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Take-Two's Zelnick says Google overpromised with Stadia

Take-Two's Zelnick says Google overpromised with Stadia

The CEO of Take-Two Strauss Zelnick says that Google oversold its Stadia streaming platform.

Speaking at the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference – as reported by GameSpot – the exec said that while he believes that streaming will be a viable way of playing games in the long term, Google's platform led to disappointment.

"Streaming technology is upon us," Zelnick explained.

"The launch of Stadia has been slow. I think there was some overpromising on what the technology could deliver and some consumer disappointment as a result."

He continued: "Anytime you broaden distribution you potentially broaden your audience, which is why we supported the release of Stadia with three titles initially and will continue to support high-quality streaming services as long as the business model makes sense. Over time I believe streaming will work... The belief that streaming was going to be transformative was based on a view that there were loads of people who really had an interest in interactive entertainment, really wanted to pay for it, but just didn't want to have a console. I'm not sure that turned out to be the case."

Three games from Take-Two's portfolio of companies are available on Stadia: Red Dead Redemption 2, Borderlands 3 and NBA 2K2020. In the past, Zelnick has been hesitant to hype up streaming platforms, saying that he doesn't think they will make games more accessible to more people.

Google Stadia was released in November 2019, though was missing many of the previously-announced features on launch. All of which led PCGamesInsider.biz to ask what the hell was happening with the search giant's big leap into the games space


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.