GTA 6: Marketing spend forecast suggests exit in 2023/2024, analyst says
5Next September, the phenomenon of 130 million copies sold GTA 5 will celebrate its seventh anniversary. The question of when his successor will arrive burns the lips of fans of Rockstar Games productions, and theories are multiplying on this subject. According to a financial analyst, we can already anticipate the release period of GTA 6 based on the marketing spending forecasts of Take-Two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar Games, 2K Games and Private Division, for the next five years.
A theory presented by VentureBeat and financial analyst Jeff Cohen of the investment firm Stephens. The latter is based on the annual form 10-K sent by Take-Two to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States federal body regulating and supervising the financial markets. As you can see, the American firm forecasts a peak in marketing spending of $ 89.2 million for the fiscal year from April 2023 to March 2024, more than double compared to the other fiscal years of the period 2021 / 2025. This budget was initially planned for the 2022/2023 financial year, but was finally postponed by one year and increased.
Such a budget suggests the arrival of a major release between April 2023 and March 2024, and it is obviously GTA 6 that comes to mind from Jeff Cohen. Take-Two would then benefit from a well-installed next-gen console park. The analyst supports his theory by explaining that the previous peak in marketing spend for Take-Two had determined the release of Red Dead Redemption II for the 2018/2019 fiscal year. In any case, this confirms the information relayed by journalist Jason Schreier last month: he indicated that GTA 6 would only be at the beginning of its development, and would therefore not be released for several years.
The GamesIndustry site noted, however, that no similar peak was noted before the release of GTA V in September 2013. In addition, Take-Two currently has no less than 93 games in preparation for the next five years, including imagine some big hits that could lead to an increasing marketing budget. In particular, a new Bioshock is in development.
One thing is certain: GTA 6 will not be released in 2021, Take-Two having announced that this year will be "light in new releases" (hence a marketing budget of "only" $ 11.8 million). Knowing that GTA 5 continues to sell by the millions over the months (20 million copies sold in 2019 alone) and that GTA Online is still as popular, there is no rush for the American firm.