Take-Two CEO: "We Ought To Be Monetizing 100% Of The Audience" For Mobile Games

Take-Two's CEO has said it is his hope that the company can monetize "100% of the audience" for the company's mobile games. During Take-Two's latest earnings briefing, Strauss Zelnick said less than 10% of the audience for a mobile game spent money on it, with the rest playing for free and moving on. Zelnick wants to boost those numbers, all the way up to 100%.

"We are fielding a game for 100% of the audience and monetizing 10% or so, perhaps a bit more, often a bit less. And it's our view that we ought to be monetizing 100% of the audience," he said.

Zelnick does not believe 100% of mobile game users will spend money directly through a microtransaction purchase, though. To get to 100% monetization, Take-Two is looking to advertising.

"So if someone's going to spend, that's great. And if they're not going to spend, then we ought to be able to monetize through advertising," he said. "The question is how do you do that and create a high-quality experience? And I think the answer is we can do that. We can distinguish among those audiences. We're not there yet, but I think we're moving in that direction."

Take-Two's mobile game business grew in a significant way recently when the company acquired mobile and social game giant Zynga for $12.7 billion. This remains the largest acquisition in the history of video games that has actually been completed. Microsoft's $68.7 billion bid to buy Activision Blizzard is many times larger, but that deal has not yet gone through.

Zelnick's pay is tied to how well microtransactions perform for Take-Two games. In 2022, Zelnick and Take-Two president Karl Slatoff earned more than $31 million in stock and incentives due to the performance of microtransactions at the company, according to Axios.

In other Take-Two news, evidence continues to mount that GTA 6 could be released in 2024.