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Take-Two Reaffirms Commitment To Post-Launch Monetization
Take-Two Interactive chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick reaffirmed the companies' commitment to providing opportunities for "recurrent consumer spending" in its games. This means aspects like the VC currency/structure of the NBA 2K series, Grand Theft Auto's Online's Shark Cards, DLC, and more are certainly here to stay.
"We've said that we aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company," he said. "It may not always be an online model, it probably won't always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board.
"The business, once upon a time, was a big chunky opportunity to engage for tens of hours, or perhaps a hundred hours," Zelnick continued. "That has turned into ongoing engagement. Day after day, week after week. You fall in love with these titles, and they become part of your daily life ... That's a sea change in our business. Recurrent consumer spending is 42 percent of our net bookings in the quarter. It's been transformative for us."
Zelnick says that post-launch consumer spending on titles is a big part of Take-Two's business: In the company's second fiscal quarter 2018 (ending on September 30, 2017) it accounted for 42 percent of total net revenue. This category grew 66 percent at the company from last year during this time.
[Source: Take-Two Interactive (1), (2)]
Our Take
That microtransactions and DLC make lots of money isn't a surprise, nor are they necessarily offensive by their mere presence. I do worry, however, about the larger effect microtransactions in particular may have on games' structure even for those who don't want to spend money on them – something we've already seen countless times.
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