Netflix has announced that the Grand Theft Auto 6 Extended Look showcase, which was a timed exclusive on the streaming platform before making its way to YouTube, was its most-watched video for the week. The showcase was able to garner 31.1 million views, topping the English film charts for Netflix in the process in 87 of the 93 countries tracked.
For comparison, Netflix has also provided details on the rest of its top-10 videos for the week; second place was taken up by the movie The Whisper Man, garnering 23.2 million views. When it comes to the non-English film list, Mexican crime thriller Facing El Chapo took the number one spot with 20.7 million views.
The Grand Theft Auto 6 Extended Look showcase featured 27 minutes of in-engine gameplay and cutscenes, revealing plenty of details about the title ahead of its November 19th launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Interestingly, CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, had previously alluded to the fact that the showcase would only serve as “one of the hors d’oevres” for the game’s marketing.
“There’s appetizers, main course and dessert to follow,” Zelnick said before going on to call Netflix “a great marketing partner for us, and distribution partner.” He also revealed that the partnership for the Extended Look came together thanks to “a groundbreaking partnership that Rockstar arranged.”
In the same interview, Zelnick also spoke about how pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 have been “unprecedented and astonishing.” Rather than celebrating this fact, however, the CEO noted that the company is still waiting for the full release of the game since the pre-orders are “so unprecedented that we just don’t know how it’ll translate into sales.”
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before, at Take-Two or in the industry. One of the reasons we’re not changing our guidance is, to be clear, we haven’t sold one unit yet. You can cancel a pre-order. We’re kind of allergic to victory laps round here, and we certainly don’t do the victory lap before the event.”
Among the details about Grand Theft Auto 6 revealed during the showcase included the fact that the upcoming title will have a larger and more complex world than Rockstar’s previous game – Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar North’s co-studio head Rob Nelson also spoke about how a focus on realism means that driving, navigation, and even stealing vehicles is going to be more challenging.
“The streets in this game are narrower and more realistic in terms of scale. Which, in addition to all the density of the traffic on the roads, makes driving slightly more challenging and requires a bit of skill.” When it comes to car-jacking, Nelson said that the studio wanted to add more gameplay to the system rather than having the player simply hit a button to steal a car.
“We have put some layers of stratification into the vehicles. Previously, you could just press triangle to automatically hotwire and steal any vehicle that you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of potential gameplay on the table in terms of progression and decision-making for players. So now, you start off the game, and there are certain parked cars that are not accessible to you until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them, but you can always carjack any driver you see.”
For more on GTA 6, here are 25 hidden details from the Extended Look showcase that you may have missed.
