Remember when Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed, not once but twice? It's hard to forget: its first release date was treated as a day of mourning by some particularly upset fans. Despite all the outcries from fans, Take-Two Interactive chief Strauss Zelnick has repeatedly explained that he doesn't regret the decision.
Talking to WSJ the interviewer asks Zelnick what his immediate emotion was after hearing from the team that GTA 6 needed to be delayed: "I don't always feel calm but I tend to come across as calm … The timing of the call was not great for an array of reasons. We had just had a board retreat 10 days earlier so I wasn't thrilled about the timing. That said, this is a balancing act with all creative executives and it's not just time, it could be resources."
"These are very difficult decisions to make," Zelnick continues. "If, on the other hand, if as a refresher course, your mission is to make the best entertainment on earth and part of your three part strategy is to be the most creative, sometimes you have to make these expensive and inconvenient decisions in service of that mission goal.
The delay was essential, Zelnick says, to stay true to Take-Two's mission "to make the best entertainment on earth."
"What happens when people take the other approach," Zelnick asks. "The other approach being we're slavishly devoted to a schedule and we're just going to ship despite what is going on. I'm not going to throw any competitors under the bus, but if you know anything about the videogame business in the past few years there was a very high profile release that fell into this category. They shipped and they had to pull the title after shipping because it didn't work."
I don't think there's much doubt about what game Zelnick is referencing here, but just in case anyone is wondering, my bet would be on Concord—yeah, it's probably Concord. And for good reason: it didn't have a shred of the anticipation that GTA 6 has but was still bankrolled by a major studio and essentially burnt hundreds of millions of dollars—a cautionary tale if ever I heard one.
