Take-Two’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, said in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer that unlike movies, it’s important for video games to receive good reviews as review scores have a “meaningful influence on sales.” Speaking with reference to Turtle Rock’s upcoming title, Evolve, Zelnick said:
It’s very different, for example, than the motion picture business. You might win the Palme d’Or, for example, and it might not affect the box office at all. You might actually get bad reviews, and if it’s a crowd-pleasing comedy, people will still go. But if you get a bad Metacritic score, you’re going to have a very hard time with your video game. If you get a great score–for example, the Metacritic score on GTA V for next-gen is 97–that correlates highly with the sales.
Our consumers watch those scores; they watch the reviews, they care about awards. They care about quality.
In the same interview, Zelnick also said that he believes Evolve will have a successful launch. He said that it’s all “lining up well” and that the number of pre-orders that came in paint a positive picture overall.
Evolve will release on February 10 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Make sure you check out our Evolve info dump for everything you need to know about the upcoming shooter.
