Grand Theft Auto 6 stormed to the front page of every news feed worldwide when Rockstar Games revealed it in December 2023. It quickly broke viewership records and soared up the charts, setting the industry on fire with an intense anticipation of what could be the fastest-selling game ever.
Recently, Mat Piscatella, an expert analyst with Circana, sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to discuss the financial outlook for the games industry, suggesting that we (as a global community) need to see more ‘overachievers’ like Palworld as spending dives. He also suggested that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a monumentally important game that’ll change hte face of the industry.
‘We Should Get a Boost’
It has been a rough year or so for the games industry. From more than 16,000 layoffs in eighteen months to the cancellation of games that looked phenomenal on paper, gamers and industry workers worldwide have come to terms with some intense struggles of late. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, according to Piscatella, who spoke recently to GamesIndustry.biz.
This is going to be a tough year, but if you look towards 2025, if interest rates come down and money becomes a little bit more free-flowing to devs and pubs, we should get a boost in the development cycle again. We’re going to get a renewed batch of interest with GTA 6 in particular. There’s probably never been a more important thing to ever release in the industry, so no pressure.
It’s a fair assessment. More than a decade after Grand Theft Auto 5 was released, it’s still topping the sales charts and scraping up more viewership on platforms like Twitch than any other game. It’s well and truly time for a new title, and while fans will have to wait until 2025 to get their hands on GTA 6, the hype train is unlikely to slow down any time soon.
There are high expectations that it’ll have more pre-orders and more sales at launch than any other game in history. That was more or less the case with 2013’s GTA 5, and given the response to the game’s first trailer, it’s easy to see GTA 6 outpacing its predecessor with ease.
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