Grand Theft Auto VI<\/a>, coming Nov. 19, will land amid a slew of expensive and high-profile movies and returning TV shows dropping within several days of each other. Most of them offer their own escapist fantasy worlds that will compete in the attention economy with a title that\u2019s expected to be the biggest video game launch in history.<\/p>\n\n\tSeason three of Amazon-MGM\u2019s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is rolling out episodes over three weeks beginning Nov. 11 and Johnny Depp\u2019s comeback vehicle Ebenezer lands Nov. 13. Lionsgate\u2019s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens the day after GTA 6 launches on Nov. 20 along with the fourth season of the studio\u2019s Paramount+ hit Yellowjackets. The same day, Disney rolls out the third season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Five days down the road comes Amazon MGM\u2019s limited series Blade Runner 2099.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a watershed moment for not only the gaming industry but also all the folks in the media and entertainment industry who are going to have to deal with the fact that eyeballs are going to be leaving their environments to go play GTA 6,\u201d said Bart Spiegel, global media, entertainment, gaming and sports leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s indeed tough to overstate the earthquake GTA6 is expected to create in terms of entertainment spending, distraction hours and pop culture noise. The Rockstar Games project has a first-year sales forecast of 45 million copies and $3.2 billion in sales \u2014 a figure which would top all-time box office champ Avengers: Endgame. A whopping 29 percent of U.S. gamers expect to purchase the title and one economist suggested, rather wildly, that the game would cost the U.S. economy $1 billion in lost productivity due to PTO requests. Other video game publishers have run for the hills and surrendered November to Rockstar\u2019s sun-drenched, pastel-colored 800-pound gorilla.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think GTA 6 will be the biggest entertainment launch in history,\u201d predicts Geoff Keighley, gaming industry producer and entrepreneur behind The Game Awards. \u201cNot just as a game in terms of dollars it will make \u2014 this will easily trump Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three \u2014 but how much it will impact moviegoing, streaming, and the way people spend their time. Hollywood should look at the hours as closely as the dollars because GTA 6 is going to be some people\u2019s entertainment plan for the rest of the year, basically. The entertainment industry has never really seen something like this before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile the game\u2019s core mission will likely take around 80 hours to complete \u2014 which alone is a massive amount of hours for one title \u2014 the title is also an open world environment where players tend to return again and again, and insiders assume the game will allow some kind of online multiplayer mode as well. \u201cSo this is not just about opening weekend,\u201d Keighley says.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut for Hollywood, which is accustomed to largely owning the entertainment attention economy, particularly around the holidays, the impact of GTA 6 seems almost certainly to be felt \u2014 if difficult to measure.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpiegel noted streaming is likely to take the biggest hit because a console game directly competes for viewing hours on living room TVs. Last year\u2019s fourth quarter streaming numbers were rather strong, he noted, but he suspects GTA 6 could put a real dent in the year-over-year comps. The live urgency of sports viewing, however, will be safer from erosion than entertainment programming. \u201cBut trust me, if that game gets boring, GTA 6 is going on pretty soon,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n
\n\tBehind the scenes, streamers are increasingly aware GTA 6 is coming and that Jason and Lucia might rob some of their viewers. \u201cEverybody is rumbling about how big this game is going to be,\u201d says a representative working with one potentially impacted streaming title.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn the film side, a major exhibitor executive said it\u2019s \u201ctough to know\u201d the effect on films like Ebenezer and Sunrise on the Reaping. \u201cIt\u2019s hardly come up in internal discussions, but anyone in the industry who\u2019s ever been a gamer \u2014 or who lives with someone who is \u2014 knows it\u2019ll have some impact,\u201d he said. \u201cHunger Games presales are strong, which might point to it being solid counter programming. Ebenezer presales are dire, but I doubt GTA6 is the main reason. We\u2019ll have to see how walkup sales go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFuture box office heavy hitters like Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three, which open \u201cDunesday\u201d Dec. 18. Such titles would seem to fall outside the game\u2019s blast radius, but perhaps not. Spiegel has noted the game\u2019s \u201cpull could last through December.\u201d While hardcore gamers will rush out and play GTA 6 the first few weeks, others will hold off until they have more free time during the December holidays, while some kids (with rather permissive parents) won\u2019t even be unwrapping the presumably Mature-rated game until Christmas.<\/p>\n
\n\tMusic will be disrupted, too, with the game\u2019s 34-song soundtrack already at 26 million monthly listens on Spotify and a 30-track original score by Justice coming Dec. 11.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne as-yet-unappreciated aspect of the game\u2019s gravitational pull will be on social media, where you\u2019re already starting to see anticipatory videos (such as a boyfriend getting his girlfriend a kitten so she won\u2019t bother him while playing the game, or another boyfriend who seemingly wrote up a contract pledging a list of compromises if his girlfriend doesn\u2019t, yes, bother him while playing the game). But social media is also massive part of entertainment marketing \u2014 not just direct advertising but fan-generated content that helps programs generate buzz and become part of the cultural conversation. But what happens if GTA 6 becomes all anybody is talking about?<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to take over live streaming and clips and content creators,\u201d Keighley says. \u201cBarbenheimer worked because you could go see Barbie and Oppenheimer, and you only needed five or six hours. People will still go see other things, but I think the entertainment value has to be extremely high.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThis story appeared in the Nov. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are gamers who have waited 13 years to return to Vice City really going to spend their time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":960842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,78187,360484,105],"class_list":["post-960841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business-features","tag-grand-theft-auto-vi","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/960842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}