take-two interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said Monday that consoles aren’t going away, but the industry will move toward PCs over the next decade.
“I think we’re seeing more of a shift to the PC, and I think businesses are going to be more open than closed,” Zelnick said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “But when you define a console as a property rather than a system, the concept of extremely rich games played for hours on a big screen never disappears.”
Zelnick said consoles and mobile are about evenly split in the current market, but mobile is growing faster than consoles.
I like big game companies, but sony’s playstation and nintendo It continued to focus on traditional consoles until rivals such as Microsoft’s Xbox has hinted that it will bring more PC-based games to next-gen hardware.
“It’s kind of funny that people think of consoles and PCs as two different things,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said in an interview with TBPN. “We built the console because we wanted to build a better PC that could perform well for gaming. I want to rethink that conventional wisdom.”
Gaming company Valve made a splash last week when it announced its new Steam Machine, a console/PC hybrid that can run PC games on your TV or as a regular gaming computer.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer congratulated Valve in a post for X, writing, “Expanding access across PC, consoles and handheld devices reflects a future built on the choices and core values that have guided Xbox’s vision from the beginning.”
Take-Two’s most high-profile titles, such as the Grand Auto Theft and Borderlands series, are primarily played on consoles and PCs, but the company has been investing heavily in mobile after the mobile gaming industry boomed during the pandemic.
In 2022, the company acquired mobile developer Zynga for $12.7 billion, its largest gaming acquisition at the time.
The big-ticket acquisition subsequently paid off, with Take-Two’s mobile division driving the company’s revenue in the second quarter despite the release of notable titles such as Borderlands 4, NBA 2K26 and Mafia: The Old Country.
Mobile games from developers like Zynga, Rollic and Nordeus accounted for 46% of Take-Two’s net revenue in the quarter, while console sales were down slightly at 41%, with PC and other platforms accounting for 13%.
“It’s mobile, it’s portable, it’s reusable, it’s fun,” Zelnick said Monday. “And I think it will probably continue to grow even faster because it appeals to the widest possible audience.”
The company’s CEO said in an earnings call that the mobile division is expected to grow by about 10% in the next quarter.
Mobile gaming slowed down after hitting unprecedented highs during the coronavirus pandemic, but the market has re-accelerated somewhat this year.
Global mobile gaming revenue is expected to reach $188.8 billion this year, up 3.4% from last year, according to research by Newzoo. Consoles and PC are projected to make a combined $45.9 billion, or 45% of the total gaming market.
