Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has spoken about the use of in-game advertising ahead of GTA 6.
For whatever reason, everyone at one point decided that GTA 6 was going to be the game that changed game pricing trends – with some even speculating that it would cost as much as $100. However, after Mario Kart World ripped the band-aid off by being an $80 game, everyone effectively resigned themselves to thinking that Rockstar would be the next publisher to do so since GTA 6 is probably the most-anticipated game of all time. However, even if it does end up being more expensive than the average game, Take-Two doesn’t want to push its luck by advertising in-game.
Speaking on The Game Business, Zelnick was asked if he sees the opportunity for in-game advertising to be as prominent in console and PC games as it is in the mobile gaming market. Zelnick responds, “For free-to-play titles, yes. For titles for which you’ve paid 70 or 80 bucks, no.” He does note that games like the WWE and NBA 2K games do feature ads, but says those are “because it fits with the vernacular. You want to see advertising in an arena, in a stadium, because you would if you were there in real life.” However, he notes that these are “not a big economic contributor.”
Zelnick continues, saying it’s “very difficult for me to believe that we would want to have interstitial advertising in a game that someone paid 70 or 80 bucks for. It would seem unfair.” Of course, it’s hard to believe that GTA would ever have in-game ads, given the content not exactly being advertiser-friendly, and the games having always made jokes out of its in-game ads as worldbuilding. And with how in-depth Rockstar usually is with its worldbuilding, I don’t think the studio would want to compromise that for advertising money – especially when the game is going to make billions without it.