The Major Publisher is Making Bank from Microtransactions
If it works, nothing is going to stop it. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the company will implement the same business model in all its games henceforth. From GTA to NBA 2K, the plan is to offer “recurrent consumer spending opportunities” (i.e. microtransactions).
Reported by IGN via Gamasutra, Zelnick explained a plan to maintain player engagement with their games, a plan that entails more spending:
“We aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company. It may not always be an online model, it probably won’t always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board.”
Unsurprisingly, the plan stems from the success of microtransactions in Take-Two titles. According to the publisher, they’ve accounted for 42% of the company’s financial earnings in the last quarter. In other words, consumers are voting with their wallets and they’re tallying up the votes. The results: more microtransactions in one form or another.
“The business, once upon a time,” explains Zelnick “was a big chunky opportunity to engage for tens of hours, or perhaps a hundred hours. That has turned into ongoing engagement. Day after day, week after week. You fall in love with these titles, and they become part of your daily life.
“One of the things we’ve learned is if we create a robust opportunity, and a robust world, in which people can play delightfully in a bigger and bigger way, that they will keep coming back. They will engage. And there is an opportunity to monetize that engagement,” he continued. “There’s a lot of room for growth. This is just the beginning.”
We’ve had a discussion on the implementation of microtransactions, and we suspect there will be more such discussion in the foreseeable future. As indicated by the shutdown of Visceral Games and the inclusion of microtransactions in Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the industry is leaning toward Take-Two’s model of “recurrent consumer spending.” Will this hamper gaming experiences, going forward? Perhaps we’ll see the effect in Take-Two’s next major title, Red Dead Redemption 2.