Today was a big day for virtual reality: the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset was officially announced, Ubisoft confirmed that new Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed VR games are in the works, and Electronic Arts announced that Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will launch on December 11 and will be available on multiple platforms. Several other new games and updates to existing games were also announced.

One gaming industry executive who does not share this enthusiasm, however, is Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive. Asked about the potential impact of cloud gaming, particularly Stadia, he said in an interview with Protocol, "New distribution methods that offer high quality, efficiency, and reasonable prices are good for our business."

"There was years of hype about VR, but I wasn't too compelled by it," Zelnick said. 'As a result, thankfully, we didn't waste our money on VR, because it's a great way to get people to see what we're all about.'

He expressed similar doubts about the impact of cloud gaming, saying it "will not be transformative."

"Some officials said there are 130 to 140 million current gaming consoles; there are billions of PCs," he said. If everyone with a PC, tablet, or cell phone could have access to console video games in a frictionless way, the market size would automatically increase 20-fold."

"Of course, that makes no sense at all. Because it would mean that you were super interested in video games, but just didn't want to buy a console. I mean, sure there were people like that, but if they were interested enough to want to pay $60 or $70 for a first-line title, it's hard to imagine that they didn't want to spend $250 on a console to be able to do that, which only comes once in a lifetime."

Further complicating the issue is the age-old infrastructure difficulty: "If you're on the cloud and they're on a phone line, they can't take advantage of what you're delivering.

It is a bit surprising that the head of a major video game publisher would refuse to embrace what is widely regarded as the next big technology, but to Zelnick's credit, he has a pretty solid track record as head of Take-Two. The company's biggest games are both Rockstar series ("Grand Theft Auto" and "Red Dead Redemption"), but it has had considerable success beyond that: in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, the company released "NBA 2K20," "Borderlands 3," " Civilization 6," the "WWE" series, "Outer Worlds," and, of course, "GTA5" and "RDR2" as the biggest contributors to the company's record-breaking $831.3 million quarter.

The recent publicity surrounding the Xbox One and PlayStation 5 and the relatively subdued response to Stadia also speaks volumes. While cloud gaming may one day become as ubiquitous as Steam, the excitement surrounding next-generation consoles suggests that we still have a long way to go before we get there.