As part of Take-Two's financial results today, company head Strauss Zelnick noted that Firaxis' strategy title
XCOM: Enemy Unknown was in the top 10-grossing iPad apps within the first week of release - a big success for the company.
Talking in the Q&A following the company results, Zelnick noted: "This bodes well for the opportunity to deliver profitably our most immersive new triple-A titles to mobile platforms as they evolve."
He continued: "It’s a matter of just a couple of years before [tablets are] great entertainment platform [for video games]." It seems that the aggressive pricing for the title,
which was priced at $19.99 in the U.S. iOS store, ended up working out for the company - in the short term, at least.
Zelnick also commented that the
upcoming external iOS game controllers would help the AAA game's cause a lot: "We do need an 'outboard' controller that becomes an industry standard that works for consumers. But I have every reason to believe that a tablet will become a great game platform, and we’ll be right there. I do think we’re a couple years away."
And Zelnick continued: "The truth is consumers pay for what’s of value of them. And obviously we create a product that’s very expensive to make and market, and the price point reflects the intersection of those two things. There really is no reason that if you deliver a great experience on tablets that we should be price-limited."
But, he said if consumers rejected that premium pricing, Take-Two is “flexible” and could work on other business models.