Company Chairman reveals plans of growth, as far as Take-Two is concerned

Nov 28, 2007 11:48 GMT  ·  By

Remember rumors of Take-Two selling out? Well, of course you do if you like reading the morning... gaming news. As it turns out, that's not gonna happen! How could something like that happen when Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick reckons this is the best time to be in the video games business. More than that, the company is planning to roll out more intellectual property/original titles.

It was at the Reuters Media Summit where Take-Two's Strauss Zelnick revealed that there are no current plans to sell the company, mentioning that they're much more interested in growing it, rather than disposing of it, according to Reuters:

"I'm much more interested in growing the business than in selling it, to be clear," Zelnick told the Reuters Media Summit. "I would say for the next five to seven years this is a terrific time to be in the video game business. [...] I imagine we will try to find greater efficiencies but they probably won't be through headcount. I imagine headcount will grow. This is a growth business. We are in growth mode," Zelnick said.

As mentioned above, current plans include expanding the company with developing new intellectual property: "From a specific point of view, what we find most compelling is building up our collection of our intellectual property. I'm not really interested in scale for scale's sake," Zelnick said.

Last, but certainly not least, speaking of the delayed, yet very anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, Zelnick showed a very optimistic attitude towards the game's release and future success, going as far as claiming it will blow everyone's mind away, even those whose expectations are already high: "I believe this release, 'Grand Theft Auto IV,' is going to be vastly better than those expectations -- vastly better -- and that's hard to do when expectations are so high," he said.

Again, to clarify the Take-Two-selling-out issue once and for all, Zelnick concluded: "From a general point of view I think you'll see some industry consolidation. It's hard to imagine that you wouldn't," making reference to the industry's $40 billion landmark in global sales of hardware and software, expected for this year.