Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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The high price of video game hardware and the looming threat of further increases is still casting a shadow over the future of gaming for consumers. And while video game executives, generally, are not folks you’d expect to be particularly fussed about these cost increases, especially if they’re profiting off of them, the CEO of Take-Two—owner of Grand Theft Auto 6 studio Rockstar Games—agrees that these price hikes are not a good thing. However, he’s not too concerned, because he believes we’re all going to be streaming our games on other devices in three years anyway. The Nintendo Switch Cloud versions of games that was a thing a few years back prove the point re: ownership that everyone is worried about.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite was rendered unplayable a few days ago, with no refunds for the full-price game The Nintendo Switch Cloud versions of games that was a thing a few years back prove the point re: ownership that everyone is worried about.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite was rendered unplayable a few days ago, with no refunds for the full-price game
This came from a lengthy answer given in Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call this morning by Strauss Zelnick, in response to a question about the rising cost of hardware. He began his reply by saying that the rising price of hardware is “not a good thing” because it means fewer people will have machines on which to play games, but that it won’t slow Take-Two down as a business, “because we’re delivering experiences that people want.” Strauss Zelnick has stated that the gaming industry is “scratching the surface” regarding growth and monetization🚀
“I think we’re scratching the surface still, both in terms of the size of the audience and the monetization of that audience.”
Source: GamesBeat
I called it, Take-Two and Sony are worse than EA when it comes to greed and disrespect for gaming as medium, and can only see it as a business and nothing more.
By monetization and growth, you can imagine predatory MTX, subscription paywalls, probably even NFT skins, and growth by inviting the lowest common denominator of casuals and tourists, and most games will be made based on their inferior preferences.
But Zelnick continued with a really interesting response about streaming. First, he pointed out that the world is increasingly moving to open systems, as demonstrated by the rise of PC gaming over the last 20 years. Then, he continued:
With the advent of streaming—which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that’s low latency, and really works well for consumers—machines that weren’t game machines before will become game machines. So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially. And if you believe in streaming, to be clear, we really do, and I’m happy to put a timeline on it. I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency. That can 10x the effective the install base. That doesn’t mean we’re going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn’t project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously.
Follow me on social media:
Instagram: instagram.com/dreamcastguy
Patreon: patreon.com/DreamcastGuy
Twitch: twitch.tv/thedreamcastguy
The high price of video game hardware and the looming threat of further increases is still casting a shadow over the future of gaming for consumers. And while video game executives, generally, are not folks you’d expect to be particularly fussed about these cost increases, especially if they’re profiting off of them, the CEO of Take-Two—owner of Grand Theft Auto 6 studio Rockstar Games—agrees that these price hikes are not a good thing. However, he’s not too concerned, because he believes we’re all going to be streaming our games on other devices in three years anyway. The Nintendo Switch Cloud versions of games that was a thing a few years back prove the point re: ownership that everyone is worried about.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite was rendered unplayable a few days ago, with no refunds for the full-price game The Nintendo Switch Cloud versions of games that was a thing a few years back prove the point re: ownership that everyone is worried about.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite was rendered unplayable a few days ago, with no refunds for the full-price game
This came from a lengthy answer given in Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call this morning by Strauss Zelnick, in response to a question about the rising cost of hardware. He began his reply by saying that the rising price of hardware is “not a good thing” because it means fewer people will have machines on which to play games, but that it won’t slow Take-Two down as a business, “because we’re delivering experiences that people want.” Strauss Zelnick has stated that the gaming industry is “scratching the surface” regarding growth and monetization🚀
“I think we’re scratching the surface still, both in terms of the size of the audience and the monetization of that audience.”
Source: GamesBeat
I called it, Take-Two and Sony are worse than EA when it comes to greed and disrespect for gaming as medium, and can only see it as a business and nothing more.
By monetization and growth, you can imagine predatory MTX, subscription paywalls, probably even NFT skins, and growth by inviting the lowest common denominator of casuals and tourists, and most games will be made based on their inferior preferences.
But Zelnick continued with a really interesting response about streaming. First, he pointed out that the world is increasingly moving to open systems, as demonstrated by the rise of PC gaming over the last 20 years. Then, he continued:
With the advent of streaming—which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that’s low latency, and really works well for consumers—machines that weren’t game machines before will become game machines. So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially. And if you believe in streaming, to be clear, we really do, and I’m happy to put a timeline on it. I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency. That can 10x the effective the install base. That doesn’t mean we’re going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn’t project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously.
