Take-Two: Red Dead is a “Permanent Franchise”

Since Red Dead Redemption launched in 2010, the millions of people who bought the game have been asking for a sequel. When Take-Two announced that they “have more than 10 titles in development for next-gen” last year, and then added that Rockstar would be releasing a PS4/Xbox One game this fiscal year, there was hope that Red Dead Redemption 2 would release on the new consoles.

Well, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick added more fuel to the sequel fire this week at the Cowen and Company analyst conference (via GameSpot), where he called Red Dead a “permanent franchise,” something he once did back in July of last year:

“The risk of just [releasing more games] is that you end up just bulking up your release schedule and that isn’t really what consumers want. Consumers want better, not more. So our selective approach, which we’ve taken since ’07, I think has paid off. Now, we have gotten more by taking that approach; we’ve launched one new successful franchise every year and I would like to keep doing that particularly because I talk about permanent franchises, but not everything is going to be a permanent franchise. Some of our great franchises eventually will lose their luster and some will hopefully be permanent.”

“I pretty much know the ones that I can assure you are permanent. It’s obvious that GTA is a permanent franchise as long as we keep delivering this incredible quality; it seems quite obvious that Red Dead is a permanent franchise, again with the same caveat, or Borderlands, for example, and NBA and others. But not everything is going to be a permanent franchise. We can do very well even if it’s not. I would like to see us grow with a couple more great franchises in the next couple years and we’re launching Evolve; we have very high hopes for that.”

Do you think we’ll hear about Red Dead Redemption 2 this year? Let us know in the comments below.

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