The $100 Ultimate Edition of GTA 6 is selling more pre-orders than the $80 Standard Edition, Take-Two CEO says
But Strauss Zelnick notes this could be a sign of the “most avid” players pre-ordering
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says the $100 Ultimate Edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 is being pre-ordered more than the $80 Standard Edition.
In an interview with CNBC, Zelnick was initially asked whether strong pre-orders for GTA 6 would result in strong continued sales after the game is released, or whether this marked an initial surge of interest that would tail off once the game is out.
“It really depends on the title,” Zelnick replied. In the case of Grand Theft Auto 5, it’s continued to sell, we’ve sold 230 million units and it’s continued to perform through three console generations.
“So in that case, it was and remains the standard bearer, not just for our company but also for the industry over 13 years. Now, of course we could never project that to occur again, but that is a historical fact.”
He added: “I think the odds are very high that the pre-orders turn into sales [but] we can’t tell if that’s demand that was pulled forward because of initial excitement of the most avid consumers, or whether it reflects something very different. There’s just no history from which to extrapolate.”
Zelnick was then asked about Take-Two‘s approach to pricing the game, and how the company came to the pricing decision it did. He replied that despite early reports suggesting the Standard Edition could have been a $100 game, it opted for a price point it felt provided more value for money.
“We’ve established an $80 price point and a $100 price point for the regular edition and the premium edition,” he replied, “and I think most people felt if we wanted to exert it, we had a great deal of pricing power.
“Our job, though, as we see it, is to always deliver way more value to the consumer than what we charge, and we want to do that over, and over, and over again. We understand that a consumer experience is the intersection of the thing itself and what you paid for it. And so we want people to be thrilled, and we would never want people to feel like ‘this is out of my range’.”
Pre-orders are “skewing more to the Premium Edition,” Zelnick says
When asked whether players were pre-ordering the $80 version or the $100 version, Zelnick replied: “Both. Actually, it is skewing more to the Premium Edition, but that might be a reflection, again, of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones who are pre-ordering.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Zelnick was asked if the game’s price would be reduced before Christmas. He replied that while Take-Two had no control over individual store discounts, there will be no official plans to reduce the price of the game any time soon.
“We obviously establish our pricing,” Zelnick explained, “and then storefronts can do what they do. We don’t have any ability to control that. So if they reduce the price, they’re obviously reducing their margin on the sale.
“There are situations where certain retailers will price down to drive demand for other things that they sell. And I can’t tell what will happen. I will tell you that we preserved our pricing on Grand Theft Auto 5 for a very long time, much longer than a standard release of an entertainment property.”
