There is little doubt that Grand Theft Auto 6, when it finally comes out, will be an absolutely massive game. However, some have started worrying whether it will be too massive, especially since they might have other responsibilities in life that prevent them from fully engaging with the title. Parent company Take-Two Interactive’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, has dispelled this notion in an interview with The Game Business.
When asked how older audiences, like those who have families to handle, could get bogged down with these responsibilities and not be able to enjoy Grand Theft Auto 6, Zelnick noted that the company has many games, like the NBA 2K and WWE 2K franchises, that can “appeal to all audiences.” He continued: “Others are specifically tailored at audiences that are 17 and above, for example, GTA. We serve all audiences and we market our products appropriately to the audience in question.”
As for audiences that may have grown up playing Rockstar’s previous titles like Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5, Zelnick isn’t too worried there either.
“I think we’re gonna have a lot of 17-year-olds playing GTA 6,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any risk of being like, ‘All right, yeah, if I didn’t play five or four or three or two or one, I’m not showing up.’ I think we’ll be able to engage every appropriate individual in GTA 6.”
For fans that may have grown up as gamers, Zelnick has a message: “If you fell in love with video games at 17 and you’re 40, guess what? You still do? Play video games.”
As the open-world title gets closer to its November 19th release date for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games are also getting ready for a major marketing push. Zelnick had spoken about this last month, noting that the game’s development is on track to not see further delays, and that plans for “marketing beats” over the Summer will continue as well.
“Well because we actually, obviously, track progress daily of everything that we do,” he said when asked about how he could be so sure that GTA 6 wouldn’t see yet another delay. “And we obviously announced that we have marketing beats coming this Summer. And we don’t spend money on marketing until we’re pretty close to release.”
He went on to discuss how, despite Grand Theft Auto 6 being a massive upcoming release, the company still has to spend time and money to market it. While there is awareness of the game in the industry, he noted that there also has to be energy for it.
“I think there’s a difference between awareness and energy, and we need to create the energy,” Zelnick explained. “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.”
A recent report of Grand Theft Auto 6‘s IDs being added to the PlayStation Store backend have lent further credence to the title sticking to its planned release date later this year.
