The trouble with having a blockbuster hit like “Grand Theft Auto” is that all of your other video games pale by comparison. Still, Take-Two Interactive Software Chairman Strauss Zelnick sees no reason “to apologize for having the biggest franchise in the business” in GTA. 

Zelnick, speaking at the Reuters Media Summit, went so far as to compare owning the GTA franchise to owning the James Bond franchise.

“It is hard to imagine how many titles will ever compete with ‘Grand Theft Auto’. But the fact that you are fortunate enough to own the James Bond franchise doesn’t mean you have to apologize for your other megahits just because they aren’t quite as big.”

Zelnick then compared GTA to… Pippi Longstocking? It’s not easy drawing comparisons between a sophisticated, violent video game and a fictional character in children’s books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, but Zelnick gave it a shot.

“She used to complain that she didn’t get to go on vacation because she didn’t go to school,” he said of Pippi’s glass-half-empty outlook. Whining about what GTA’s success has done to other Take-Two titles is “a bit like that.”

Even so, Zelnick acknowledged the success of GTA is “a double edged sword” in some ways. ”You can never rest on your laurels. It puts a lot of pressure on our creative people. It’s not that we stamp it out and people just show up and buy it. It’s great stuff. Every one is better than the last.”

Whether the next one — GTA 4 — is better than the last will be determined soon. Zelnick confirmed the next version will ship sometime next spring.

(Photo: Reuters/Actress playing Pippi (left) ; GTA San Andreas screenshot (right))