In an interview with GameInformer, Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick tried to justify the microtransactions in the NBA 2K series. As Zelnick claimed, there are some gamers that want everything for free and Take-Two won’t be able to help those people.
As Zelnick claimed:
“Unquestionably we pay attention to consumer response because we’re so focused on engaging and captivating and entertaining the consumer. Any time we get feedback that is anything less than 1000 percent positive, we stop and say, what should we do differently? I think there’s a small sliver of the consumer base that basically wants everything for free, we can’t really help those people. I think most consumers just want a fair deal and we do think that part of a fair deal is, you know when you get the check at the end of the meal, it’s not enough that the food tasted good, it has to be a fair deal for what you got. So we’re very focused on it being more than a fair deal, we want to give consumers much more than they paid for.”
Hilariously enough, Zelnick forgot to mention that the NBA 2K games are games sold at full price instead of free-to-play games. As such, it makes perfect sense for gamers to actually demand everything to be available – and not behind pay walls – in the game they had purchased.
Of course, NBA 2K are not the only sport games featuring ridiculous micro-transactions. EA’s FIFA series is also well known for its awful micro-transactions. However, and given the fact that these are niche games, there hasn’t been a big uproar similar to that for Battlefront 2.
In any case, gamers can vote with their wallets so it’s really up to them to show EA and Take-Two that they are not “okay” with these practices.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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