Unpopular Opinion

The last Rockstar game I've been able to finish was Vice City. SA, GTA IV, GTA V and RDR2: as much as I want to like them, at some point they always loose their appeal.

GTA 6 isn't coming out for PC at the moment, but even if it had I would have skipped it. It might be a technological marvel, but in the end the gameplay is what matters and Rockstar's gameplay just isn't my thing. Especially for €100,-.

Well, I mean it's the "biggest" game in the world and the previous one was released - what? - 23 years ago?

The hype is definitely deserved but I agree you can also hype it to undeserved levels. I personally don't really have my finger on the pulse on where the ambient level of hype regarding it currently stands.

I've been saying it for years, but fanboys will fanboy.

They over invested and over hyped this game. I honestly don't think it can be successful. Keep in mind, for it to be successful, isn't based on what normal people think is successful. There's a lot that goes into it.

We see video games that sell well, but despite making a profit, the company says it failed. Because it didn't meet sales expectations. Think 2013's Tomb Raider.

Publicly, they've announced $1.5-2 billion, but it probably ballooned closer to $3-4 billion if we're being honest. Lets normalize the data so we don't have to do conversions, so we'll just use USD. GTA 6 is available on Xbox and Playstation only. No PC. Lets just set the price for the "low" $80 per. Wikipedia has Xbox at 35 million units sold, Playstation is at 93 million. Let's pretend those are all individual, unique sales and doesn't count upgrades (PS5 -> PS5 Pro), doesn't count collectors, etc. And everyone ONLY bought one or the other, no crossover. That gives you a maximum of 128 million possible sales (best-case scenario). At $80, that gives you anywhere between $10,240,000,000 to $12,800,000,000. WHICH... sounds like a lot. On a budget of let's say $3 billion that's the most they could earn. A roughly 3-4x ROI is best case scenario with just sales.

Except we know there's a lot of people who just aren't interested in the GTA as a brand. There are people who bought multiple consoles. There are people who just can't afford the high price of some of these games so they won't buy. So the number will go down. So there's absolutely going to be a shop and subscription because the ROI likely isn't great, and that says nothing if they don't win awards.

For contrast, lets look at last years GOTY Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A budget of $10 million, start to finish, was 6 years, and reportedly sold 8 million units. Lets say that's ~$400,000,000 (best case, which it won't be). So an ROI of ~40x. GTA 5 sold 225 million (with a budget of $265 million), and the #1 most sold game is Minecraft at 350 million. GTA 5 spanned 7 platforms which helped it see additional sales. From PS3/XBox 360 to PS4/XBone to PS5/XBox Series X (and also PC). GTA 6 started development in 2014 and comes out 12 years later.

You'll notice that means there's not even enough consoles sold, to even match GTA 5...

So if they're looking at (currently) a best case scenario of a $1.5 billion invested (go on the low side) with a max potential $12.8 billion gives you an absolute best case of 8.533333x ROI.

So to bump that up, they'll rely on people buying multiple copies (new consoles). They'll have to release on PC, which its financially stupid they're not. When GTA5 came out, the game was designed for the PS3 (a custom PowerPC arch) and XBox 360 (also PowerPC arch). Modern Playstation and Xbox are the same architecture and are more inlined GPU wise with PCs. So there's not really any technical reason anymore. But that in-game shop and subscription are going to have to pull a lot of weight.

And there's a BIG difference when you invest millions vs. when you invest billions. At $1.5 billion... that budget could basically pump out 150 Expedition 33s. If they take 6 years each... the investment for 1 game could have funded games from one developer for the next 900 years.

I don't see how this game can be financially viable long-term. Releasing the game and everything else will be damage control at best. A lot of people are going to get fired to protect the C-suite/investors but there's a real chance this ends Rockstar. Fanboys, gaming "journalists", etc, are assuming it'll be the biggest game of all time, but there are not enough consoles for that to happen.

I'm more annoyed that general media is giving them free marketing just because it was a name brand over a decade ago without bothering to contemplate the fact that it was over a decade ago.

For a videogame franchise, that's a massive amount of time for so many factors to change. It would be like if they gave that horrible ghostbusters reboot full media credit just because it has the name "ghostbusters", so surely it must be a massive release worthy of everyone's attention.

The irony in all of this is that GTA6 is going to fall victim to the "GTA clone" concept that so many other games fell into. It will have none of what made GTA a massive hit and instead have all the stuff GTA clones tried to "copy" in a poor attempt to be a massive hit.

Rockstar is just cashing in on a decade's worth of hype and anticipation knowing full well that they'll earn a crap ton of money just like every other half assed AAA release this era. They're protected from initial skepticism because they haven't released anything substantial ever since RDR2, so there's literally nothing to critique them for. They can even wave off the lazy GTA remastered collections as outsourced material that has nothing to do with them.

I just hope the userbase doesn't continue to ride the train after the release because it just makes developer expectations worse for everyone else. Crowbcat is still highly unpopular due to his RE4 remake videos, despite the fact that what he presented is nothing uncommon among other games in the industry that have gotten much more criticism for botching the source material.

Half Life 3 confirmed.

I don't think this take is as unpopular as you may believe.

In 2026, it is definitely healthy to be weary of any upcoming game. Overhyping is super common. Games regularly do not deliver on promises. Sometimes they can be turned around (e.g. No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077), but most often, they're just money grabs and a hope that preorder incomes at least bring it to break-even.

Rockstar's track record is decent in this regard, but with all the press about their internal issues, I'd argue it's just being realistic to believe the hype only when you see the game.

Overhyped and overpriced

Then there’s Rockstar as an employer, terrible customer service, greedy and clearly exploit their staff from the UK union claims

This could be the greatest game ever created and I won’t buy it because of the company and also pricing

I agree none has been as revolutionary as 3 was, but every major new version (4, 5) has upped the ante in reguards to the scale and depth of the "city simulation" that is unmatched by any other game. 6 in theory should continue that trend, and I'm excited to play around in that sandbox.

Interacting with NPCs and seeing how they react, messing with physics, racing cars insanely fast and crashing them spectacularly, escaping from 20 police. It really can't miss if it delivers that experience. I could honestly give a fuck about the story or the jokes or how good the missions are or whatever.

As long as I can kill people it'll be good to buy on a steep sale in five years.

The only reason why we know more now is because the source code got leaked and Rockstar needed to get ahead of it. If the leaks never happened, we would know far less.

Seeing as how I didn’t even know GTA 6 was announced, much less going to release, I’m gonna say it’s not really overhyped.