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Rockstar: Mobile developers put revenue before quality

Dan Houser says Grand Theft Auto developer is focussed on "superior products"

Rockstar co-founder and VP Dan Houser has given his thoughts on the current state of mobile gaming, which he believes puts money before quality.

"This is my personal opinion, but I think a lot of people in the general mobile industry are more focused on making money than making good products," he told Japanese magazine Famitsu.

"We're a business, too - we have to think about how to build revenue and we value the knowledge you need for that, but we want to conduct business with superior products. Focusing on nothing but business is depressing to me; it's boring. I want people to understand that we make games for more than just to make money."

In the interview, translated by 1Up, Houser stated for Rockstar developing new products wasn't about business opportunities or filling niches, but creating products it could be confident about.

He also didn't see the mobile sector as a threat to more traditional gaming, and touched on Rockstar's previous experiments with mobile, namely the iOS port of GTA: Chinatown Wars.

"I don't think mobile is going to swallow up video games, but it's an important topic," he said.

"The massive phenomenon we saw when portable game systems came out has already spread over the mobile market, but we've experienced successes and failures in portables in the past."

Rockstar also plans to release a GTA III port on iOS, and has just announced the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V.

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Rachel Weber

Senior Editor

Rachel Weber has been with GamesIndustry since 2011 and specialises in news-writing and investigative journalism. She has more than five years of consumer experience, having previously worked for Future Publishing in the UK.

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