Take-Two’s CEO thinks games will look ‘exactly like live action’ in 10 years

Strauss Zelnick discusses advances in technology

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick expects the industry to produce games that are indistinguishable from real life in 10 years’ time.

The executive discussed advances in technology during a presentation at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference on Monday.

“Technology will allow our creative folks to do things they’ve never been able to do before, including make games that look exactly like live action,” he said.

“What we do now looks a lot like live action, but it’s still animation. In 10 years, you will have to option if you want to make things that look completely realistic, all done inside of a computer.”

Zelnick said last year that lifelike graphics are particularly suited to certain types of games such as the publisher’s NBA 2K basketball series, but not to others.

“That doesn’t mean we’ll do it for all of our games,” he told CNBC. “Borderlands, for example, is an animated universe, it’s always going to be an animated universe.

“But this promise of taking certain titles like basketball and making it truly look like live-action – it’s pretty close now, squint a little bit, it looks like live-action – that’s really exciting, and that gives our creative folks a new canvas on which to paint.”

Earlier this year, NBA 2K21 became the the first next-gen game to be priced at $70, a decision Zelnick said on Monday “was merited and I think consumers largely were OK with it”.

During his presentation, Zelnick also said Take-Two will “probably” complete its planned acquisition of Codemasters in the first quarter of 2021.