The most anticipated title of the year, Rockstar Games’ GTA 6, has yet to announce an official release date, along with a second full length trailer which is clearly on purpose as the company aims to gradually build up anticipation and excitement for the release. And in a recent interview with Bloomberg, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about the release date of GTA 6 being kept a secret so far, to which he answered:
“The anticipation for that title may be the greatest anticipation I’ve ever seen for an entertainment property,” Zelnick stated. “And I’ve been around the block a few times and I’ve been in every entertainment business there is.
“We want to maintain the anticipation and the excitement. And we do have competitors who will describe their release schedule for years in advance. And we found that the better thing to do is to provide marketing materials relatively close to the release window in order to create that excitement on the one hand and balance the excitement with unmet anticipation. We don’t always get it exactly right, but that’s what we are trying to do.”
He also emphasized the importance of the enormous time that’s simply essential for the development of a game with the magnitude of GTA 6:
“Rockstar Games seeks perfection in what they do. Perfection is a pretty high bar. It takes a long time”.
While he didn’t open up on anything specific, Zelnick’s words do suggest that everything is part of their intention to build up massive anticipation for the game, and is definitely being done on purpose. Also, the launch of a title like GTA 6 would have to be not just a videogame launch as we’ve come to expect but a gigantic entertainment event that sends shockwaves throughout the industry. So it’s understandable for them to take their sweet time to build the kind of response they think the game needs.
There’s currently a lot of unknown surrounding the launch of GTA 6, from the release date of it’s second full-length trailer to the possibility of a PC version and all of which only add to the game’s overall mystique which in turn furthers it’s anticipation.
It’s also important to remember that the required promotional materials for the release of a game such as GTA 6’s caliber is still suspiciously low as of yet. Of course that may very well change as we get further into 2025 but with the release of just a single trailer so far, which has been well over a year since it came out, the possibility of GTA 6’s release slipping well into 2026 is real and tangible.
