Can Rockstar Truly Develop GTA 6 the Greatest Entertainment Experience Ever?
Regardless of the circumstances, it is entirely fair to say that the hype surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6 was always going to be astronomically high. GTA is the sort of franchise that transcends all mediums, and that is even truer in a world where Grand Theft Auto 5 and its companion online experience, Grand Theft Auto Online, have become the juggernauts that they are now, and have been for years at this point. Universal acclaim, staggering sales figures, and prolonged success for over a decade at this point have turned GTA 5 in something of a legend all of its own, which in turn has made the hype and anticipation for its long awaited successor seem that much more white-hot.
And now that Grand Theft Auto 6 is actually something that is tangible and at least somewhat within touching distance (or in its vicinity, if nothing else), excitement surrounding its release is hitting highs that we had never seen before for games. And yes, we have obviously had some very clear and obvious proof of that of late. Not long after announcing an unsurprising delay for the open world crime epic from a previously announced Fall 2025 release window to a new launch date of May 26 of next year, Rockstar Games released a new gameplay trailer for GTA 6, which, as the company announced shortly afterward, went on to attract a whopping 475 million plus views across all platforms within a single day, making it a record breaking biggest video launch ever to date, taking the top spot from Deadpool and Wolverine’s debut trailer and putting it at a distant second by quite some ease.
As if all of that hype weren’t enough, Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive are continuing to talk up GTA 6 and what it is aiming for with the kind of confidence that you would frankly expect from a company that has delivered the likes of Grand Theft Auto 5, Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and many others. Just recently, for instance, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said in an interview with CNBC while discussing the recently announced delay for Grand Theft Auto 6 that given Rockstar’s lofty ambitions for the open world title, the delay was a decision that made sense.
“The key thing is that Rockstar Games is trying to create the best thing anyone’s ever seen in entertainment, not just interactive entertainment,” Zelnick said. “That’s a tall order, and I think consumers have huge hopes for the title.
“But the delay itself is really a reflection of desire to polish and create the best possible experience for consumers, and we as a company have been known not to have a sort of slavish devotion to release dates but rather to seek the highest quality entertainment.”
That is, of course, a tall order- to say the very least. “The best thing anyone has ever seen in entertainment” isn’t really a standard that you would really ever reasonably hold anything to, but at the same time, it’s also not surprising that the company behind industry-defining and genre-creating masterpieces such as Grand Theft Auto are holding themselves to that standard, at least as far as their public-facing comments are concerned. Sure, that might not be something that many might believe any game – even a new mainline Grand Theft Auto release – could be described as, barring some very rare exceptions, but Rockstar seems like one of chosen few companies out there that could get away with making that a marketing beat for one of their upcoming flagship releases because very few companies over the medium’s history that have managed to have that kind of an impact with their releases.
So the question is, could Grand Theft Auto 6 be that kind of an industry-defining release? As ever, the easiest way to answer that question is to look at the developer in question’s past releases, and make educated guesses based on that. And Rockstar’s track record is, of course, second to none, to the extent that it almost doesn’t even need any briefing. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has never had anything resembling a slip up with its mainline releases, with the likes of Grand Theft Auto 3, 4, 5, Vice City, and San Andreas all having seen widespread and unprecedented success the likes of which you don’t see too often from most other video games. Grand Theft Auto 5’s commercial success in particular continues to be jaw-dropping for even the most hardcore gaming enthusiasts to this day- there’s just no getting used to that sort of commercial longevity for a paid console game.
Outside of GTA, meanwhile, Rockstar has seen similar critical and commercial acclaim with the Red Dead Redemption games. Owing to its period setting, the Wild West franchise obviously hasn’t seen the sort of universal success that something as accessible as Grand Theft Auto obviously enjoys, but Red Dead Redemption is still among the biggest and most successful gaming franchises out there, with both titles so far having been widely regarded as some of the best games ever made, on top of having enjoyed incredible sales figures.
Across Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, time and again, Rockstar has set standards for the genre and the medium as a whole in a way that no other game developer has been able to do, at least on a consistent basis. Outside of those two juggernauts, the company has still managed to win over fans with other games like Bully, Midnight Club, Max Payne 3, and others, each of which has only added to Rockstar Games’ well-earned reputation as one of the best and most prestigious game developers around. All of that is to say, of course, that if there is one company that can have any hopes of being able to deliver the “best thing that anyone has ever seen in entertainment,” the way Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick puts it, as ridiculously high as those ambitions might be, it would have to be Rockstar Games.
That would also be why a delay for Grand Theft Auto 6 ultimately seems not awfully difficult to take (although most definitely there will be some who will vehemently disagree with that sentiment). For many, a delay for GTA 6 was nothing short of an inevitability at any rate, so when Rockstar said that the game would be slipping past its Fall window and instead target a May 2026 release, the announcement didn’t come as a huge shock.
But even beyond its expected nature, the delay announcement was perhaps a relatively easy pill to swallow because of the implicit expectation that Rockstar is going to put the added development time to good use and deliver a product that is likely going to be worth the wait. Of course, there isn’t much that you can take for granted in the games industry, especially when the game in question that you have been waiting for is more than a decade in the making, but based on all that we have seen of Grand Theft Auto 6 so far, it does seem like it’s going to be exactly the spectacular return to Vice City that fans of Rockstar’s open world crime franchise have been dreaming of for so long. Or at least, so we hope.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
