Zelnick: Games industry not immune to recession

Take-Two Interactive's Strauss Zelnick has warned that the games industry is not immune to recent downturn in the economy, saying "it doesn't look very promising".

Speaking at the BMO Interactive Entertainment conference, Zelnick outlined the company's plan to ride out the economic crisis, emphasising the importance of not seeing any entertainment business as immune to current environment.

"No matter what people think, entertainment in general, interactive entertainment specifically, isn't immune to economic cycles," he explained. "…that said we can have some resistance to the cyclicality if we have really high quality products. "

"In the last couple of weeks specifically we're beginning to see some softness in retail, it's pretty broad and it's beginning to have an impact on the industry and by that I don't mean a good impact."

He went on to detail Take-Two's plan to release fewer top tier titles as a way to buttress against the current economic fallout.

"In that context we think our strategy, which is to release a limited number of top tier titles, somewhat cushions us in the environment because must have products should still sell … your overhead should be lower, your marketing costs should be lower…"

He added: "It's very difficult to predict what the impact of this economy is going to be on the consumer, specifically in the upcoming holiday season, but it doesn't look very promising."