Take-Two expects gaming to enter 'commercial streaming mode within 3 years'

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar, expects the games industry to shift into "commercial streaming mode" within the next three years. CEO Strauss Zelnick made the statement during the latest earnings call, arguing that cloud gaming will expand the audience even as hardware prices climb.

Zelnick acknowledged that the current crisis in the PC components market is "not a good thing." The soaring cost of consoles and parts threatens to price many players out of the hobby. But Take-Two does not view increasingly inaccessible gaming hardware as an insurmountable problem, as the company anticipates a rapid rise of game streaming in the near future.

According to the CEO, the "advent of streaming" with low latency that "really works well for consumers" is "right around the corner." Devices that were not game machines before will become game machines. As a result, the company expects its customer base to keep growing as cloud gaming becomes standardized, regardless of what happens to the traditional gaming hardware market.

"If you believe in streaming — and to be clear, we really do — I'm happy to put a timeline on it. I think we'll be in commercial streaming mode within three years," Zelnick said. By his estimate, broader adoption of cloud gaming could effectively increase Take-Two's potential user base tenfold. That would not necessarily translate into a tenfold revenue increase, he noted, as the most "avid" customers are those who already own traditional hardware. Still, streaming "creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable, even outside of core markets."

There is a plausible kernel in Zelnick's vision: many people might be interested in playing titles like GTA 6 without investing in a gaming setup, especially as the cost of building one continues to rise. However, for streaming to become a common standard in gaming, it will need to overcome a range of technical and infrastructure hurdles.