Gaming is moving towards PC and open platforms, Take-Two CEO says

Now that console gaming is pretty much saturated, major businesses are now targeting PC in an attempt to grow the industry. Executives like Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick are taking notice and commenting on the new trends.

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Microsoft's new Xbox console will reportedly be a merged PC hybrid. Sony is releasing games on PlayStation. Steam continues to grow, breaking concurrent player records with 41 million players while earning over $16 billion this year. PC gaming is growing, partly because of all the accelerated effort to make it grow, particularly because it represents a new frontier of focus for companies.

The games business is expanding and evolving, and in a recent interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick highlights his thoughts on the industry's new push towards PC and open platforms--the latter might be a nod to the new Xbox PC.

• Read more: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella comments on next-gen Xbox PC console hybrid
• Read more: Take-Two still thinks day-and-date games on Xbox Game Pass is irrational for its business
• Read more: Xbox's Phil Spencer praises new Steam Machine console: 'It's an open platform built on choice'

"I think it's moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed. But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen - that's never going away."

Consoles themselves shouldn't go away--at least the delivery mechanism of a box that you hook up to your TV to play games--however the new merged business model will undoubtedly impact software sales potential. Traditionally, Xbox and Windows have had two separate stores that sell the same games. Publishers and developers can benefit from two purchases because of this, however Microsoft shed this bifurcated sales strategy a long time ago by offering its first-party games in Play Anywhere, a promotion that gives a free license to the PC version when a console version is purchased.

It's unclear what publishers think of the implications of Microsoft's new Xbox PC console hybrid, especially if the Xbox console storefront is merged with the Windows PC storefront.

Zelnick does say that mobile has the highest growth potential for the typical reasons--everyone already has a phone, the games are portable, and the titles are usually mass-market oriented to attract more users.

"Mobile, of course, is taken with you, it's repeatable, and it's enjoyable, And I do think because it appeals to the broadest possible audience, it will probably continue to grow more rapidly."