“Grand Theft Auto VI” will break records despite gaming slowdown

The long-awaited release of the latest version Grand Theft Auto The game is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of 2025 and is expected to gross $3 billion in its first year, making it a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster video game market.

Grand Theft Auto VIThe game, which publisher Take-Two Interactive will release on PlayStation and Xbox consoles in the fall, is expected to draw over $1 billion in pre-orders before it even becomes available, according to analysts at DFC Intelligence, a video game research group .

total proceeds GTA VIDFC predicts it will reach $3.2 billion in the first 12 months of release, double its 2013 predecessor. Such success would far surpass the biggest films of 2024 Inside Out 2which grossed $1.7 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, and Deadpool and Wolverinewhich cost $1.3 billion.

“I never claim victory before it happens,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told the Financial Times. “That means I think (GTA‘s developer) Rockstar Games will once again deliver something absolutely phenomenal. . . The anticipation is definitely great.”

Gamers have waited more than a decade for the latest release in the cinematic action game series, in which a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime couple rampages through Vice City. The first GTA VI The trailer, released in December 2023, has been viewed more than 225 million times on YouTube.

“We expect it to be one of the biggest entertainment releases in history, not just in gaming but across all media,” said Yoshio Osaki, managing director of gaming-focused IDG Consulting. “The pent-up demand is greater than anything we have seen before.”

However, GTA VI will be an outlier in a gaming industry still struggling to recover from a protracted slump that has led to layoffs at the gaming units of Sony and Microsoft, as well as top publishers such as Take-Two, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft . According to tracking website Games Industry Layoffs, more than 33,000 people have lost their jobs since 2022, including nearly 15,000 in 2024 alone.

Zelnick acknowledged that he was “somewhat surprised by the decline in demand” from gamers since 2022 as consumers turned off their screens and returned to live, in-person events following the pandemic. “All of us in the industry have had to do some restructuring,” he said. “We are also a little ahead of ourselves with our growth expectations.”

Now the Take-Two boss assumes that growth will accelerate again.

“It’s far too early to think that this (console) generation is mature or has reached its peak,” Zelnick said. “Overall, we are seeing higher consumer demand. And the (gaming) industry, frankly led by us, has an amazing release plan for 2025 and beyond. . . Success that comes from one company tends to benefit the entire industry.”

Not everyone is so optimistic. Ampere Analysis, a consulting firm, predicts that consumer spending on gaming content and services will increase just 2.2 percent to $195 billion in 2025. This annual growth rate is slightly higher than Ampere’s estimate of 1.4 percent in 2024 and better than the 4.8 percent decline between the peak of the pandemic in 2021 and the easing of the lockdown in 2022.

Still, it pales in comparison to the industry’s huge expansion over the last decade: Spending on gaming content doubled from $95 billion in 2015 to $191 billion in 2021, according to Ampere.

“We’ve grown so much in the last 25 years that it feels like none of us know how to work in an industry that’s not growing,” said Nicholas Lovell, a game designer and consultant. “We are now a mature company. . . There is no funding and the market is oversaturated (with new games).”

Even an oversized hit like e.g GTA or the expected debut of Nintendo’s new console will not be enough to bring the gaming industry’s growth rate back to its previous pace, according to Matthew Ball, a technology investor and author of The Metaverse.

“The biggest structural problem in the industry is the reduction in time played per player and the number of players,” said Ball. This is particularly true in the US, where video apps like TikTok discourage smartphone users from gaming, he said. At the same time, he added: “The global market for mobile gamers is no longer growing.”

The slowdown in the smartphone market, alongside the rise of social games such as B. one of several major growth drivers in the last decade Roblox And Among usand new business models like Fortniteis the “Battle Pass” subscription that unlocks more virtual goods as the player progresses.

“Three years (after the pandemic), the biggest games are as big as they were, there are no bigger games and most others have shrunk,” Ball said. “Almost all of the major studios are struggling with the fact that they believed that there would be many millions more players and that audiences would try new games.”

While the most popular games and franchises – such as FortniteFootball simulator EA Sports FC and Microsoft Call of duty – continue to be extremely lucrative for their founders, they are no longer growing as quickly as they did a few years ago.

At the same time, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for new releases to lure players away from their tried-and-tested favorites, especially since the biggest games now regularly add new content throughout the year.

“Publishers believe that with the increasing popularity of these games, it is better to rely more on a proven (intellectual property) and ensure a longer lifespan with live services and content updates,” Osaki said.

One of those enduring hits is GTA Vwhich has sold more than 205 million copies to date, with an online multiplayer version that continues to attract millions of players every month. This gives Take-Two a strong basis for releasing the new game.

The start of GTA Online was “pretty bumpy,” Zelnick recalled, initially crashing due to high player demand. “One of the things Rockstar has done over the last eight years is vastly improving the technical foundations of everything we do,” he said. “We no longer have such challenges today.”

In contrast to annual franchises such as Call of duty or EA Sports FCthe long gap between GTAThe releases make them an extraordinary event for gamers. “Nobody accomplished anything GTA works just as well GTA does,” Lovell said.

However, this comes at a huge cost: estimated development costs range from several hundred million to $2 billion, including post-release content updates. “It could be the last hurray of this way of doing business,” Lovell said. “Very few people will be able to make a bet like this on a property like this.