GTA Online looks to be going as strong as ever, with new DLC and updates coming at a regular pace. This will not go on forever, though, according to the CEO of publisher Take-Two. This news comes thanks to GameSpot.
When speaking at the Cowen and Company Technology Media & Telecom Conference, CEO Strauss Zelnick mentioned that GTA Online would not be supported forever, and that’s an intentional decision.
"We do expect GTA Online's results to moderate because October will be three years since we released it," Zelnick said at the conference. "Not only was it not our intention that GTA Online was permanent, but it's important that it not be permanent. We have to rest the franchise at some point."
Zelnick and others at Take-Two have expressed in the past the importance of resting franchises and not producing new games yearly. Zelnick himself said in 2015 that annualizing games makes for a worse product.
"The market asks us, 'Why don't you annualize your titles?'” Zelnick said. “We think with the non-sports titles, we are better served to create anticipation and demand. On the one hand to rest the title and on the other hand to have the highest quality in the market, which takes time. You can't do that annually."
All that being said, it doesn’t look like Rockstar is going to phase out GTA Online any time in the immediate future. The next update, called Further Adventures in Finance and Felony, will be released on June 7 and Rockstar has already made a loose announcement about another update coming after this one.
So what do you think? Will you be sad to see GTA Online turned off one day? What do you think about Take-Two’s stance on letting games rest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
