There’s a certain buzz in the air these days. Amid all the depressing rumors and reports of layoffs at Xbox and Bungie, as developers and publishers scramble to optimize their titles before the big release wave in the coming months, it’s none other than Grand Theft Auto 6. Last we left Rockstar Games, it revealed some pretty snazzy cover art and a date, June 25th, when pre-orders will go live.
Since then, we’ve seen a well-known French retailer’s Portuguese chain post five listings, seemingly indicating different editions from 90 to 200 Euros (which caused many to assume that the Standard Edition would cost $80). No sooner had that happened than Dealabs’ billbil-kun, who’s been on the money for various leaks throughout the years, claimed that these weren’t representative of the game’s final price.
Granted, it didn’t take long for the truth to come out. The Standard Edition will retail for $80 while the Ultimate Edition costs $100. But this is Grand Theft Auto 6 we’re talking about – where the hours feel like days and the days feel like months, desperate for any new details. Even if it’s clear when we can expect more, that doesn’t make the wait any less agonizing. And who should pour more fuel on that fire than, of all entities, YouTube.
If you happened to return to Grand Theft Auto 6’s Trailer 2 due to the announcement of pre-orders, then you might have noticed an influx of new comments. Fans excited about the same, making plans to call in sick, predicting that it would sell at least 1000 copies on launch – the usual. All perfectly reasonable, because why wouldn’t you want to share your excitement, or keen financial prowess on how this latest title in a long-running franchise of multi-million blockbusters would perform at the very minimum?
However, in the midst of all this, the official YouTube channel, which feels like a paradox, commented: “Consider us busy June 25th.”
Now, on the surface, you could assume it’s just a playful comment about how it’s potentially looking forward to pre-ordering the game alongside millions of others (ignore the logistics on how). A bit of sharing in the community hype, and since this is one of the most popular trailers on the platform, it makes sense. But “consider us busy” is where things take a turn. It’s one thing for a fan to say this, but the biggest online video platform?
Thus, as someone looking forward to Grand Theft Auto 6, there’s only one reasonable conclusion to draw: Trailer 3 on June 25th.
A big leap in logic? Probably, but again, I wouldn’t consider pre-ordering a game something that should keep anyone, much less YouTube, “busy.”” Featuring and managing significant traffic for another trailer that brings in hundreds of millions of views in just a few hours, which could spawn who knows how many shorts, reactions, and whatnot? Now that sounds like busy work. And besides, there’s taking the remark in the most literal sense – that you should consider YouTube as a platform to be busy later this week. While that’s possible based on all the videos fans will doubtless share about pricing and various editions, it’s even more plausible if there’s a new trailer to go along with the same.
Alright, I can imagine your reaction, and it’s telling me that’s not enough evidence. Leaving aside the fact that we’re officially in what Take-Two Interactive considers the “Summer” window of when marketing is about to start, at least in the Astronomical sense, there’s also some history to draw on. Remember Red Dead Redemption 2? One of the greatest games ever made?
Its third trailer debuted on May 2nd, 2018 – a little over five months from its October 26th launch the same year. Fast forward to now, and June 25th is a little under five months before Grand Theft Auto 6’s launch on November 19th. You could call it a coincidence, but at this stage of development, everything that Rockstar does should be taken as completely intentional. Perhaps it judges that five months is enough for a marketing cycle, and quite frankly, it wouldn’t be wrong – hype notwithstanding, this is the first new title from the developer in more than eight years.
Of course, you probably shouldn’t expect anything too long if it does happen, simply because it will have an extended gameplay showcase and hands-on previews lined up in the coming months. Assuming it follows the same pattern as Red Dead Redemption 2, you can likely expect the showcase by late August or early September. Not because it needs to really show anything to guarantee those tens of millions of pre-orders, but because things will only continue to ramp up from there.
Then again, it’s always possible that this isn’t the plan. That Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 3 doesn’t actually exist; that YouTube is just doing what it does; and that the marketing plan is completely different from what Rockstar did eight years ago (which only resulted in the third-best-selling game of all time, but I digress). But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and something tells me that the development team is eager to take the wraps off its open-world behemoth and outline everything about it.
And it may not be as immediately extensive as we’d all like at this stage, but Rockstar knows the assignment: Stoking the flames of hype. Rewarding fans who have waited this long for something, anything, new. Slick as those new clips on its official website may be, they’re not even enough as an appetizer, and you’d have to assume the team knows this. That’s the purpose behind a new trailer – to really build on everything that’s already there. Well, besides presenting something suitably attractive enough that the few people who don’t know about Grand Theft Auto 6 would be willing to pre-order, coincidentally on the same day.
From there, the hype can really work its own magic, as fans dissect every single detail, though you’d have to assume that Rockstar would provide a little bit more than just new gameplay. A tease of the next GTA Online, perhaps? The announcement of advanced access for those nice enough to pre-order the Ultimate Edition? I wouldn’t go so far as the developer telling us when the showcase will happen, though. It would be nice, but that hasn’t been the developer’s MO.
Until it says that Grand Theft Auto 6 has gone gold, and the game is on my console, ready to play, I’d really hesitate to say that it’s launching on November 19th, guaranteed. Such is the nature of game development, and I’ve seen plenty of instances where games get delayed weeks, even days, before their official release. Even if that ends up happening here, all the buzz and the start of Rockstar’s marketing campaign at least proves one thing – that GTA 6 is very much real and tangible. And even if the chaotic nature of game development decides to play spoiler for whatever reason, it’s soon to be playable in the very near future. That alone is a good enough feeling – now it’s on the development team to deliver and live up to the monstrous hype.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
