Take-Two CEO says you can trust that GTA 6 release date because they’ve spent, like, so much money on marketing in the run-up to it, and they’re ‘Not selling hamburgers’ here

After a couple of delays you might have heard about, Grand Theft Auto 6 is still scheduled for a November 19 release date on consoles, which will be music to the ears of anyone with a few million bucks in Take-Two stock (that’s most of you, I assume). Still, maybe you’re a bit yippy, and need extra reassurance—even after a T2 press blast a few days ago—that Rockstar really means it, this time.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick hears your cries. In a recent chat with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Zelnick pointed out that, look, the company must be confident in the November 19 date, because it’s spent all this goshdang money on marketing the game in the lead-up time.

“We have marketing beats coming this summer, and we don’t spend money on marketing until we’re pretty close to release,” said Zelnick. To be clear, he means more than just putting out a slick trailer in the tail-end of 2023. Think ads on buses, billboards, a never-ending feast of GTA 6 imagery jammed in your eyes and ears for months on end. It’ll be fun!

Asked if Take-Two really needs to bother marketing a game that’s already bigger than god, Zelnick demurs that “I think there’s a difference between awareness and energy, and we need to create the energy.

“The anticipation is huge, it’s bigger than ever before, but in our business, you do have to tell people what’s coming… our consumers want to know that this is going to be great and they want to see what the visuals look like.” I think we kind of already know what the visuals look like, but I’ll cut Zelnick some slack: he’s explaining things for a CNBC audience who probably aren’t too au fait with games.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

He does get a little philosophical with it, mind you. Zelnick says Take-Two isn’t just out there doing marketing in order to get you hype to drop an unknown amount of dollars on GTA 6, it wants “the product to be authentically owned by our consumers.”

Which, yeah, I think is just a highfalutin way of saying they want you hype to drop an unknown amount of dollars on GTA 6, sure. “The marketing has to be delicate. It has to feel like this is real. We’re not selling hamburgers. We’re selling this unique art form.” And they’re selling it on November 19. Don’t let anybody tell you different (unless it’s Strauss Zelnick).

About