We’ll all be streaming our games in about “three years”, says Take-Two boss, raising some post-release questions about GTA 6
Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick has predicted that commercially viable game streaming with low enough latency for most players will arrive within about three years. He argues this could greatly expand the number of devices capable of running games, creating new opportunities for widely appealing releases, though the article notes the prediction raises questions about how Grand Theft Auto 6 may be distributed after launch.
Zelnick said streaming could increase the industry’s effective potential audience tenfold, while cautioning that revenue would not rise by the same amount because keen players already own gaming hardware. Take-Two has raised its forecast for fiscal 2027 revenue to $8.2bn, and the article speculates that GTA 6’s absence of a PC release date could make a streaming version plausible before a conventional PC port; however, this remains speculation rather than an announced plan.
- Take-Two expects mainstream game streaming within three years.
- Streaming could broaden gaming beyond consoles and PCs.
- GTA 6 streaming plans remain unconfirmed.
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Take-Two is a video game company whose chief executive, Strauss Zelnick, has discussed how streaming could change the way people play. With game streaming, a remote computer runs the game and sends the picture and sound to a player’s device, which may not need powerful gaming hardware of its own.
The idea matters because it could let more people play demanding games on devices they already own. Zelnick has suggested this might expand the potential audience, though that would not necessarily mean the same increase in sales: many regular players already have consoles or gaming PCs.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is Take-Two’s upcoming major release, and its future availability on different devices is a point of interest. A streaming edition has been raised as a possibility, but no such plan has been announced.
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The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Game streaming technology is advancing rapidly with substantial investment from major firms in reducing latency and improving cloud infrastructure. The technical challenges, whilst significant, appear solvable rather than insurmountable; a three-year timeline for commercially viable streaming is reasonable given current progress and the powerful economic incentives driving development.
The case against
Streaming gaming faces persistent technical obstacles in latency and bandwidth that current infrastructure cannot reliably meet across diverse global markets, and players have shown durable preference for local hardware ownership and offline access. Previous predictions about streaming dominance have repeatedly proved overoptimistic about both technological capability and consumer adoption, and the particular demands of fast-paced games suggest a longer realistic timeline.