Take-Two CEO Still Wary of VR, “Excited” for the Future of Nintendo Switch

Roughly a year ago, Take-Two Chairman & CEO Strauss Zelnick expressed his doubts about VR and the market it has opened. He discussed this at the 44th Cowen and Company Annual Technology, Media & Telecon Conference. Yesterday, he echoed this mindset in the same halls.

He still isn't keen on the idea as a whole but remains open to it. He does, however, think it has other applications outside of entertainment.

"It’s developing exactly as I expected [laughing]. Look, so far there’s not a significant entertainment market for VR software, I think that’s a factual statement. We have put out some VR games, sold some units, we put out the NBA2K VR experience. If VR develops as a meaningful entertainment platform, we’ll be there with our IPs and our teams would be really excited to do very cool developments.

To be clear, there’s no shortage of passion to do something about it. I do think there are limitations. I do believe VR is a very powerful technology for medical and military uses; I am not convinced yet it will be a powerful technology for entertainment uses."

Virtual reality is progressing slower than many invested in the movement expected because as Zelnick predicted, there are still too many limitations in VR.

In the same conference, Zelnick also talked about his stance on the Nintendo Switch and its application.

"We’re there front and center, we have NBA 2K coming for the Switch. We consider ourselves to be in a very important partnership with Nintendo. We believe in it, it’s been a very successful launch. It remains to be seen how it does [going forward], but we’re excited about it and assuming there’s an install base, we’ll be there. Not with all of our titles, but selectively."

The full discussion can be found here. At the same conference, Zelnick also expressed his thoughts on microtransactions, stating that Take-Two could do more but won't be out to "Grab the last nickel."