Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says that the company is still far from deploying virtual reality games.
The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah E. Needleman spoke with CEO Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two Interactive, owner of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games, about how the company planned to keep the GTA franchise fresh.
Amidst questions specific to the blockbuster series, Needleman posed a forward-looking closer question to Zelnick regarding virtual reality.
WSJ: Virtual reality is often talked about as the next frontier in gaming. What is Take-Two doing in the space?
Mr. Zelnick: We’re still in [research and development] land, because the headsets haven’t been commercialized yet. We still have to figure out what is the nature of the intersection between VR technology and interactive entertainment. It’s not clear how long you’re going to want a headset on.
At the beginning of motion pictures, maybe people said: ‘Sitting in a darkened room with a bunch of strangers for two hours, that sounds terrible.’
The response from Zelnick—who reaffirmed in the interview that he isn’t a gamer himself—suggests that we aren’t likely to see anything VR-related from the company or its subsidiaries until there is a critical mass of consumers. Not an unexpected response for a publically traded company that answers to its investors.
However, that hasn’t stopped hundreds of forward-thinking VR companies who are writing the language of VR gaming at this very moment.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty of brewing interest to see the hit GTA franchise in VR, with videos from VR treadmill makers Virtuix and Cyberith racking up more than a million views each with videos showing GTA played on the Oculus Rift, adapted by the third-party VorpX VR driver.
See Also: Play GTA V in Virtual Reality with the Latest VorpX Release, Out Now