You probably want to know when GTA 6 is coming out. Everyone does, and publisher Take-Two’s well aware everyone does, as CEO Strauss Zelnick’s just acknowledged in an interview that saw him be asked why Rockstar still hasn’t locked in a proper release date for the game, even though it keeps saying GTA 6 is on track for this Fall.
So, why is it being kept hush-hush? From what Zelnick said, the answer is what you’d expect – Take-Two thinks it’s smart to keep people hungry for info, before really ramping things up once the game’s closer to dropping.
These latest comments from Zelnick came in an interview with Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week show, which saw the exec sit down in his nicest blue turtleneck, surrounded by stuff like awards and a copy of Borderlands 2 that definitely hadn’t been deliberately arranged to face the several different camera angles being used.
Right at the end of the video, the Take-two CEO was asked why GTA 6’s release date is still “so carefully held as a secret”.
“The anticipation for that title may be the greatest anticipation I’ve ever seen for an entertainment property, and I’ve been around the block a few times, and I’ve been in every entertainment business there is” Zelnick began, before saying the important bit: “We want to maintain the anticipation and the excitement.”
“We do have competitors who will describe their release schedule for years in advance,” he continued, “and we’ve found that the better thing to do is to provide marketing materials relatively close to the release window in order to create that excitement on the one hand, and balance the excitement with unmet anticipation. We don’t always get it exactly right, but that’s what we’re trying to do.”
So, it basically sounds like the publisher’s saving the date in order to really kick off the hardcore GTA 6 promo with a bang whenever it deems its release date to be close enough, while the hype generated by there currently being no formally announced full date and fairly little new info keeps everyone relentlessly posting unhinged stuff for the time being. Smart, and not unprecedented when it comes to big games.
If you’re a bit annoyed at not getting the date yet, spare a thought for other studios and publishers in the industry hearing this as they try to avoid releasing stuff right as GTA 6 likely blows everything away for at least little a bit.
“GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor and we will just stay clear of the blast zone,” one studio boss was quoted as saying last week, “We will nudge our releases back or forward three weeks to avoid it. Of course, the problem is everyone is going to do the same. So three to four weeks before or after GTA 6, you’re going to get a load of games dropping content in what they believe will be the safe zone.”
We’ll just have to see when Take-Two decides to press go on the big GTA 6 marketing train. Sadly, if you want to fill in the time by exploring an attempted re-creation of GTA 6’s map in GTA 5, you’re out of luck, as a mod attempting to do just that was pulled offline by its creator the other day following a Take-Two YouTube claim.
