Take-Two CEO Dubs Subscription Gaming a Business 'Holy Grail'

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Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has seen the future, and it is subscription-based gaming, a business model that the leader called the "Holy Grail."

"The Holy Grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that's focused on packaged goods that you sell once ... and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers," explained Zelnick at the BMO Capital Markets conference this week as noticed by Kotaku.

Zelnick was eager to indicate that the lucrative DLC trade is an intermediate step toward that business model. "Looking ahead, the biggest opportunity that we see for the industry as well as for us is downloadable content," the executive stated, offering paid downloads for Grand Theft Auto 4 and BioShock as solutions to the thriving used game trade.

There are limitations to the plan, Zelnick conceded. "The triple-A titles that people really want to have that are really must have are in the best position for this business model," he said. Further down the food chain, however, Zelnick believes that "you won't be able to apply a subscription model to mid-tier titles."

From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 14, 2008 12:54 PM

    if he thinks people are gonna sign up for a subscription to DLC before that DLC is released, he's nuts.

    • reply
      November 14, 2008 1:16 PM

      But it worked so well for Hellgate!

      The only way I would sign up for this is if I had the option to recoup all of my subscription if they failed to meet their set deadlines for content. And even then, I'd only consider it for big companies that are unlikely to end up "bankrupt".

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