Take-Two Interactive Are “Believers” In Nintendo NX

Take-Two Interactive chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick had stated at E3 2016 that the third-party publisher is “very interested” in Nintendo NX, a position that has been reinforced in a more recent interview.

As part of a wider discussion that touched on topics such as virtual reality, caution over movie licensing, and increased success in generating additional revenue from downloadable content, he closed the conversation by sharing that the publisher was “pretty enthusiastic” about Nintendo NX.

“We’re believers. We never want to count Nintendo out. They do it over and over and over again. So we feel pretty enthusiastic actually,” Zelnick remarked to GamesIndustry.biz.

As with virtual reality, it seems unlikely that Take-Two will support Nintendo NX at launch. When asked as to his reasons why the publisher was cautious about committing to virtual reality so early on, Zelnick replied: “You don’t get paid for being the first to market, you don’t sell more units. The installed base is too small.”

That means that while Zelnick is buoyant on Nintendo’s chance at success, the publisher will likely wait until it has built an attractive install base to lure them in. But, posed with a question about Nintendo’s position in the console race, Zelnick was defensive about the Japanese giant even after the struggles that they had faced with Wii U.

“It’s not a slump, it’s intentional,” he responded. “They come to market, they do really well, and then they sort of exit the market for a period of time. They’ve been doing it for like 150 years, and that company has been doing the same thing… They’re really thoughtful, they come to market with something they really think is going to work, more often than not it really works, it blows up and then eventually they let it decline and they move on to the next thing. They don’t mind having time in between.”