Core business not threatened by emerging platforms, says Take-Two

Take-Two Interactive believes emerging platforms like mobile, social, and online do not pose much of a threat to its core gaming business, at least not yet. Speaking this week during the Wedbush Transformational Technologies Conference, chief operating officer Karl Slatoff said the reason for this is such experiences thus far have been "very casual."

"It's worth noting here, there's been a lot of discussion about these emerging platforms and whether or not they've cannibalized the core gaming business and their effect on the core gaming piece. We don't believe that's the case at all; certainly not up to this point," Slatoff said. "And the reason being most of these experiences are very casual experiences."

Slatoff said Take-Two prides itself in creating "highly compelling, immersive experiences" for core gamers. These mobile, social, and online games have not yet been capable to deliver those kinds of experiences, though they do serve as a means to introduce new gamers to core experiences, he said.

"We see it really more as expanding the audience for video gaming in general and hopefully the folks who've gotten into video gaming for the first time via these platforms will migrate up into a more core gaming audience," he said.

At the same time, Slatoff said products for these emerging platforms are likely to become deeper and more engaging experiences as technology evolves. He argued Take-Two is preparing itself for this future by investing in these markets and meeting gamers wherever they are.

"That being said, we fully expect that these platforms are going to become more sophisticated over time," Slatoff said. "Which is why we're actually investing quite a bit in making that we have games releasing on these platforms and we're monetizing them as best we can now because they will become more sophisticated. And if core gamers want to play on these platforms, we will be there and we'll be ready to do that."