As GTA 6 release date approaches, gaming industry prepares to take over the world

Video game industry analysts often can only say that “Grand Theft Auto VI” will be the biggest entertainment release of all time before the phrase seemingly loses all meaning to those who have never played a “GTA” game before.

With just a week until the Nov. 19 release of the most anticipated video game of all time, everyone from passersby passing Vice City billboards and watching “SNL” skits to Hollywood executives who saw Netflix’s “extended look” in August know that the hottest topic right now is Rockstar Games’ title. According to market research firm Newzoo, the game is currently expected to bring in between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in first-week sales on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S gaming consoles on a reported budget of $1.5 billion.

“Even if you don’t play games, chances are you’ve heard it,” said Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s vice president of nonfiction series. Variety. “Just like maybe you heard about a famous athlete or a famous song. So I think they had that in their favor.”

But not everyone knows what will attract “GTA 6″‘s collective attention (and money) in pop culture, and those who do know are most likely already in the massive echo chamber that has been waiting 13 years for the game.

The simplest possible answer is that the “Grand Theft Auto” franchise created a new type of video game, the open world genre, and that new type of video game has continued to grow to become the most immersive form of entertainment we have today. In these games, you have almost unlimited possibilities for how you interact with the virtual world, making the normally collective experience of consuming the same piece of narrative media also personalized.

“Really, ‘GTA’ was the pioneer of open-world gaming,” said Geoff Keighley, creator of The Game Awards, a longtime video game industry broadcaster and journalist. Variety. “‘GTA 3’ is really where Rockstar set out to make a 3D open world game. A lot of games are so linear, where they’re actually scripts that you play through and have a bit of choice. But ‘GTA’ revolutionized the industry with a true open world game that lets you decide what journey you want to take in that simulated environment. When ‘GTA 3’ came out, it was ahead of its time. And Rockstar a, with each game the ambition has become greater and greater about the density of the simulated world and this allows players to have a huge sense of action to create the story they want to create inside the world.

Riegg, who worked with Rockstar Games studio head Jennifer Kolbe to launch the “GTA 6” extended trailer in what he said “wasn’t some kind of monetary deal,” says “the game itself is probably the closest thing to that total immersion in the video game world.”

“It’s ‘Ready Player One,’ maybe without the headset,” says Riegg. “There’s a narrative in the game and objectives, but you can also just live in that world. You don’t have to do that stuff. I can have a relationship with someone. I can text them. I can commit crimes. It’s this immersive alternate universe that you can actually participate in in whatever way you choose.”

Strauss Zelnick, head of Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive, says he has “so many thoughts” about the game, but he’s at a loss for new words until it’s revealed.

“That’s a good question to ask,” Zelnick said Variety On Monday, when asked if there was anything specific, the Take-Two CEO believes that he and the Rockstar team have yet to say about “GTA 6” that they can talk about the game before its release. “No, I mean, I think our point of view has been well represented, and I think at this point I put myself in the cautious optimist camp.”

Zelnick, former chairman of 20th Century Fox and head of BMG Entertainment, has done so many interviews previewing “GTA 6” at this point that aside from recently defending Take-Two’s track record with successful franchises (“GTA,” “Red Dead Redemption,” “NBA 2K,” “Borderlands” and “Sid Meier’s Civilization”) in a conversation with the Wall Street Journal, little changed between the questions and answers.

“Everyone here is incredibly excited about the upcoming launch,” says Zelnick. “Pre-orders are far exceeding our expectations, so that’s a good thing. That said, we never claim success until it happens, so we’re only days away from starting to see the fruits of our labor.”

“GTA 6” is a guaranteed hit (“God knows I need it,” Zelnick joked), so measuring the success of the $80 game goes well beyond analyzing finances and hours played, time away from other forms of entertainment and what percentage of the workforce takes a day off. And that last one is no joke.

“Honestly, I think almost no one in the video game industry will be working that day,” says Christoph Hartmann, former head of Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games and currently head of Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment.

“I actually downloaded it today and I’m upset because the Wi-Fi was really slow in our house,” Hartmann said. Variety Wednesday. “I think it was 212 GB. And yeah, I’m going to take the day off, and then I have the challenge that my 14-year-old son is insisting he can play too, and I told him it was mature, and he was like, ‘Yeah, but Dad, you worked on this game. Shouldn’t I know what it is?'”

“Grand Theft Auto 6” is the story of Jason and Lucia, a couple who “always knew the deck was against them,” according to Rockstar Games. “But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darker side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy that stretches across the state of Leonida – forced to rely on each other more than ever if they are to make it out alive.”

Rob Nelson, co-head of Rockstar Games studio, said the game’s main narrative should take around 80 hours to complete. The title will feature the largest open-world map in franchise history and offer players new ways to shape their gameplay, from the level of romance between Jason and Lucia to the appearance of their physiques based on what they eat and how often they exercise.

“The ‘GTA’ games have been unique in their ambition, and certainly this one. The scale of what they’ve built in a decade is incredible,” says Keighley. “So I think that’s why gamers respond to these games, because there are so many possibilities in the world of how you play it. It’s not a game that you play in 20 hours and finish. You continue to exist in this world and explore it. And obviously, ‘GTA Online,’ that’s a big thing that has continued for a decade. So the ‘GTA’ experience is unlike anything else in gaming, let alone to entertainment That’s what’s so unique about gaming. ‘GTA’ games is that they are truly unrivaled in all of entertainment because of their scale.

Since its founding by brothers Dan Houser and Sam Houser in 1998, Rockstar Games has become the “largest American games publisher” and has “the largest entertainment franchise” with “Grand Theft Auto 6,” according to Joost Van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData and professor of the Business of Video Games at NYU.

Regarding the massive success of “Red Dead Redemption 2” and “Grand Theft Auto 5,” “they’re no longer the underdogs,” Van Dreunen notes, meaning much of Rockstar’s countercultural appeal has become mainstream since the release of its latest hit. “So can he maintain that character and can he market it? » asks Van Dreunen.

“GTA 6” will launch as part of Rockstar Games workers’ ongoing efforts to unionize, now with the public support of SAG-AFTRA. The timing is no coincidence, with Rockstar employees looking to draw attention to their detailed work over the past 13 years, while Take-Two Interactive stands to make billions from their work. The game’s success will likely impact the gaming industry as a whole, as well as how the general public views the medium, which has long struggled to be taken as seriously as film and television despite the more than $200 billion in revenue games bring in each year.

“I hope they used the success of ‘GTA 5’ to manifest the creative vision they had in mind all this time and really delivered on their promises,” Van Dreunen said. “And I think that will be its unique selling point, not the fact that it’s a fringe form of entertainment and my mother is telling me I’m not allowed to play this game. That was a big part of its selling point, its marketing. They were doing guerrilla marketing. They had stickers in Lower Manhattan and the East Village, these Rockstar stickers all over the lamp posts and on the street furniture and all that. They would take a very marketing rebel because it is in line with the game brand.