What does Take-Two Interactive’s chairman Strauss Zelnick do when their heavy hitter, Grand Theft Auto, isn’t coming out anytime soon? Bank on the next biggest thing. For them, their next big thing is BioShock 2.
Zelnick admits that BioShock wasn’t that big of a seller, even with its 50 game of the awards. It eventually sold about 3 million copies, but he’s hoping its sequel will move 5 million.
“I’d like to see a title like that sell 5 million units. That would make the difference for us. If you have four or five titles that are significantly successful, that will meaningfully change our profitability.”
And as for the game, it sounds like they have big plans: “We are investing heavily in making it bigger and better,” Zelnick tells VentureBeat. “We want it to be different enough that people will want to own it.”
He also states that BioShock 2 will benefit from brand awareness, and that people that may have missed the original would still be interested in this sequel.
“It will have multiplayer capability, where the approach is interesting. The single-player game is a sequel in time to the original story. The multiplayer version is a prequel in terms of its setting. We think it’s innovative.”
I don’t think they’re going to have any problem at all.
