Take-Two Addresses NBA 2K18 Microtransaction Controversy, Will Learn From Mistakes

Even though it still managed to sell millions of copies across the board, NBA 2K18, the latest basketball sim from 2K Sports, wasn't without its controversy.

A number of players complained that the game's microtransactions getting too far out of hand, leaning more towards a pay-to-win cycle.

As a result, it appears that the developers may have learned from their mistakes, just as EA did with Star Wars: Battlefront II and its controversial loot box system. Game Informer recently had a chance to speak with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about the controversy and what's been learned from it.

First off, Zelnick admitted, "Unquestionably we pay attention to consumer response because we're so focused on engaging and captivating and entertaining the consumer. Any time we get feedback that is anything less than 1,000-percent positive, we stop and say, what should we do differently? I think there's a small sliver of the consumer base that basically wants everything for free, we can't really help those people. I think most consumers just want a fair deal and we do think that part of a fair deal is, you know when you get the check at the end of the meal, it's not enough that the food tasted good, it has to be a fair deal for what you got. So we're very focused on it being more than a fair deal; we want to give consumers much more than they paid for."

But there's a challenge with that, and it comes from balancing monetization the right way. "We do learn every time and we have to balance monetization with the experience. In our case, we sort of all regrouped and said, wait, let's remind ourselves that we're in the business of creating the best entertainment on Earth, across all types of entertainment. We're focused on engaging and captivating consumers. If we do that right and that's our entire focus, the revenues and the profits will probably take care of themselves, so let's not overemphasize those. So I'm asking questions now like does big data and having lots of data scientists on your team allow you to enhance your monetization? And the answer is, technically I suppose that would be the case, but are you a monetization company or are you an entertainment company? We're an entertainment company and when we get that right, everything else flows from it."

We'll see if 2K Sports has learned its lesson when NBA 2K19 hitts the hard court on September 11 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC.