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Peter Levin of Griffin Gaming Partners explains to Yahoo Finance Executive EditorBrian Sozzi why Xbox could be strategically expendable within Microsoft while its franchises, platform, and intellectual property may represent a multibillion-dollar standalone asset. He then breaks down why Grand Theft Auto takes a decade to develop—and why GTA VI could generate extraordinary demand.
the end of the day, if you look at the macro business of Microsoft, you know, Xbox and gaming kind of barely moves the needle, right? And so if that doesn’t change dramatically, you know, in a very truncated window, I could absolutely see that that being the case. And they’ve got some incredible IP.
Well, how how attractive is that asset? Just push aside the fact that, you know, the expense structure might be better. I mean, I think about the Xbox Live, the the entertainment, the, you know, you’re talking to different gaming players, you got the franchises. I mean it’s huge.
It is. Um it is. And I think at the end of the day when you look at the acquisition of an asset like um Bethesda’s ZeniMax, you know, Fallout and the portfolio of IP, you know, just, you know, within within that little basket of of of brand equities, um you know, that alone, you know, it’s a multi-billion dollar asset at this point. So there’s a lot in there. Um there’s some smart folks there, you know, folks smarter than I am with respect to how they’re going to manage their business. So I wouldn’t be surprised, you know, if we saw them them spin it out.
Are you surprised that really the last big deal going back to Mark Pincus, I mean it was Zynga sale to take two. Was that one of the that was one of the last kind of big deals in the space?
Well, you had Savvy by Scopely. You know, you had EA, you know, uh EA was recently purchased. You’ve had a lot of
Oh, I forgot EA. Good call. Yeah.
It’s a big one. Um but again, that had been rumored for a really long time and I mean it I remember 20 plus years ago where you know, the rumors were Disney was going to buy EA. And then prior to that, the rumor was that EA was going to buy Disney. Right? Kind of prior to, you know, um Iger taking the helm. Um so I think there’s going to be more M&A probably um in that kind of medium-sized um acquisition space. I think a lot of these players in legacy media are trying to figure out, you know, how, again, this is the most attractive and the most elusive demographic within the global media.
I mean the last public, the last public video game company from it’s take two, right? And they’re out there with Grand Theft Auto and that community.
Yeah, and then you’ve got well, you know, you’ve got Discord, right? Folks are a lot of chatter about what’s going to happen with Discord, you know, whether or not they’ll be exploring the markets and you know, the next few quarters or so. So while not a publisher developer, you know, they certainly are the most meaningful communication platform to to the gaming demographic.
As someone in the trenches with gaming, what takes so long to get a Grand Theft Auto out? Like why all these years before this company could get this game out?
Yeah, I mean, I Triple-A gaming is in particular at that, I mean that’s rafied air. There’s nothing like GTA. Um, certainly not venture- friendly, right? You you’re talking 10-year cycles, plus. But it doesn’t really matter. if you the the most successful individual piece of intellectual property in the history of intellectual property was GTA 5. Right? So if you just think about that, what what GTA 6 is going to mean to the market, just their pre-sales. Those numbers are, you know, incredible. Um but it’s not, you know, it’s not for the faint of heart and Straus Elnick, you know, at the helm of Take 2 is he’s an apex predator. That guy’s a as alpha as it gets. Yeah.
