Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed on Tuesday that Rockstar Games has looked into doing more with L.A. Noire, the 2011 detective game that has not had a new entry in over a decade.
Zelnick made the comments at iicon, a new gaming industry event in Las Vegas organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the same body that previously ran E3. He was interviewed on stage by Variety’s Jenny Maas.
What Zelnick Actually Said
When asked directly whether Rockstar had looked at doing more with L.A. Noire, Zelnick’s answer was a straightforward “yes.” That reply reportedly caught the interviewer off guard.
He followed that up quickly with a broader statement on Take-Two’s approach to older franchises:
Broadly, we’re looking at doing something in the future with all of our intellectual property. There’s nothing to announce on L.A. Noire specifically, and if there were, it would be Rockstar announcing it, not me. But in any case, with regard to our legacy IP, the teams are always looking at what we have and we’re always thinking about it. The question is, at any given time, do we have a team that’s passionate about working on that?
So no sequel is confirmed. What Zelnick did confirm is that the IP is not off the table.
L.A. Noire originally launched in 2011, developed by the now-defunct Team Bondi. Players controlled Cole Phelps, a detective working through cases in 1940s Los Angeles. The game received a remaster in 2017 for modern consoles and a separate VR release.
Team Bondi’s founder, Brendan McNamara, later set up a studio called Video Games Deluxe, staffed partly by former L.A. Noire developers. That studio handled the 2017 re-release for Rockstar. In 2024, Rockstar acquired Video Games Deluxe and rebranded it as Rockstar Australia. The game also became part of the GTA+ subscription service in 2024.
That acquisition is worth noting. Rockstar now owns the studio with the most L.A. Noire experience outside of the original team.
