still being discussed in high places. And it’s Take-Two’s CEO who is speaking so candidly about the deal of the year for the first time this time.
Take-Two continues to strive for the heights
It was at the Yahoo microphone that Strauss Zelnick, president of Take-Two Interactive, spoke about his role in the industry, but also that of his company, publisher of famous franchises such as GTA, NBA 2K, Borderlands, Red Dead Redemption or even Bioshock.
According to him, it’s just his mission to make Take-Two the “the most innovative, creative and efficient entertainment company in the world”. It is mainly for this reason that he offered himself Zynga for nearly $13 billion, with the specific goal of following the rapid growth of mobile gaming and becoming a major player in this sector that was once underrepresented in the world of society.
We were already a leader on console and PC, and we thought we already had the best collection of IP in this niche. However, mobile is the fastest growing part of the interactive entertainment business.
Mobile games thus make it possible to reach a different audience than console games, sometimes older and more feminine.
Strauss Zelnick Promotes Microsoft Acquisition of Activision Blizzard
While Take-Two announced its acquisition of Zynga in early January 2022, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing its intention to buy Activision Blizzard King and its major franchises such as Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, and Candy Crush a few days later. And for the Take-Two boss, Microsoft was right to embark on this adventure. Zelnick doesn’t see competition as a threat. He sees Microsoft as an ally and the upcoming acquisition of Activision is a good move for the industry as a whole.
Ultimately, it is the consumers who vote. And when we make big hits, which is our niche, the customers will be there and nobody can take that away from us.
The entertainment industry is the antithesis of a tradable trading company. Each title is isolated. And so it competes with nothing else, and yet in a way it’s still very competitive. In other words, we compete with everything and we compete with nothing. You cannot replace one of our games with another game.
This summer, Take-Two . reconfirmed the roadmap for the coming years with the release of more than 80 games in 2 years, including 8 remasters. We can of course imagine that a certain GTA 6 will point the tip of his nose during this period.