Rockstar Games’ long-awaited GTA 6 is set to release later this year. While many expect another delay for the upcoming open world crime game, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is adamant that the game’s November 19th release date is locked and loaded.
As GTA 6 gets ready to start its massive marketing campaign, Zelnick doubled-down on the game’s proposed final release date, and explained why the game will see such a huge marketing campaign when it’s already expected to be the biggest entertainment launch in history.
Speaking on CNBC’s Mad Money segment, Zelnick explained that they know the game will hit its final proposed release date. When asked how he knows the game will be released this December, the CEO responded: “Well because we actually, obviously, track progress daily of everything that we do.”
“And we obviously announced that we have marketing beats coming this Summer,” Zelnick continued. “And we don’t spend money on marketing until we’re pretty close to release.”
But does GTA 6 need marketing? As the most anticipated video game launch in the history of the medium, the whole world knows about the game‘s impending launch. Nevertheless, Zelnick explained that showing the same energy that fans are showing for the game is integral to making them feel like the next Grand Theft Auto is actually as good as they imagine it to be.
“I think there’s a difference between awareness and energy, and we need to create the energy,” Zelnick said. “We do have the awareness, the anticipation is huge, it’s bigger than ever before, but in our business you do have to tell people what’s coming and our consumers wanna know that this is gonna be great and they wanna see what the visuals look like.”
Despite this, GTA 6’s marketing is a bit of a challenge, the CEO explained. After all, nobody has ever had to advertise a game of this scale and fervour before, and the company has to convince potential customers that the game is actually real and will be playable.
“It is a challenge because we want the product to be authentically owned by our consumers, and so the marketing has to be delicate,” he continued. It has to feel like this is real. This is not… we’re not selling hamburgers. We’re selling this universe art from.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of the most anticipated games in history, although it won’t be launching on PC later this year. Releasing only on PS5 and Xbox Series, the game is expected to release on PC sometime in 2027 or 2028, likely with a slew of visual improvements.
The game’s delayed PC launch comes after the Take-Two CEO admitted that PC is now becoming the de facto platform for gaming. Unfortunately, players on the platform will have to wait as usual for Rockstar’s latest release.
