Take-Two Interactive CEO: We're "Undermonetizing" Our Users

Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of such renowned series as Bioshock, Borderlands, Civilization, XCOM, and more, have recently hit the spotlight when they decided to acquire Kerbal Space Program. But rather than looking at that little purchase, we should have been paying attention to CEO Strauss Zelnick speaking at Cowen and Company 45th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, because he said some stuff that might make a few eyebrows rise.

Namely, he started talking about Microtransactions in games… and how his company should really be doing more of them. Via GameSpot:

"We are convinced that we are probably from an industry view undermonetizing on a per-user basis. There is wood to chop because I think we can do more, and we can do more without interfering with our strategy of being the most creative and our ethical approach, which is delighting consumers. You can't give stuff away for free in perpetuity; there's no business model in that.”

So. That doesn’t bode well, as you could probably surmise on your own. I can’t think of a single time anyone, save maybe executives or investors, thought a game needed more microtransactions. He seems at least kind of aware of this, however, and suggests they wouldn’t want to fall victim to nickel-and-diming their userbase.
 

“But we're not trying to optimize the monetization of everything we do to the nth degree. My concern is, if you do that, the consumer knows. They might not even know that they know, but they feel it. We're not going to grab the last nickel.”

Oh, trust me, man, they know that they know. Take 2 has had an excellent track record for DLC and other add-on content, even when it would have been easy for a company to be far worse with them. I hope this doesn’t signal a reversal of those trends.