Confidence

Grand Theft Auto 5 is the second best-selling game of all time. Only Minecraft beats it. No other game even comes close. So it’s not surprising that after more than a decade, people expect big things from Grand Theft Auto 6. But the growing gravity well around the game’s impending release transcends fan hype and bullish proclamations from LinkedIn-pilled industry watchers. The vibes keep intensifying to the point of bordering on desperation. GTA 6 will be huge. GTA 6 must be huge.

Out of this uniquely volatile cocktail comes statements like the following. “I mean, there are AAA games and then there’s AAAA games and I’d argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game, it’s just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands,” Devolver Digital co-founder Nigel Lowrie told IGN this week.

It was in the context of a conversation about how smaller companies navigate the minefield of modern release dates, where at any moment all of the oxygen could be sucked out of the room by bigger hits, suffocating a game’s chances of finding an audience before players even give it a try. Hardly anyone was staking out release dates for the fall until Rockstar announced that GTA 6 had been delayed to May 2026. Even now, Silksong‘s surprise release date announcement just last month drove scores of other indie games to get out of the way of its September 4 launch.

Lowrie suggested GTA 6 has the power to “blot out the sun” when it comes to attention in the gaming world. “AAAAA” isn’t just a reflection of the long-awaited open-world game’s budget, suspected to be over $1 billion, or its marketing, which by some estimates is likely to cost another half-billion. Nor is it just a testament to the consumer spending crater that will be left in the wake of its sales, projected by one analyst to be $10 billion over the life of the game, not including any new GTA Online component.

GTA 6 being the first “AAAAA game” is also a prediction about the way it will funnel humanity’s collective boredom and curiosity into a cultural singularity that trumps everything from 2023’s Barbenheimer to this year’s viral “Coldplay couple.” That’s the growing consensus at least, which grows more conventional with each passing month. And like the bond ratings that gaming’s triple-A shorthand for blockbusters is borrowed from, “AAAAA” is as much a prediction about possible futures as a measurement of current facts.

Publishers want their games to sell lots of copies and fans want those games to be great or even, in the rarest cases, life changing. But with GTA 6 there’s as much a hope that it will be transformative as there is a sense of potential panic if it’s not. After years of being in the driver’s seat, console gaming has stalled out. While industry boosters tout the size of the overall gaming market compared to Hollywood and sports, growth over the last five years was effectively flat. Social hubs like Roblox surging in popularity is great for their investors, but another sign that traditional gaming is on the back foot.

Even outside of the numbers, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S console cycle has felt surprisingly unexceptional. There have been plenty of great games, sure, but nothing hardware-defining the way some of the biggest hits from the second half of the PS4 and Xbox One era felt. Fans searching for that unmistakable feeling of “next-gen” magic from years past are left to comb over Digital Foundry forensics like lapsed believers threatened by a crisis of faith.

Consoles increasingly struggle to distinguish themselves in much the same way smartphones keep adding more camera lenses to convince you you’re upgrading more than just RAM. The latest leaks suggest the new hardware from from Sony and Microsoft is just a couple of years away and will be even less of a generational leap. And why should they bother if half of their current install base won’t be updating anytime soon? I can’t wait for system architect Mark Cerny to show me how much better Joel and Ellie’s hair looks in The Last of Us Part 1 when it gets ported to PS6.

What an “AAAAA” rating for GTA 6 really means is that it’s the only game people believe can single-handedly shift those trends. Proof of what the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the only consoles it’ll be available for at launch, are truly capable of, from cutscene-level shooting animations to mouth-watering condensation on beer bottles. A best-seller that doesn’t just move copies of the game but reignites sales in a flagging console race to once again grow the total install base. A sign, perhaps, that the most polished and sophisticated craftsmanship money can buy can once again capture the imagination as much as a crudely reskinned Cookie Clicker in Roblox.

Even if GTA 6 can shower shareholders with a historic new windfall, if it can’t do those other, grander things it’ll be the surest evidence yet that the “AAA” rating, and the aura farming it does in the video game industry hype cycle, was a junk bond status all along.

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