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Hollow Knight Silksong has just come out and is an absolute phenomenon already. On Steam alone, it has debuted at over 500,000 concurrent players, and it has caused online game stores to crash at launch. Many have compared its popularity to the upcoming release of GTA 6, which is predicted by analysts to be the biggest entertainment launch in history. While the comparisons are timely because of the success of Hollow Knight Silksong and how it is currently breaking the internet, industry veterans have warned that GTA 6 is on another level above as it’s “potentially the AAAAA game” and is a “black cloud that looms over everything”.
GTA 6 is “potentially the AAAAA game” and on another level to Hollow Knight Silksong
One of the biggest debacles about the upcoming release of GTA 6 has been whether other publishers and developers should delay their game. There have been reports of publishers worried about releasing near the launch of Grand Theft Auto, and we have seen games delayed because of fierce competition launching in the same month, such as a PS5 exclusive dinosaur horror game delaying from October until December to avoid Call of Duty.
Hollow Knight Silksong’s release also resulted in delays such as Baby Steps from Devolver Digital. Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of Devolver Digital, told IGN that while Baby Steps might’ve been fine launching on September 8th, four days after Hollow Knight Silksong, he wasn’t “willing to risk this team’s livelihood and the future of the game they’ve worked on for five years”.
With GTA 6 and whether it would be wise for other publishers to delay and avoid competition, Lowrie argued the situation is even bigger with Grand Theft Auto than with Hollow Knight because it’s an indie phenomenon vs. “potentially the AAAAA game”. AAA games are the standard for big budget releases from major publishers or was until Ubisoft made the horrendous choice to dub Skull and Bones the first AAAA game.
Adding onto GTA 6, Lowrie said, “It’s just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands”.
In addition to Lowrie, Adam Lieb, CEO of marketing platform Gamesight, described GTA 6 as a “little bit of a black cloud that looms kind of over everything”. This is because GTA is so broad that it competes with everything including first-person shooters, and it can even compete with genres you wouldn’t expect from Grand Theft Auto such as horror because of RP servers. There are also claims that GTA 6 aims to become the “next UGC platform” like Fortnite and Roblox.
Both Lowrie and Lieb claim that publishers avoided setting a release date in Fall 2025 until Grand Theft Auto was officially delayed to May 26th, 2026. There’s no telling what will happen to games that still haven’t announced a release date if GTA was to be delayed again, but, fortunately, the Take-Two CEO has said he is very confident about the May release.
GTA 6 is going to be the biggest game of all time and demand all the spotlight when it launches. Not only is it a Rockstar game with a budget surpassing $1 billion, but it’s the next installment in one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, and it’s the newest game in the series for over 10-years. The game has already broken records with social media and YouTube views for trailers alone, and it is likely to break several more records at launch, even though it will not be releasing on PC from day one.
Other ramifications for the gaming industry include the price of GTA 6 as there are claims that publishers are hoping Grand Theft Auto will raise the Standard price of video games. Rockstar are still yet to announce the price, but Take-Two Interactive’s CEO has said it will be “fair” and that the publisher’s goal is to “deliver more value” than the price.
About the Author
Grand Theft Auto 6
- Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series X
- Genre(s): Action, Action Adventure
