Black Friday sales better than expected: Take Two

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Black Friday sales of video games were probably better than expected but that's no guarantee of strong sales for the rest of the holiday season, Take Two Interactive Software Inc's (TTWO.O) Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick said on Thursday.

"I think everyone was encouraged by Black Friday," Zelnick told the Reuters Media Summit in New York, referring to the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday that marks the start of the holiday shopping season.

"It was better than expectations, but it's pretty hard these days -- being slightly down is the new up," said Zelnick, a veteran of the U.S. media industry. He has been at the helm of Take Two, the New York-based videogame publisher best known for its blockbuster 'Grand Theft Auto' game, since March 2007.

Healthy sales on Black Friday is no indicator that the industry will be able to sustain the sales momentum through December, Zelnick said.

Strong game titles will continue to sell well, but "everyone's at best cautiously optimistic," Zelnick said. "You're unlikely to be celebrating, but you'll be OK."

Earlier this week, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) vice president of strategy and business development for interactive entertainment business, Shane Kim, told the summit that Black Friday weekend sales of its XBox 360 videogame consoles broke a record, up 25 percent from a year ago. Kim also said he remains "cautiously optimistic" about holiday season sales.

Zelnick did not disclose sales figures for "GTA 4," which has sold more than 10 million units as of August, since launching in April.

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das and Franklin Paul; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)