GTA 6 'last enormous release of its kind' predicts author and expert

At the risk of this sounding like famous last words, it seems all but certain GTA 6 will release on 19 November barring any last minute disasters.

That's because six months ahead of the game's release, Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive confirmed the game still remains on track to release by the end of 2026.

There seems to be high confidence in the industry this will be the case too as almost every other publisher is avoiding releasing their games anywhere near GTA 6.

The vast majority of games from other publishers slated to release in the second half of 2026 are releasing in September or October or being pushed back completely to February 2027 and beyond.

But while it's positive GTA 6 seems nailed on to release on 19 November, gaming expert George E. Osborn, the author of the upcoming book Power Play which focuses on the link between gaming and politics plus the battle for global influence, thinks the behemoth release of GTA 6 might be the last of its kind.

Speaking to Indy100 ahead of Power Play's release, Osborn said: "I think what you can see really clearly is everyone understands GTA 6 will be a landmark moment for the global games industry. It's almost certainly going to be the last enormous scale release of its kind.

"There are very few other games that are going to be able to compete at this kind of level of budget and scale and have taken this long to get to market because the economics of the industry just simply doesn't support it anymore.

"It's going to have that enormous titanic effect on the industry and plenty of publishers are running for cover."

Osborn thinks the only studio that could ever replicate this kind of release is Rockstar itself.

"It would be because Rockstar has created such a specific market for what it wants that it's able to do this," he added.

"With pretty much every single other developer, the story over the past two years has been really clear. Games have taken too long to get to the market. They're costing too much for people to buy lots and lots of games, especially as you've seen consumers get squeezed by various cost of living issues.

"I think frankly people just don't have as much cash to spend on games and the prices of things like consoles as well have obviously been pushed up by things like RAM shortages.

"I think companies are saying maybe four or five years is too long to release a game. And if that's the case, then something like GTA 6, which we can reasonably guess has been worked on for about a decade at enormous expense, I think in the context of where the games market is going, I think it's very difficult to perceive that kind of repeatability around those kinds of big huge hits.

"But that wouldn't necessarily stop Rockstar from doing it. But that's because it's Rockstar. Everyone else has to ultimately pay attention to the market."

George E. Osborn is the author of Power Play / Supplied

He also thinks it will be interesting to see what the true effect of GTA 6's release will be on the rest of the industry.

Osborn said: "I noted Sony reported in its financials it was expecting its revenue to slightly dip in the coming financial year.

"But I think what it was doing was looking ahead and going, we forecast a dip and then if GTA 6 comes along, it should sell so many consoles, so many games that essentially we end up pushing ourselves back towards that kind of profitability."

Osborn's Power Play is out on Thursday (18 June) in hardback.

Elsewhere from Indy100:

• GTA 6 official release date update from Take-Two Interactive - and it's the best news
• GTA 6 will apparently 'produce real-life millionaires' through gameplay

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