Take-Two Says Fast Game Turnover Cycles Degrade Game Value

Game turnover cycles have become ludicrous. Call of Duty releases every year. Assassin’s Creed is looking to follow suit. All the biggest names in the business are looking to push out more games faster and faster. In the days of the NES and SNES, sometimes you had to wait an entire generation to get to the next entry of a popular franchise. There’s no way studios can churn out games on a yearly or bi-yearly basis while still keeping the franchise interesting and Take-Two chief operating officer Karl Slatoff agrees.

Speaking at the Wedbush Transformational Technologies Conference this week (via GameSpot), Slatoff said, “Often times people ask us, 'Why don't you come out with Grand Theft Auto every two years?' To us, that doesn't make sense, because Grand Theft Auto, every single time it comes out, is a brand new experience. You can't possibly do that in two years. And if we did that, our product would fatigue and the franchise would degrade from a value perspective.”

Rockstar North developer Leslie Benzies expressed a similar sentiment last year, saying that Rockstar could probably churn out a new GTA title every year, but actively chooses not to. “If we did that, eventually the fans would lose interest,” Benzies said.

Grand Theft Auto V is due out September 17^th this year. It will likely be one of this console generation’s last hurrahs and we will lprobably have to wait midway through the next console generation to see a new GTA game hit the shelves. That’s just the price you pay for quality!