Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely be a juggernaut success if GTA 5’s historic run is any indication, and the series’ parent company reckons the long-awaited sequel could be “unmatched in the industry.”
During an interview at TD Cowen’s 52nd Annual Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference yesterday, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick – head of the company that owns Rockstar Games and GTA – discussed how much the gaming industry has ballooned since the last GTA release, and how there’s now the capacity to support a game as big as GTA 6 could be.
“I do think the world’s in a different place than it was when we launched GTA 5,” Zelnick explains, pointing to the series’ past without microtransactions and a dedicated GTA Online version. “[GTA] was neck and neck with Call of Duty at that point as the biggest franchise in the business,” as opposed to where the series stands now as “the number one entertainment property of all time, across all forms of entertainment” after GTA 5 sold over 200 million units. Zelnick boasts of GTA 6’s record-breaking announcement trailer as a clue to the game’s potential commercial performance.
Zelnick doesn’t think GTA’s landmark success exists in isolation, however. “The big titles continue to perform, and with the history of the entertainment business, the big and better only get bigger and better, and the mediocre go away, and the stuff in the middle either has to get really really good, or it also goes away,” Zelnick explains.
With boatloads of hype and an even richer company behind it, should Rockstar Games “deliver an amazing, perfect video game” in GTA 6, Zelnick thinks Take-Two “certainly have the ability to support a hit title that is unmatched in the industry.”
Similar comments came last week when the CEO claimed Rockstar Games is aiming to create “an experience that no one has seen before,” while still trying to deliver “more value than what we charge.”