Strauss Zelnick, the head of GTA 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive, has opened up about the challenges of creating a hit game — and made a clear reference to MindsEye in the process. MindsEye, the infamous debut title from Build a Rocket Boy — the studio founded by former Rockstar veteran Leslie Benzies — arrived as a buggy, poorly received flop after years of development and lofty metaverse ambitions, leading to hundreds of layoffs. Speaking at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Zelnick said, 'Making hits seems to get harder and harder as entertainment industries mature. The folks at Rockstar seem to be able to make these massive hits, and lots of other people have tried, including former Rockstar employees. And so far, they haven't been able to do it.' He added, 'Doesn't mean they can't in the future. We're always running scared. But it won't be technology that changes the game. What'll change is that some extraordinarily creative individual or individuals will show up and do something astonishing. Our goal is to get those people to work within the Take-Two system. If we fail to do that, we fail.' Zelnick also discussed the long wait for GTA 6, framing the gap between releases as a strength. Unlike other publishers, he said Take-Two has never tried to annualize its franchises (outside of sports games), avoiding the pressure to churn out annual Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed titles. 'Our plan might not be to have a specific cadence around our properties because we're not a cadence-driven company, we never have been,' Zelnick said. 'I didn't show up at Take-Two nearly 20 years ago and say, "We're going to annualize our products like clockwork." I was an outlier at the time.' He noted that some competitive properties have had mixed results with annual releases. 'GTA was not the number one property when I joined in 2007. It was a top five property. And take a look at what happened to the properties that were higher up in the food chain that were annualized.' Despite the long wait — 13 years since GTA 5 — Zelnick insists anticipation is a good thing, driven by the need to make something 'as good as it can possibly be for that intellectual property.' GTA 6 is finally set to arrive this November after numerous delays, and Zelnick recently assured IGN that its release date is expected to stick.
