Today, following the news of the sale of Private Division, Take-Two Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick explained the reasoning behind the decision.
We learned earlier today that the label was sold to an undisclosed buyer (it should be announced soon) for a purchase price that remains mysterious for now.
Yet, during Take-Two Interactive Software’s quarterly financial conference call, Zelnick at least provided more color about the sale and what led to its sale. Basically, while its games were successful, they weren’t big enough to compare with the core intellectual properties that Take-Two aims to make.
“Look. It’s always hard to part with, um, friends and colleagues. That’s actually the hardest thing that we have to do occasionally.
We’re really impressed with what Michael Worosz and the team built at private division. They brought on board and launched a number of titles over the past several years and virtually all of them worked out, and a couple of them were pretty big breakouts.
At the same time. It became clear that our thesis, which is work with independent developers, bring them into this independently-minded division, and perhaps create new, huge, durable, intellectual properties for the company, was going to be challenging at best, because the titles, though big, were not big in the context of our core intellectual properties at 2K And Rockstar.”
And our job really is to focus on making the biggest and best hits for the marketplace and we’re not the long tail company. We are top-10 hit makers around here. That’s who we are in the console side. That’s where we are in the mobile side and that is the core of any mature entertainment business being a top 10 player.
While Zelnick stopped short of mentioning the company that acquired Private Division, he did pledge that it has found a “great home.”
“Those are the companies that matter. Those are the companies that grow. Those are the companies with operating markets. So that’s what we need to focus on and we’re really thrilled that we found a great home for Private Division.”
Private Division has published several games over the years since its launch in 2017. The most well-known is likely The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment.
Other titles include OlliOlli World by Roll7, After Us by Piccolo Studio, No Rest for the Wicked by Moon Studios, and many more.
If you want to learn more about Take-Two’s performance, financial performance, you can read our dedicated article from earlier today.
On top of that, other companies have already announced their latest financial results, including Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Konami, Marvelous, Nintendo, and Bandai Namco.
