"Our view is it’s hard to make permanent intellectual properties if you annualize it, with the exception of sports titles. So far, that’s proven to be the case. IP that is annualized eventually seems to hit the wall, and we don’t want our IP to hit the wall"

said Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

As the head of Take-Two, a company that controls many successful studios, including Rockstar, Firaxis, and many 2K studios, including Irrational Games, Zelnick attributes their success to avoiding annualization and giving time to fans to look forward to the next installment.

Zelnick may be right. While Activision has so far proven successful with their annual releases of the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops II has so far not sold as well as the last installment, which may or may not be a sign of slowdown. Regardless, Zelnick commended Activision and their multiple studio Call of Duty team for managing to pull of successful launches of the series every year, but stated that annualization is a "risk" that Take-Two is not willing to take.