Take-Two Interactive, the parent company behind Rockstar Games, has revealed that it wants to go down the dirty route of free-to-play games. Urgh. During its quarterly investor relations call, Take-Two’s stated that GTA: Online was a surprise success for the firm and that it still pulls in 8 million weekly players. An impressive number, surely.
What was also mentioned is that on the surface, GTA: Online looks and feels like a free-to-play game. It’s been a profitable little side-line for Take-Two as players have lapped up the game’s in-game currency, shark cards. It doesn’t look like Take Two want’s to end that revenue stream anytime soon, either, in fact it’s looking to continue down the path to the dark side.
“We now feel like we can sort of increase our level of risk and the organic decisions we make,” going on to explain that “we do have capital now, and while we don’t want to be frivolous or cavalier, we do have the ability to go down the risk spectrum more freely with things like online games and free-to-play and the like.”
So, basically, expect Take-Two to push out online-only and free-to-play games in future. This doesn’t mean that traditional games won’t exist – they will, but it means that the company may look towards other options to bring in cash, whether that be maintaining the free-to-play style multiplayer in future games, or releasing standalone free-to-play games.