The major Grand Theft Auto 6 launch will impact many in the industry, but niche developers are unlikely to face serious problems.
Arrowhead Game Studios’ chief Shams Jordani appeared on The Game Business podcast to talk about a major industry development — the delay of Grand Theft Auto 6. He argues that only the smallest, most niche studios are likely to avoid the negative fallout from Rockstar Games’ new release.
According to the Helldivers 2 creator, the GTA 6 launch will “eclipse the sun” for a time and be a nightmare for many in the industry.
Jordani previously worked at Paradox Interactive, known for its grand strategy titles. He explained that the publisher aimed to launch games in the fourth quarter (year-end) — a window when few competitors typically release similar projects:
Everyone else had very crowded release calendars [at the time], but who else makes grand strategy games? Launching in December was an excellent move for Paradox, and I believe it still is.
The developer thinks Paradox may not need to worry about GTA 6’s launch, but that won’t be true for everyone on the market — “it will be awful” for the rest to compete.
Currently, the Helldivers 2 team isn’t rearranging its schedule around Rockstar’s game, but that could change as the release draws nearer:
If the release is pushed back by six months, that means six more months of continuous work for us, and GTA won’t disrupt our schedule. We try to plan without paying too much attention to what happens around other launches, but GTA was clearly hard to ignore.
Source: iXBT.games