Take‑Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick told investors on the company’s August earnings call that the gaming sector will move into a “commercial streaming mode” within three years, driven by soaring hardware prices.
Zelnick warned that the current “hardware crisis”—with GPUs and consoles costing more than a round‑trip flight to Nvidia’s QuakeCon booth—is pricing many players out of the hobby. He argued that low‑latency cloud streaming could turn ordinary devices into viable game machines, potentially expanding Take‑Two’s addressable audience by up to tenfold, even if revenue growth lags because its most avid customers already own consoles.
The outlook clashes with earlier skepticism about subscription‑only models and with consumer unease over losing ownership of games. Zelnick noted that broader streaming adoption could let titles like GTA 6 reach players who would otherwise avoid building a gaming rig. Industry observers such as Ubisoft’s Philippe Tremblay have already suggested gamers will grow comfortable with not owning games, a trend Zelnick hopes to accelerate.
