Speaking during the Cowen and Company analyst conference this week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick described Red Dead as a “permanent” franchise, like Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands.

Zelnick’s comments came as part of a response to a question about Take-Two’s “selective” approach in its game releases.

“The risk of just [releasing more games] is that you end up just bulking up your release schedule and that isn’t really what consumers want. Consumers want better, not more,” Zelnick said, in part. “So our selective approach, which we’ve taken since ’07 I think has paid off. Now, we have gotten more by taking that approach; we’ve launched one new successful franchise every year and I would like to keep doing that particularly because I talk about permanent franchises, but not everything is going to be a permanent franchise. Some of our great franchises eventually will lose their luster and some will hopefully be permanent.”

He then labeled Red Dead as one of those “permanent” franchises, perhaps suggesting that a sequel for the 2010 title could be in the works.

“I pretty much know the ones that I can assure you are permanent. It’s obvious that GTA is a permanent franchise as long as we keep delivering this incredible quality; it seems quite obvious that Red Dead is a permanent franchise, again with the same caveat, or Borderlands, for example, and NBA and others.”

“But not everything is going to be a permanent franchise. We can do very well even if it’s not. I would like to see us grow with a couple more great franchises in the next couple years and we’re launching Evolve; we have very high hopes for that.”

(via CVG, Gamespot)