Zelnick: Rockstar Punta al Massimo, but the Expectations are A Monster

This week Strauss Zelnick, managing director of Take-Two Interactive, told CNBC the thing that every fan of Grand Theft Auto VI wishes ardently to hear, that is, in short, what he would say. His Rockstar Games division, Zelnick explains, understands that enthusiasm is huge, but the task is now to overcome it. “I think we will,” he added. Promise to meet expectations is the most difficult promise to keep in the video game industry, and Zelnick just talked about overcoming it, referring to the game where expectations are already the highest in gaming history. The waiting for GTA 6 is the opposite of low. It is a decade of expectations and delays, two trailers that have accumulated hundreds of millions of views each and a fanbase that silently built the perfect game in their minds. When the bar is already touching the ceiling, “superarla” stops being a mere marketing slogan and becomes a real challenge. A simply excellent game, the type for which most studies would also exchange an arto, could however disappoint if the fantastic was bigger than what is really possible to achieve. To say justice, Zelnick was ultimately meant to say. Take-Two has tied all its financial forecast for the year to this game and its commercial success, so talk confidently to exceed expectations is almost the only option available. A CEO who decreases the most important launch three months later would be real news. Rockstar is right here. Take-Two's trust is nothing. The last two games of the studio are Grand Theft Auto V, which stands at 97 on Metacritic and has sold over 230 million copies on three generations of consoles, and Red Dead Redemption 2, also at 97, with over 87 million copies. These are the standards Rockstar is self-imposing and has defined them all independently. If any developer deserves the benefit of doubt to overcome an impossible number, it is this. However, the part that none of these interviews openly mentions is that “expectation” is not a single thing. Fans want a world that reinvents the genre of open worlds. Investors want money from Grand Theft Auto Online, those that continue to flow for a decade, and analysts, experts and the rest of the video industry want a $80 game that turns $80 into the new standard. Being able to meet the target of investors, with aggressive monetization and everything, is just what would ruin the fan version. Zelnick can promise to exceed expectations. But he cannot promise to overcome them all at the same time, and the current price dispute suggests that he is aware of it. He defended the same sit-down with CNBC 80 and 100 dollars, relying on the bottleneck of GTA V for 13 years to justify them. At this point, while Zelnick continues not to mention a number for the preorders of GTA 6, the financial and commercial side is almost guaranteed and we have already made estimates on how quickly the game reaches the draw. The creative side, satire, memes... Quello che noto e’ che Zelnick ha fatto un discorso piuttosto calcolato. Parlare di “senza precedenti” per i preordini è una tattica standard quando si cerca di placare gli investitori, ma la frase sull'"antipasto, portata principale e dessert" mi convince poco. Mi fa pensare a quanto Take-Two stia cercando attivamente di gestire le aspettative, quasi come se già sapessero che il gioco dovrà sforzare molto di più per soddisfare quella montagna di aspettative accumulate. Il fatto che definisca il debutto su Netflix come “un assaggio” è un altro campanello d’allarme: suggerisce una volontà di minimizzare l'impatto dell'esperienza completa, preparando il terreno a eventuali critiche se il gioco non raggiunge i livelli mediati da anni di hype. Non mi stupirei se si concentrassero molto sull'aspetto "Online" per quanto riguarda questo assaggio, puntando sulla redditività che ha dimostrato di generare con GTA V e Red Dead Redemption 2. Il rischio è quello di creare un’aspettativa irrealistica e poi deludere tutti, ma mi sembra che Zelnick stia già anticipando questo scenario, cercando di contenere l'entusiasmo prima ancora che il gioco esca. La mia impressione e’ che si stanno preparando a una battaglia mediatica senza precedenti.

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