According to Kotaku, Zelnick voiced concern over the practice of stripping content from a game to be later sold as DLC—something which has brought a fair amount of controversy to competing publisher Electronic Arts.

"You can't pull content out of a console game and then sell it to people later; it's not a good experience," he said, adding that better ideas could include downloads which would "change the way characters look, [add] weapons, cars and the like."

The chairman noted that Take-Two could improve response by shifting business away from packaged retail products and towards digital distribution and pay-for-content models, similar to EA DICE's Battlefield Heroes.

"If we can get a good model for episodic content for high quality titles, that should be a pretty profitable business because there are no hard goods associated with it," he said.

Take-Two's publishing efforts cover a wide range of genres, including 2K Games BioShock and Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto. The company is currently planning two pieces of episodic content early next year for the recently released Grand Theft Auto IV.

Ninja Gaiden II director and departing Team Ninja lead Tomonobu Itagaki raised similar concerns over paid content downloads which unlock content already on the disc, telling Shacknews earlier this year that "games like that should cease to exist from this planet."