Interstitial ads in full-priced games would be unfair, Take-Two CEO says

Take-Two Interactive has no plans to interrupt gameplay with forced ads in premium-priced games.

2

Ads are the next horizon for monetization in gaming, especially on consoles...but it's a tricky well to tap. Ad-supported tiers have taken over all streaming services--perhaps the ultimate endgame all along--and the same could happen with gaming, at least to an extent, but no one has been brave enough to tackle it yet.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says that these kinds of interstitial ads have no place in full-priced $70 games. This sentiment makes sense on a value level, as advertisements in games are typically used in free to play games, with the exception mainly consisting of sports titles. And the kind of interstitial ads that Zelnick refers to are the kind that break immersion and threaten engagement by disrupting player activity. For more on how ads could work for console gaming, check out this article.

In a recent interview with Christopher Dring's The Game Business, the Take-Two CEO expresses his opinion on ads in gaming, with Zelnick basically reflecting the current status quo on ads.

Q. Do you see an opportunity for advertising in the PC and console space.

A. For free to play titles, yes, for titles that you've paid $70 or $80? No. We have some limited advertising around NBA 2K because that fits with the vernacular. You want to see an advertisement in an arena, in a stadium, because you would if you were there in real life. But that's not a big economic contributor.

It's very difficult for me to believe that we would want to have interstitial advertising in a game that people paid $70 to $80 bucks for. It would seem unfair.

That being said, Microsoft is indeed planning on rolling out a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming sometime this year. Gamers will be able to watch advertisements in exchange for playtime, being able to stream select games on the service for free.