Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is currently on the firing line. The publisher has delayed Grand Theft Auto 6 for a second time, and both fans and investors are getting impatient about it.
One of the reasons for their impatience is that Rockstar has been stingy in marketing and sharing new information about the game. But it sounds like Zelnick isn’t going to keep us waiting until launch after all.
In an interview with The Game Business, Zelnick was asked why they even announced a release date when they couldn’t predict when it would finish development.
He said this:
It’s not that far in advance if you look at when you need to deliver a game to get it out. Also, we have to start marketing activities in a significant amount of time ahead of release.
What we want to do is give consumers as much certainty as possible. And again, we feel quite good about this date.
Why Did We Expect Rockstar To Keep Delaying Grand Theft Auto 6’s Marketing?
Of course, a lot of fans were wishcasting that Rockstar would start marketing Grand Theft Auto 6 soon. We’ve already seen and ignored several fake announcements for the third trailer.
Unfortunately, there’s more reason to believe that Rockstar would be holding off on marketing the game. Most game companies have been acting on some research that revealed that games make the most money from the marketing they’ve had two weeks before launch.
This is because if game companies do market their games early, gamers may forget about the game by the time the launch comes. But this has also led to a situation where gamers just don’t get sufficiently hyped up for upcoming games anymore.
So How Soon Can We Expect Marketing To Start Coming In Rapidly?
We can see Zelnick arguing that they have already started marketing Grand Theft Auto 6. But Take-Two are not hiding in some ivory tower.
They definitely see the online sentiment even if they don’t let it show. This may explain why they have been spending a few months now hiring people just to work on marketing materials for the game.
This is the necessary solution to the issue of Rockstar needing more time to polish the game while they also need to market it.
So, we won’t be making some prediction on a specific date when Grand Theft Auto 6 marketing will go on overdrive. But we believe it will start after Rockstar gets their team in order, and they start getting to work on those trailers and promotional art.
