GTA 6's multi-billion-dollar budget is 'a high-stakes game for big boys only,' Take-Two boss says, but he's 'cool with it'

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke about the immense pressure for the game to succeed, given the publisher's massive investment into Rockstar's long-awaited crime caper. He described the risk the company's taking in a way that, unfortunately, I can only describe as going kinda hard.

"Development costs have gone up and up. And we really do aim to deliver the highest quality entertainment on Earth," Zelnick told Bloomberg. "And that is costly. And AI influence is not withstanding. We haven't seen those costs decline yet. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't."

The cost of triple-A development has been a hot button issue this console generation, with increasing technological and graphical complexity demanding correspondingly larger team sizes and bigger budgets. High-profile, expensive sales failures beg the question whether smaller team sizes, shorter development cycles, and cheaper games should be embraced as an alternative.

But Zelnick still wants the publisher to focus on blockbusters, and he s...