Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games and 2K Games, gave some insight into their games’ microtransactions during the Cowen and Company Conference on Wednesday, and while it looks like the in-game purchases are here to stay, they’re trying to make each one meaningful for the players.
As reported by GameSpot, the CEO of Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, touched on a variety of topics during the conference, one of the primary ones being the use of microtransactions in their games. One of the main games that comes to mind when considering Take-Two and Rockstar’s titles is certainly Grand Theft Auto 5 and the online platform GTA Online that uses a fairly limited amount of microtransactions in the game. Even amid the in-game purchasing options, GTA Online keeps coming out with plenty of free content and discounts that can be used to buy things with in-game currency as opposed to real money. Zelnick acknowledged that the company was pretty conservative with their inclusion of microtransactions, but said that they’ll likely continut to include the in-game purchases in their future titles.
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“You can’t give stuff away for free in perpetuity; there’s no business model in that,” Zelnick said during the conference. “But we’re not trying to optimize the monetization of everything we do to the nth degree.”
Microtransactions are in no way an unfamiliar element to many of today’s games, a concept that Zelnick and Take-Two are keeping in mind when they implement the microtransactions. Players know by know what they’re getting, and they know when they’re getting ripped off, too.
“Think about it anecdotally–when you paid a little too much for something, even if it was something really good, it really irks you,” he said. “Paying too much for something bad is even worse. Paying too much for something really good, even if you can afford it, just leaves you with a bad feeling. We don’t want our consumers to ever feel that way.”
While they’re continually looking for smart ways to offer in-game purchases to their players, Zelnick also said that he feels the company is “undermonetizing” users, at least compared to some unnamed competitors.
One of the next big games coming from Take-Two will be Red Dead Redemption 2, though it’s uncertain at this time what kind of microtransactions could be included if any. Take-Two also recently made news after their acquisition of the space flight simulator Kerbal Space Program.
