Take-Two Eschews Annual Franchise Releases

At the beginning of the console cycle, many joked that Take-Two was essentially the house that Grand Theft Auto built. Now, the company often criticized by analysts for giving its creative minds too long a development leash looks to be reaping the rewards for its artist-friendly strategy. Six years later, the publisher has an impressive stable of critically acclaimed franchises like BioShock, Red Dead, L.A. Noire, and Mafia. Given the impressive success of Call of Duty and Assassins Creed, some wonder if or when Take-Two will adopt the yearly release plan to capitalize on the popularity of its games.

Speaking with IndustryGamers, Take-Two COO Karl Slatoff seemed reluctant to start pumping out sequels in such a hurried fashion.

"At the end of the day, you always want a balance of sequels and new IP because you keep the pipeline going," he said. "If you have franchises, by definition, you want to have sequels. And you’re buildling an audience. The trick is – and I think this speaks to our strategy – making sure that every time you release something (it may be a sequel within a franchise), you make sure it’s fresh and it’s something new, which is one of the reasons why you don’t see us releasing something every year... we don’t come out with a BioShock every year or a GTA every year. We don’t do that. Sports is different because sports is going to be a yearly thing. But every time we do something we need to make sure that it’s building value for that franchise, and not just releasing it because we can."

This approach sounds like a good plan for avoiding franchise fatigue. It would be a shame to see BioShock or GTA sapped of their value and left for dead like Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.