Det har været nogle begivenhedsrige uger for Xbox, efter at de har vinket farvel til ledelsesduoen Phil Spencer og Sarah Bond og i stedet udnævnt Asha Sharma som ny CEO for Microsoft Gaming. Sharma er en erfaren leder, og selvom hun måske ikke har den store erfaring fra spilbranchen, virker Take-Two-chefen Strauss Zelnick overbevist om hendes evne til at føre virksomheden videre.
I et interview med The Game Business afviste han at give hende råd med på vejen i hendes nye rolle. "I don't think the newly appointed head of Xbox needs any advice from me," sagde Zelnick. "She's a highly accomplished executive who's done just great without ever having met me. I'm going to bet on her continuing to do great. Moreover, I have to focus on myself doing better, before I talk about other CEOs."
"At the end of the day, what drives success in our business is making the best entertainment. The rest does tend to take care of itself," fortsatte han. "When I first became President of Fox, I was just responsible for the business side. My boss was the chairman, Joe Roth, and he was responsible for the creative side. If I did my job well running the business, and Joe did his job poorly running the creative, we would fail. If he did his job well, and I did my job poorly, we would succeed. And if we both did our jobs well, we would succeed mightily. And we did, thankfully."
"But the truth is that hits cure all ills. In the absence of making hits, you won't have a successful entertainment business. That's the thing to focus on. At Take-Two, we try to do all of the above. We try to run an amazing creative enterprise, and we try to run a highly rational, highly effective business enterprise. Sometimes we get it wrong, but that's what we try to do," tilføjede han til sidst.
Det er et massivt år for Take-Two, da vi ser frem mod den potentielle lancering af Grand Theft Auto VI i november. Zelnick har hænderne fulde med det projekt og har både talt om, at spillet ikke er for stort at håndtere, samt forsikret os om, at AI aldrig ville kunne skabe noget som GTA.