GTA 5 Parent Publisher Says It Has More Franchises "Than We Can Even Deal With"

At a business summit this week, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff was asked to compare the company's makeup this console generation compared to the last one. In a statement that is likely to please investors, the executive said one key point of differentiation is that Take-Two's library of franchises is much larger. In fact, Slatoff said Take-Two has more game brands "than we can even deal with" at this stage.

"Our IP situation, right now--it's better than it's ever been in the company's history," Slatoff said at a Piper Jaffray event this week. "We've got a lot of IP. We've got more IP than we can even deal with at this point in time and we're always looking at generating new IP. So that is a very different circumstance than we were in back right before the Xbox 360 and PS3 launched."

Take-Two's crown jewel is Grand Theft Auto. The latest entry in the series, 2013's Grand Theft Auto V, has shipped more than 60 million copies and it continues to sell, years after release. Some of the company's other notable brands include annual powerhouses such as NBA 2K and WWE 2K, as well as Borderlands, Mafia, Red Dead Redemption, XCOM, Battleborn, Evolve, BioShock, Civilization, and Max Payne.

Another difference between Take-Two today and years ago is that the company has doubled its developer headcount. When the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles launched in the mid-2000s, Take-Two's total development staff was around 1,000--now it's more than 2,000 strong. This number does not include teams at third-party studios such as Borderlands developer Gearbox.

"Our creative foundation is a lot bigger and a lot stronger," he Slatoff said. "So I would say our capacity to create products is vastly better than it was before."

The third point was that Take-Two is far more cash-rich. Take-Two's latest numbers state that the company has $1.2 billion in cash and investments on hand, compared to only around $150 million for the time around the time the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation started.

Also during the event this week, Slatoff explained why Take-Two has no interest in "milking" its franchises.