It is well-known, for instance, for its guerilla-style marketing campaigns. Rockstar has slowly cultivated a specific counter-establishment personality. It affords players a virtual environment in which they explore and experiment with the fantasy of being a destructive good-for-nothing.Īnd this wasn’t just based on gameplay. Similar to punk and grunge in music or the relentless reliance on gangsters and criminals in movies and TV productions, GTA offers players an alternative space where the bad guys are the heroes. That has become part of the industry’s marketing vernacular where game makers like Rockstar have positioned themselves as rebels kicking against the establishment by producing titles that aggravated and challenged existing ideas and beliefs.Ī game like Doom, for instance, with its deliberate ultra-violent sci-fi fantasy gameplay, is meant to agitate common notions of what entertainment should look like. Largely labeled a misfit, interactive entertainment has long been regarded with suspicion by parents, politicians, and rival forms of amusement. Take-Two’s studio, Rockstar Games, also managed to tap into the prevailing mindset among its core audience. The fact that it is one of the pioneers of the open-world action/adventure genre is only a partial explanation. ĭespite these issues, GTA had managed to cultivate a loyal following. “We simply underestimated the impact on our servers of 25 million players all going online at once.” - Excerpt taken from One Up. Online multiplayer games generally grow their user base over time and expand their server infrastructure gradually instead of instantly.) One of its developers told me at the time: (The comparison with other live-services games was unfair, of course. Gamers were understandably disappointed and it suggested to investors that Take-Two wasn’t quite ready for digital prime time. Unable to accommodate demand, GTA ’s server infrastructure crashed and remained offline for several weeks. Despite a successful launch, switching on its online mode, Grand Theft Auto V Online, proved disastrous when the bulk of its player base simultaneously tried to log in. These anxieties initially seemed validated when Take-Two initially struggled to facilitate online gameplay. Take-Two’s reliance on console gaming combined with having no meaningful presence on mobile made it appear vulnerable to digital changes. Mobile gaming was going to disrupt the console games industry which called into question the longevity of even existing franchises. After Apple approved in-game monetization in the form of free-to-play and micro-transactions in its ecosystem, a growing number of game makers, investors, and consumers started to exclusively focus on the new device category. Worse, mobile gaming had started to grow rapidly. The transition to digital distribution posed new challenges for popular titles. In the lead-up to the 2013 release of GTA5 e xpectations of Take-Two, and the console gaming market more generally, had softened. In just a few weeks it had sold more units than its predecessor had over five years. The biggest release so far was Grand Theft Auto V (2013) which exceeded $1 billion in sales within its first three days and 29 million copies within its first six weeks. The 2008 release of Grand Theft Auto IV did even better when it sold 11 million copies within just its first month and rang up $500 million in sales in its first week. Following, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) became the best-selling title of all time on the PlayStation with 12 million shipped units within four months. Launched only a year later, Grand Theft Auto Vice City sold 5 million units in that same time frame. Grand Theft Auto III (2001) shipped a million units in under a year. Every major release in the series has outperformed its predecessor. Take-Two has a history of delivering high-quality titles, for one. Garnering over 110 million views within a day on YouTube, the next installment’s trailer promises to be another blockbuster success. Bolstered by the firm’s increase of anticipated net bookings from $5.5 billion for 2024 to $8 billion in 2025, a long-awaited sequel was finally coming closer to release. Back in February 2022, a two-word acknowledgment from publisher Take-Two Interactive that the development for Grand Theft Auto IV ( GTA6 ) was “well underway” set off a firestorm of speculation among gamers and investors.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |