Zelnick: GTA VI will be pushed with an aggressive marketing campaign

Everyone knowing Grand Theft Auto is not enough. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a fireside chat at GamesBeat Insider that GTA VI needs to be marketed aggressively despite the franchise’s global fame, pointing to Barbie: a recognizable brand that still had a huge campaign behind it.

“You always have to go out and create enthusiasm,” he explained. In his view, they are two different things: “Awareness is one thing; enthusiasm is another. And we have to show people what they’re going to get.” He compared the challenge with film and TV, where the audience just sits back, with nothing to install and no controls to learn.

On content creators, Zelnick was blunt: they amplify word of mouth, but you cannot pay anyone to say something bad is good, because they would lose their own audience. A creator can be asked to play a game exclusively for a couple of days and be rewarded for that promotion, but the system cannot be gamed: “We cannot convince people something that’s bad is good.”