Take-Two, the publishing powerhouse behind franchises like GTA, Mafia, BioShock, Borderlands, and more, hasn’t brought all of its franchises to mobile, and now its CEO has explained why. Strauss Zelnick spoke with The Wrap recently, simply stating that not all console games make sense on mobile, later stating that there is only one example of a console mega-franchise that successfully jumped to mobile: Call of Duty. It sounds like Zelnick is talking about games made specifically for mobile devices rather than ports, which Take-Two has done over the years.

“Not every piece of IP belongs on mobile. Not every piece of IP needs to be a console title. It depends on the property. Conceptually, we’d love to, but each one is separate,” he said.

That said, Zelnick said Take-Two is reviewing its franchise catalog and trying to make smart, strategic bets on how to best adapt a series for mobile the right way. Take-Two recently acquired mobile gaming giant Zynga for $12.7 billion, which was the video game industry’s most expensive acquisition until Microsoft made a bid for Activision Blizzard worth $68.7 billion. Zelnick said he would love to bring some of Take-Two’s “core” IP to Zynga for mobile game adaptations, but it’s too early to talk about details.

“Specific titles? I’m probably not going to talk about specific titles. We didn’t even announce them once are developing them until we are ready and close to launching them,” he said. hits. It’s a very difficult thing to do.”

Also in the interview, Zelnick said that Activision Blizzard was successful in bringing Call of Duty to mobile as part of what he called a “wonderful expression of intellectual property” with Call of Duty Mobile. Activision builds on this with another game, Call of Duty Warzone Mobile in the future.

Zelnick sees this as an anomaly when looking at the games industry in general. Not every port of a console game for mobile devices saw the level of success that Call of Duty enjoyed, he said.

“But that’s one time. First of all, mobile has a very low hit rate as a business. Most of the time, if you’re trying to take a piece of intellectual property from one place and translate it to another, it’s hard, it’s hard”. to create a hit,” he said. “So we’re going to do it, I hope, and we’re going to do it very selectively and we’re going to focus and make sure we improve our odds of success as much as possible, but we’re not going to do it across the board. “.”

For comparison, Activision Blizzard has said that it will bring each of its franchises to mobile over time.

Mobile is the fastest growing segment of the video game market. This fact is why Microsoft is looking to Activision Blizzard for a buyout: the deal was first and foremost about mobile (and PC) devices.

As for Take-Two, one of its next big games is Grand Theft Auto VI from developer Rockstar Games. The company’s indie game imprint, Private Division, is also making headway, recently announcing a Lord of the Rings game in the works from none other than Weta Workshop itself.