// GAMESPOT — GAMING
GTA 6 Is Like The Olympics – “A Rare Cultural Moment” With Massive Ripple Effects
After years of development, multiple delays, and what can only be assumed to be one of the biggest production budgets ever, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19. The game is poised to "blot out the sun," some experts believe, and its release looms so large that other gaming companies are shifting dates for their own games to stay out of the blast radius.
Francis Lawrence, the director of the new Hunger Games movie Sunrise on the Reaping, which comes out a day after GTA 6, has said he hopes people can find the time to play the game and watch his movie. In short, GTA 6 is seen by some as a black hole that will suck up time, attention, and money from the broader gaming economy--and even workplaces, as people dive into the 80-hour game they've been waiting a decade to play.
To help make sense of, and contextualize, the enormity of GTA 6's looming launch, GameSpot caught up with Bart Spiegel of the global professional services and research company PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC. He told GameSpot that GTA 6 is "something much bigger than a traditional entertainment launch," and is more akin to an event like the Olympics.
He believes GTA 6 is a "rare cultural moment" that "commands extraordinary attention and creates economic activity well beyond the event itself."
Spiegel said he foresees potential shifts beyond gaming, in places like TV viewership, music consumption, social media engagement, and even travel. "In an increasingly fragmented entertainment landscape, it's rare for a single release to command this much attention across so many industries simultaneously. That's what makes this moment so significant," he said.
An economics professor recently claimed that about 1.5 million people plan to "call out sick" to play GTA 6, and this could come at a "cost" of $1 billion to the US economy. Spiegel said people should remember that GTA 6 isn't anything new or special as it relates to taking time off work. "People regularly plan time off around major cultural and entertainment events, and this is another example of consumers prioritizing an experience they're excited about," he said.
That being said, Spiegel remarked that PwC has observed estimates suggesting time-off requests near GTA 6's release could be 9% to 17% higher than normal. "But what's more interesting to me is what happens outside the workplace. If millions of people are spending additional hours gaming, they're potentially spending less time watching television, going out to restaurants, or engaging in other activities," he said.
"And unlike a sporting event that lasts a few hours or a few weeks, this experience could keep people engaged for months. So the broader economic implications may extend well beyond a single day of missed work," he added.
GTA 6 is expected to be an enormous success commercially--it's reportedly already sold 11 million units through pre-purchases, and that could rise to 25 million at launch. That would work out to $2 billion in revenue, which would cover the game's entire development budget and most of its marketing spend, Sensor Tower said. But many are also saying that GTA 6 represents the last of a dying breed, and that other publishers might learn all the wrong lessons from its success. Spiegel said GTA 6 is going to be a "huge net positive for the gaming industry as a whole," in part because its success will reiterate to the broader entertainment and media landscape that games are culturally significant. At the same time, Spiegel said he doesn't foresee a world in which other publishers try to replicate a blockbuster of this magnitude.
"Very few organizations have the capital, expertise, and intellectual property required to support investments on this scale. These are extraordinary events, not necessarily repeatable business models," Spiegel said.
If GTA 6 is the huge success it's projected to be, it could positively uplift the broader gaming ecosystem in a lot of ways, Spiegel continued.
"It could attract new a