I’m sitting at my desk again, listening to Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick spout some financial buzzwords on a call with investors. GTA6. It has now become a quarterly tradition for me. Anyway, gamers, there’s no need to panic this time. The big takeaway from Take-Two’s new earnings report is that GTA 6’s release date remains unchanged at November 19th. Huzza! However, Zelnick has some more interesting information today. He was the first to comment on GTA 6’s marketing, addressed rumors about delays in the physical version of the game, and came under intense scrutiny for generative AI following the recent Google Genie mania. However, he believes gen-AI will play “no role at all” in the development of Rockstar’s future behemoth.
If there’s one game that doesn’t need marketing, it’s probably GTA 6. Two trailers, two postponement announcements, and a website full of screenshots and character profiles are already enough to get millions of gamers excited. I’m already having a hard time seeing a world where most, if not all, of the sales records GTA 5 holds aren’t broken. However, preparations for the launch will continue to be in place, and Zelnick confirmed that it will begin “this summer.” So we’re more confident than ever that the November release date will actually be achieved.
“Are we going to just sit back and relax in the lead-up to the release of GTA 6? I think the opposite is true,” he told an investor asking whether Take-Two and Rockstar should bring this open-world game to market, given the buzz around it.
“We’re very fortunate. Consumer expectations for GTA 6 are certainly very high,” Zelnick added. “And we have to be smart in how we market such an extraordinary property. But rest assured, we think you’ll be pretty amazed at the creativity that Rockstar’s marketing team brings to consumers in the coming months.”
Away from marketing, Zelnick busted some myths in an interview with Variety. Last week, it was claimed that there are plans to stagger the physical release of GTA 6 to prevent leaks. In recent years, there have been several high-profile cases where physical versions of games were stolen from retailers or illegally sold before their official release date. So the smug guy often ends up uploading grainy cell phone camera footage of himself playing the game before anyone else. Not cool. However, Zelnick suddenly denied the rumors, saying, “There are no such plans.”
Zelnick is once again discussing AI, this time with Google’s controversial Project Genie technology that allows users to create explorable worlds and characters with a few simple prompts. The recognition of Genie’s power caused the stock prices of nearly every major game publisher, including Take-Two, to plummet. While he has previously been cautiously optimistic about generative AI and quite adamant about its limited creative potential, he appeared much more enthusiastic during today’s earnings call.
“We are currently actively adopting generative AI, with hundreds of pilots and implementations happening across the company, including at the studio,” Zelnick said in response to questions from investors. “We see an opportunity to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and create opportunities to do what digital technology has always made possible: mundane tasks become easier and less relevant, and creators can focus on the more interesting task of creating great entertainment.”
However, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, he asserts that this does not mean that Gen-AI has invaded GTA 6.
“Do you think the tools themselves create great entertainment? No, there’s no evidence that they don’t, and I don’t think they ever will,” he asserts. “When it comes to GTA 6 in particular, there’s no generative AI involved at all in what Rockstar Games is building. Their worlds are handcrafted. That’s what sets them apart from other games. GTA 6 is built from the ground up, building by building, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. They’re not procedurally generated, and they shouldn’t be. That’s what makes for great entertainment.”
If this guarantee turns out to be untrue and players find evidence of generated AI being used in GTA 6, I can imagine there will be an uproar. I hope that doesn’t happen. However, these strong stances on physical version rumors and confident statements regarding marketing definitely helped dispel some of the remaining doubts I had about GTA 6 actually launching this year.
