Ubisoft have told investors that GTA 6 will help sell more of their games rather than be a negative effect. Last night, the company shared financial reports and held a conference call going over the business’ past quarter with investors.
Due to its sheer anticipation, we’ve seen GTA VI get mentioned in some investor calls over the past year and last night’s was the most recent one to add to the list.
During the Q&A portion of the conference call, an investor asked the top executives at Ubisoft how shareholders should feel about Ubisoft’s pipeline for 2025. Particularly when it comes to competitiveness with GTA VI and is there any risk of “crowding out”. This is a fair question given a lot of Ubisoft’s titles are open-world games.
GTA good and bad for games.
Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot responded to the investor saying that whilst “counter-intuitive”, “what we see generally when GTA is coming more people come to play.” This means GTA brings in so many people to gaming that they end up checking out other games as well.
GTA really does help the industry in that way. Guillemot notes that games that are on the market during a GTA release “are actually doing really well as well”.
He goes onto back this up by stating when GTA V came out, Ubisoft saw “very good sales” and even when the newer gen re-release came out. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag released just one month after GTA V and is one of the best selling games in that franchise.
You can find Guillemot’s full quote below transcribed from Ubisoft’s Q1 FY2025 Sales call:
What we see generally when GTA is coming more people come to play. So, generally it is positive on the overall market and other games that are available during that time are actually doing really well as well.
So it is something we saw a few times already because we had very good sales when GTA V came and also when they did a remaster on the new consoles so it is something that’s counter-intuitive but is working for us in general.
– Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot
Meanwhile an Xbox exec said that many games will have GTA VI in mind when releasing next year and could move dates to avoid it. “I think many across the industry are of course going to plan around GTA 6, and we’re all looking forward to that game, which should be amazing” said Matt Booty.
Speaking of calls with investors, Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, will hold their next call on August 8th. The date and time was revealed this past week and we expect an investor or two to ask the CEO about GTA VI.
