Analyst: fear of launching near GTA VI is "completely overblown"
Circana's Mat Piscatella tells developers to calm down about GTA VI's launch window. Plenty of players, he says, will want to play something else.
Developers are dodging GTA VI's launch window, and one analyst says they're dodging it for nothing.
Circana games lead Mat Piscatella told GamesBeat that developers' fear of releasing in the same window as GTA VI is "completely overblown". GamesRadar notes that various studios have indeed avoided November, as he predicted last year.
His logic is simple. GTA VI will be a massive game and a huge cultural event, and he says nothing this big has been seen in 13 years. But not all of the 49 million PS5 and Xbox Series owners in the US will be interested. A lot of them will want to play other things. He also points to the Switch market and PC as audiences that may look elsewhere.
His advice to cozy games, life sims and first-person shooters: don't worry.
Easy to say from an analyst's chair. The studio that picks the date is the one that eats the risk, and I get why nobody wants to be the test case.
