Strauss Zelnick, who has been the CEO, chairman, and largest stakeholder of Take-Two since 2007, appeared yesterday on Squawk Box, CNBC's business news program that airs weekdays from 6 to 9 AM Eastern Time.
During the conversation, the veteran executive of what will soon be the largest independent American publisher (once the Electronic Arts leveraged buyout goes through) said that the gaming industry is moving toward PCs and more generally toward open ecosystems, although the console experience isn't really going away.
I think it’s moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed. But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen — that’s never going away.
The Take-Two executive isn't wrong. The console market has long stagnated, and its three big players, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, are only really stealing each other's customers rather than gaining new ones. On the other hand, PC gaming continues to grow, as evidenced by Steam's record-breaking sales. Moreover, new PC-based devices with a handheld or home console format, such as the Steam Deck, the ROG Ally, and the upcoming Steam Machine, are being produced, thus potentially stealing market share from regular console manufacturers.
For its part, Microsoft is also shifting the way it thinks about consoles. While Xbox president Sarah Bond has just reiterated that the Xbox experience starts with the traditional console, rumors point to the next-generation hardware being a sort of console-PC hybrid that might also offer access to a Windows desktop environment.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dropped a slight hint late last month at the company innovating in that space:
We also want to do innovative work on the system side on the console and on the PC. It's kind of funny that people think about the console and PC as two different things. At Microsoft, we built the console because we wanted to build a better PC, which could then perform for games. I kind of want to revisit some of that conventional wisdom. But at the end of the day, console has an experience that is unparalleled. It delivers performance that's unparalleled that pushes I think the system forward.
Do you agree with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick that gaming is steadily shifting toward the PC platform? Voice your opinion in the poll and comments below.
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