Grand Theft Auto Publisher Expresses Renewed Confidence in Nintendo Switch

Take-Two Interactive is killing it lately. Grand Theft Auto Online just walked away from its most profitable quarter in years, which is astounding considering how long the game has been around, and Grand Theft Auto V generally just stays at the top of sales charts. We want this game — or any Grand Theft Auto game — on the Nintendo Switch. Take-Two expressed its excitement over the Switch early on after the console was first revealed, and today, we’re hearing (via WCCF Tech) that Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick is happier than ever about Nintendo’s prospects.

“We were excited six months ago and supportive”, Zelnick said during a call with investors. “We’re excited now. We have NBA 2K and WWE 2K coming for Switch. The sales have been great. We expect sales to continue to be great. We’re very optimistic around the platform. We’re very supportive of Nintendo. So, the only thing that’s changed in the last six months is our initial belief has been reinforced by the early very strong results.”

But so far Take-Two is playing softball. The sports ports are the easy plays; the lobs; the underhand pitches. People always eat up the 2K sports games every year, and the success of NBA Playgrounds proves that Switch owners are hungry for sports titles on the console; Playgrounds stayed in the top-ten most popular Switch games on the eShop for weeks after its release, even though it lacked features. We expect NBA 2K18 and WWE 2K18 to clean up.

But then what?

We’re eager to see what Take-Two has in store for Nintendo’s hybrid machine. The Nintendo Switch has a good bit of fast RAM, but its processor is going to hold it back a bit as far as open-world games are concerned. The GPU is fully-featured, though, and can make up for some of the systems flimsier specs. Indeed, if you’ve seen Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, or Splatoon 2 running on the thing then you’ll know that with proper optimization the Switch is capable of incredible things. We’d love to see an incredible port of Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 show up here.