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Do you remember the 2100 games of September?
I'm going to start by addressing a game that Sony didn't even deign to mention in last night's PlayStation State of Play broadcast: Grand Theft Auto 6. Except, Sony did sort-of mention it, just in the margins of its showcase. From the very beginning, when it showed off Marvel's Wolverine in a whirlwind of viscera and adamantium and reiterated its 15th September launch, to the final release date of the showcase - 24th September for Control Resonant - you could just about hear a silent klaxon blaring over PlayStation HQ: Grand Theft Auto 6, Grand Theft Auto 6, Grand Theft Auto 6.
Any developer or publisher with an iota of business acumen is staying as far away from Rockstar's 19th November impact crater as possible. Rightly so. But because of Take-Two's reticence to commit to a hard GTA 6 date until really quite recently, we've not seen many other games state their release dates in turn. So, as Take-Two big boss Strauss Zelnick does the rounds to assure us all that date is set in stone, the calendar shuffles and even triple-A bets like Fable scurry out of the way.
What that means is showcases like State of Play - and, I'd wager, all of the other big shows this week - will do the same pantomime dance around release dates. September 2026 is already bewildering: The Blood of Dawnwalker on the 3rd, Marvel's Wolverine on the 15th, Silent Hill Townfall and Control Resonant on the 24th, Onimusha Way of the Sword on the 25th. There are more in October: Rayman Legends Retold and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve were announced tonight, and they join Star Wars Galactic Racer on the 6th, Planet Zoo 2 on the 13th, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on the 23rd, and Phantom Blade Zero (which caught a delay) on October 29th. And I'm only picking the big games here; there are plenty of promising double-A and indie titles peppered amongst the calendar chicanery.
To put it simply: Q3 is going to be a lot. September and October are wall-to-wall. And the week is far from done. We still have the Geoffs (the Summer Game Fest showcase), the Xbox showcase, and a plethora of smaller ones to roll by. We are going to get so many more release dates, and I promise you now that few - if any - will dare step near November's big, pulsing warning sign. But that just moves the problem, doesn't it? In avoiding GTA, all these games end up fighting amongst themselves; people only have so much budget to spend on games... who can commit to buying that many titles in one month?
November belongs to GTA 6 even if the game isn't out until the 19th. Or maybe Gothic 3 Classic on 24th November? You do you, lads. But it's also December that belongs to GTA and January; the calendar is bare. Based on what we know so far, normalcy only resumes in February, as games like Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis poke their heads tentatively out of release date hibernation.
But that gets me thinking: what if a game does go up against GTA in November? What if some plucky publisher, probably Devolver, dared stare Goliath in the face and go against it? I don't think 100 percent of the video game audience is going to play GTA 6 in the end, even if it's liable to gross $1 billion in three days (its predecessor did, after all). Could one game, one brave soul, stand up to the Rockstar hegemony and come out better for it? Perhaps a goal will be left wide open for such a chancer.
Though, it is notable that we didn't hear anything about GTA at all during Sony's showcase. I know Rockstar defiantly does its own thing, showing trailers on its terms whenever it feels like it, but PlayStation does have a marketing deal for GTA 6, so however that materialises will be interesting to see. Maybe it's just a 'captured on PS5 Pro' sticker on the bottom of whatever footage or screenshots we get next - who knows? Regardless, there's a part of me that's surprised we didn't see anything of the game at all last night. Or did we? After all, you just have to look at the release calendar to see GTA 6 everywhere.
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