Take-Two CEO Says ‘Rational Decisions’ Result In No Day One Xbox Game Pass Releases

“Because our decisions are rational”

by Ben Kerry Yesterday, 3:30pm

There’s been a lot of attention on Microsoft putting Call of Duty onto Xbox Game Pass day one, with the company doubling down on its subscription model after the ActiBlizz acquisition. While lots of other publishers are on board with the service as well, particularly when a deal makes sense, Take-Two has been strongly averse to launching its games in the library – and that stance hasn’t changed in 2024.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick talked a little bit about Black Ops 6 launching into the service and what it might mean for Xbox. Zelnick believes that such a release model “will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time” but says that it won’t have any affect on how Take-Two does things.

“No, it won’t affect our decisions,

Because our decisions are rational.”

To be fair, we can understand where he’s coming from. Take-Two, and its publishing arm 2K, tend to align with major AAA releases for the most part, and ones in big mainstay franchises to boot. We can’t imagine a deal would make sense for something like GTA, Red Dead Redemption or NBA to launch into someone else’s subscription service on day one.

For Microsoft it makes a lot more sense though, especially when they’re the ones running the service themselves – on top of now owning the Call of Duty IP. We’ll see how all of that pans out for Xbox in the long term, but what’s clear is that we probably aren’t going to see any major 2K games release into Xbox Game Pass anytime soon.

Do you blame Take-Two for avoiding day one Game Pass launches? Discuss these new comments down below.

[source gamesindustry.biz]

Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.

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