Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto IV earned a superb 98 percent on reviews aggregator Metacritic, but the company wants to ensure sure such quality spreads across its entire portfolio.

On Thursday during the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference in New York, Take-Two chair Strauss Zelnick said his company's average review score was highest among competitors from calendar year 2007 through April 2008.

"That's not just bragging rights. Scores translate directly into sales and profitability."

(1) Average quality ranking for current gen consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii) releases in CY 2007-2008 YTD, excluding distribution-only titles, per NPD and GameRankings.com. Date as of 4/30/08.

(2) Average of Ubisoft, EA, THQ and Activision's review scores. (Slide taken from Zelnick's presentation.)

Asked by an analyst on how Take-Two's green-light process operates, Zelnick said he draws from his former experience as a movie exec. "You get a sense, minimally, of the parameters of risk and reward."

Zelnick explained that when he was president of 20th Century Fox's film studio, his friends would call him out when a movie ended up being a flop.

"My friends would say to me, 'What could you have been thinking when you green-lit that movie? The answer was obviously what I was thinking is that it was going to be a big hit, but I was wrong.

"We're not going to be able to get all of the flops out of the system, but we're incredibly proud of our hit ratio."

He described a green-light environment at Take-Two that was centered around collaboration between the creative and the business sides with the goal of releasing a product that's high quality and commercially successful.

"We don't have a system where some people come and present on the hot seat and we say 'yes' or 'no.'"

Click on the image to see Take-Two's franchise-building process.