The boss of Take-Two has said the industry is “moving towards PC” even as GTA 6 is still down for launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S only.CEO Strauss Zelnick told CNBC’s Squawk Box that the video game business is trending towards “open rather than closed,” but insisted consoles — or console-style gaming — isn’t going anywhere.“I think it’s moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed,” Zelnick said. “But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen — that’s never going away.”The future of the video game console has become one of the hottest topics in the industry, with Microsoft expected to release a PC / console hybrid as its next-gen Xbox. Gaming rival Sony is expected to release a more traditional console as the PS6. Nintendo, meanwhile, is sticking firmly to its long-standing hardware position, bolstered by blockbuster exclusives.Zelnick’s comments come amid Valve’s announcement of a next-gen Steam Machine, itself backed by a new Steam Controller. The Steam Machine is a gaming-focused PC designed to be more accessible than a standard desktop PC, with a sleek, cube-like design and SteamOS on-board. It’s a clear play for the PC in the living room space, and gets in ahead of Microsoft’s own reported next-gen console ambitions.Still, Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer welcomed the Steam Machine announcement. “Gaming moves forward when players and developers have more ways to play and create, especially across open platforms,” Spencer tweeted. “Expanding access across PC, console, and handheld devices reflects a future built on choice, core values that have guided Xbox's vision from the start. As one of the largest publishers on Steam, we welcome new options for players to access games everywhere. Congrats on today's announce.”A recent report claimed the next Xbox is a console / PC hybrid that will play PlayStation games released on PC via Steam. That means the likes of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War, Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima and pretty much all other PC games will all be playable on the next-gen Xbox in an industry first.Windows Central reported that while users of the next-gen Xbox can remain inside the Xbox ecosystem if they want, they can exit to Windows, where the console acts like a traditional Windows PC. That means having access to PlayStation games on Steam, and mouse and keyboard games from Blizzard's launcher, Battle.net (World of Warcraft), and Riot's launcher (League of Legends).Following that report, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dropped yet another hint that the next-gen Xbox is basically a PC. In an interview with TBPN, Nadella responded to questions about the evolution of the company’s gaming business, and in doing so dropped a clear hint at where the company is going.“Remember, the biggest gaming business is the Windows business,” Nadella began. “To us, gaming on Windows… and of course, Steam has built a massive marketplace on top of it, and they’ve done a very successful job. Now, we’re the largest publisher after the Activision [deal]. Therefore we want to be a fantastic publisher. Similar approach to what we did with Office. We want to be everywhere, in every platform. So we want to make sure, whether it’s consoles, whether it’s the PC, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s cloud gaming, or the TV, we just want to make sure the games are being enjoyed by gamers everywhere.“Second, we also wanted to do innovative work in the system side on the console and on the PC. It’s kind of funny that people think about the console-PC as two different things. We built the console because we wanted to build a better PC which could then perform for gaming. I kind of want to revisit some of that conventional wisdom.“But at the end of the day, console has an experience that is unparalleled. It delivers performance that is unparalleled, that pushes I think the system forward. So I’m really looking forward to the next console, the next PC gaming.”Fast forward to last week, and Valve appears to have gazumped Microsoft by returning to the Steam Machine. In an interview with IGN ahead of the reveal, we asked Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais and hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat whether they saw gaming PCs being the natural evolution of the console, given both Microsoft and Valve’s efforts here.Here’s how they responded:Pierre-Loup Griffais: When we think about what to work on next and working on things like Steam Machine and stuff, we're typically not looking at consoles or other products in that direction. Everything we do is informed by what's happening on the PC gaming side of things. Of course there ends up being quite a bit of overlap because we’re doing a bunch of stuff that helps PC gaming work better in the living room and that's traditionally where consoles have been. But really I would say that most of our thinking is not informed by what's happening on the console side, and so I don't know if we have many theories as to where that might be headed. But in general it seems like people seem to be recognizing that there's quite a bit of value in a more PC-like experience and the customizability and all that, and so we're happy to see more of these elements being embraced by platforms in general.Yazan Aldehayyat: As far as we're concerned the Steam Machine is a PC, so that delineation is not there. In our view, the Steam Machine is just one option in the ecosystem of gaming PCs out there. If you're already happy with your PC gaming experience, that's great. We love that. We are a PC gaming company. We're just trying to give you more options. And that's how we view it. It's just something that we think is a really great addition to a living room or a desktop, but it's just one other option that people can have available to them to play their Steam games basically.We don’t know when exactly the Steam Machine will come out, beyond a vague 2026 release window, and we don’t know how much it will cost (Aldehayyat told us the Steam Machine “is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it”).As for GTA 6, PC gamers are worried they won’t get to play the game until late 2027 or perhaps even 2028, given its recent delay to November 2026. Will Rockstar bring forward the inevitable PC release as a result?Last year Zelnick was asked if the lack of a PC version of GTA 6 was set in stone. Here’s Zelnick’s response in full:Well, the lack of an announcement is not something that could be set in stone as near as I could tell, because the only thing that happens after the lack of an announcement is an announcement, I suppose, or a continuing lack of an announcement, I guess that could happen too. It doesn’t seem to me that either would be set in stone.But Rockstar has an approach to platforms which we’ve seen before, and they will make more announcements in due time. I do believe that the right strategy for our business is to be where the consumer is, and historically what this company has done is address consumers anywhere they are, on any platform that makes sense, over time.That was Zelnick dancing around the inevitable PC version of GTA 6, but he did point to Rockstar’s release strategy for its previous games. Fans of Rockstar games have noted the studio's historical reluctance to release other past games on PC day-and-date with console, as well as its fraught relationship with the modding community over the years. Still, some had hoped that a game as big as GTA 6 could be a turning point for the studio's PC gaming attitude, only to have those hopes dashed.Big Rockstar titles tend to get to PC eventually, but the question is how long PC gamers will have to wait for the biggest entertainment launch of all time.We’ve got plenty more on GTA 6 in the meantime, including how the internet reacted to the GTA 6 delay, and why it’s no surprise it was delayed in the first place.Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.