- Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says: “Of course” critical reviews are important
- The CEO apparently also took a shot MindsEye studio Build A Rocket Boy
- He says plenty of people, “including former Rockstar employees,” have tried and failed to get a hit
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said Grand Theft Auto 6 reviews will be as important as the results for all the other Rockstar Games titles.
It seems that everyone and their grandmother is eagerly awaiting the release of GTA 6and given Rockstar’s reputation, there is no doubt that the studio will deliver another memorable experience. There’s a small chance the game will be an absolute dud, but according to Zelnick, reviews are critical to the company.
In a recent interview with The Game Business, when host Christopher Dring asked the CEO if critical reviews are still important, he replied, “Of course,” he added, “as it has been in the past, Rockstar’s scores are typically in the mid-90s, sometimes high 90s. Not many games can say that. And that’s a reflection of Rockstar’s commitment to quality.”
Zelnick echoed a similar sentiment at TD Cowen’s 54th Annual Technology, Media and Telecom Conference (via Kotaku ), where he talked about the challenges of creating an industry hit. During the talk, the CEO apparently took a shot at Build A Rocket Boy, the studio behind one of the worst games of 2025, MindsEyeand said that there have been those who have failed to make a hit like Rockstar.
“Making hits seems to get harder and harder and harder as the entertainment industry matures,” Zelnick said. “The people at Rockstar seem to be able to make these massive hits, and lots of other people have tried. Lots and lots, including former Rockstar employees. And so far they haven’t been able to do it.”
The “former Rockstar employees” that Zelnick could talk about are fv.Grand Theft Auto Producer Leslie Benzies, whose hugely ambitious single-player action thriller stalled and resulted in mass layoffs, later blamed internal and external saboteurs for the disastrous launch (via IGN).
Zelnick then went on to say that just because no other studio has made a hit like GTA but “doesn’t mean they can’t in the future, by the way.”
“We always run scared,” he said. “But it won’t be technology that changes the game. What will change is that some extraordinarily creative individual or individuals will come along and do something amazing. Our goal is to get those people working within the Take-Two system. If we fail to do that, we fail.”
Despite delay speculation, Take-Two has confirmed it GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, but the game isn’t coming to PC yet.
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