GTA 6 release date absence explained by Take-Two CEO as fans clamour for news
Take-Two, trailers one.
Despite GTA 6 being scheduled for release later this year, we still have no news on a release date – something Take-Two's CEO has now revealed is a conscious choice.
It's hard to believe, but it's been a whopping 16 months since Rockstar dropped the reveal trailer for GTA 6.
In the near year and a half since, news on the game has been almost entirely speculation, as the company has made a point of not releasing any further trailers for the title.
And as Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two recently confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg, this is all part of the game's grand marketing scheme.
"The anticipation for [GTA 6] may be the greatest anticipation I've ever seen for an entertainment property," Zelnick begins, "and I've been around the block a few times, and I've been in every entertainment business there is".
Where other studios are desperate to get as many eyes on their games as possible, the sheer scale of the GTA franchise means that, for Zelnick, the less they share, the more they "maintain the anticipation and excitement".
"We do have competitors who will describe their release schedule for years in advance, and we've found that the better thing to do is to provide marketing materials relatively close to the release window," he explains.
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The key to this strategy is to "create that excitement on one hand and balance the excitement with unmet expectation".
Thus far, it appears that this approach to marketing the game is set to be a tremendous success, with excitement for the game remaining sky high despite the lack of news.
It was recently confirmed by Zelnick that GTA 6 is still on course for a release in autumn 2025, but when exactly this will be is still entirely up in the air.
In fact, beyond building excitement, the distinct lack of information has been playing havoc with other studios when it comes to planning their own release windows.
Developers are desperate to avoid launching their games anywhere near GTA 6, while at least 10 top live-service games are reportedly planning on delaying updates so as not to coincide with the release of the Rockstar behemoth.
"GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor and we will just stay clear of the blast zone," explained one developer to The Game Business.
For now, though, that meteor still appears to be at least several months away, and if Zelnick's words are any indication, we'll only find out about it right before impact.
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