As expected in Take-Two’s latest earnings report, the publisher has announced the cancellation of several unannounced projects, and other games have been delayed, according to the CEO.
“The development timelines for some of our titles have evolved, especially as we strive to redefine the creative standards of excellence in our industry, which influence our slate of releases for the current year,” the company said during the earnings report.
Take-Two will accrue an impairment charge of $54.2 million in the fourth quarter “related to development and cancellation costs of unreleased PC and console games.” In May 2021, Take-Two said it aims to release around 62 games by 2024 across a variety of major platforms.
Speaking with IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick attributed the delays to consumers’ demand for differentiation among other factors.
“The best possible way to look at it is that we all strive for quality and customers demand quality and sometimes that can take longer than expected, another way to look at it is that we have some production challenges.”
Asked to elaborate on “productivity challenges,” Zelnick pointed to the company’s hybrid work policy, which encourages developers to be in the office three times a week but includes a lot of remote work as well.
