GIB:
The publisher has just shy of $1 billion in cash on hand - even after spending $227 million last year to repurchase shares. And it's trying to decide what to do with it - and CEO Strauss Zelnick says he see three options.
"We have the opportunity to support organic growth with our balance sheet," he says. "We also have the ability to do inorganic growth. And we have the opportunity to return money to our shareholders."
Traditionally, Take-Two has kept that focus on organic growth, building up its own studios from within, rather than purchasing existing development houses. But Zelnick says he's not ruling anything out in the current video game environment.
"If there's an opportunity to grow inorganically with a company that's consistent with our disciplined approach, then we would absolutely do so," he says. "There's no question this company is in growth mode."
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick doesn't think AI will reduce employment or lower development costs, and calls it "stupidest thing" he's ever heard.
They already have AI trained to do coding.......
How he thinks it's stupid is beyond me, Especially since we see it happening in real time.
Company A has 300 employees and lays of 200 to replace them with AI to release the same quality game.
Company B has 300 employees and keeps all 300 but instead uses AI to release a game with dramatically larger scale, scope, complexity, short dev cycle etc.
Company B would release a dramatically better product by using humans + AI and consumers would buy the better game.
I actually agree with this concept.
This is key facet. Its how the AI is used. It's actually is impressive as is and really would make an amazing addition to alot of people in their jobs, not just tech. It also has the potential for businesses to use to lay off large amounts of people, as much as they could to save money on labor. I hope too many companies don't go with the latter. But since usually companies are worried about bottom line over people...we will see some try and hopefully fail. But yeah, if its to help workers like in your company B scenario I'm totally down...Just scared Company A may be too enticing to some ceos and businesses.
Value of AI and value of humans will both be increased with human-AI complex. Each, by themselves, will not be independently better than the other. Whether AI will ever be independent from humans is the fear question of humans, ironically because of our doing. At this stage, most of the doing is because of humans, not because of AI. AI is doing exactly that by our design, until we have failed ourselves with an AI development that went awry. The biggest take is that humans have only ourselves to blame when things become wrong, and we have to decide what is the ultimate goal with AI we want to accomplish. It would take a person with high morals and high ethics to make right of AI. I would not want businessman to decide what AI should do or what capabilities it can have. AI should be in the hands of people with high moral fiber, or those operating on love, kindness, and compassion.
AI is SUPPOSED to be used as a tool, not a replacement. It's designed to do two important things artists can take advantage of immediately.
- Make the ideation/reference imaging process much quicker and easier (basically using it as a google search)
- Make mundane and time consuming tasks faster and easier so more time is spent on creation.
Unfortunately, what many have done is used it as a way to replace rather than supplement.
CS7
In the ideal world yes.
In the real world where companies have shown little desire to innovate and spent every effort to maximize profits the end result will be the same quality games (if were lucky) made by less people and more AI.
Company Real World: Fires 200 people and makes the same game cheaper using AI and the executives get record bonuses.
Edit:
Lets look at history, specifically auto manufacturing.
In the 70's and 80's the auto unions tried to oppose automation of jobs (robots) stating that they would take peoples jobs. And the people in charge who wanted to make more money said the exact same types of things that are being said about AI. But we can look at history and see that countless types of jobs were in fact replaced by automation, that was of course even compounded upon by computers.
The net effect was that the rich got richer less jobs were needed so wages were forced down by competition for the jobs that were left.
that concept works in the initial beginning phase of AI but once AI learns and surpasses the knowledge and coding expertise of even the best human employee than this CEO will no longer need competent humans in that line of work.
You can already make your own SFX with text prompts now as well, of course it will lower development cost and time
WARNING WARNING ‼️ SARCASM AHEAD
Sure Strauss and robots didn’t take jobs from car factories.
Edit:Sad thing is he believes it and unfortunately he won’t be replaced for a long time by AI
He doesn't, he's just lying. These people lay people off so they can get bonuses. If AI takes jobs, their bonus goes bigger and the workforce goes smaller.
Because he sees AI as a tool to aid development. He wants to use AI to help make bigger and better games in the same timeframe. Other CEOs want to replace devs with AI to cut costs and make lifeless games faster for a quick buck. Strauss has the right idea, this is how AI should be used. To extend and expand the capabilities of devs.
I think maybe sometimes we give people in these positions too much credit when it comes to intelligence.
I think you mean candor, not intelligence.
If you take him to mean what he's saying at face value, sure.
I don't. And I think he's clearly lying.
As long as it doesn't effect his inflated executive salary or his ridiculous bonuses I'm sure he's fine with it.
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick joins 'Money Movers' to discuss the company's quarterly earnings results, how confident Zelnick is in the guidance for fall 2025, and much more.
Take-Two head honcho Strauss Zelnick states every time they establish a price, they want to make sure it's "good news for consumers."
It's the why we close servers after 2 years, why we re-use the same assets every year, and why we bundle our game with enjoyable microtransactions.
Re-using assets is not a bad thing tbh. Development is all about re-using code, assets and components.
Can you please focus on delivering enough quality content to justify the $70 asking price? While I appreciate the idea of over-delivering, it's essential to ensure that the base content itself is worth it. I have concerns that GTA6 might have less single-player content because most of the focus seems to be shifting towards online play and microtransactions
The sleaze oozes out of these gaming CEOs faces. It's honestly disturbing how distorted people look when you've realized how money obsessed they really are. He gives off "in one ear and straight out the other" vibes.
I really don't get it
like
do they think anyone believes what they say?
is it that being in charge surrounds you by so many yesmen that they get deluded into thinking everyone is like that?
Well if you look at the last 10 years you will notice there wasn't as single paid dlc. Every update was free whether you want to complain about sharkcards or not.
They're going to make billions on this game especially if they keep the same formula as last in regards to updates.
Selling Shark cards and removing content are not exactly "good news for consumers" lol.
The last time they released any DLC worth playing was 15 years ago.
GTA V is so broken and unbalanced that people would rather do stupid cringey stunts with than do heists.
I'm sure the player base would disagree, and gta5 is still being supported, much longer then most games, after all I bought gta5 day 1 on ps3....
I really 2K finds some way to get back the NFL license or even build up a team to make a boxing game
Buy some jrpg studios!
Can i borrow £20
If there is any publisher I want behind more studios it is Take-Two.