- Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says GTA 6 still needs aggressive marketing despite the game's massive hype and awareness.
- According to the CEO, GTA 6's marketing goal is to "take awareness and turn it into excitement" and the "lack of awareness into awareness."
- He said the GTA 6 Extended Look on Netflix was a tutorial for people "willing to spend their money to try it".
It might be easier to count the people who haven’t heard of GTA 6 than those who have, but Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says marketing still matters. According to the CEO, promotions can turn existing awareness into excitement, even though most players and many people outside the gaming community already know about the game.
Speaking to GamesBeat, Zelnick emphasised aggressively marketing GTA 6 despite the massive awareness, saying, “If the marketing’s terrible, you can turn people off, and if the marketing’s great, you can create more excitement.” Here’s the full quote:
The whole goal that we always have, whether it’s this upcoming launch or any other title, is to take awareness and turn it into excitement, and take the lack of awareness and turn it into awareness.
The CEO compared GTA 6’s marketing to Barbie, another well-known brand that used marketing to turn widespread awareness into cultural excitement: “All of us saw the Barbie movie, and they marketed the living daylights out of that picture. Even though the IP is very well known.”
Zelnick also commented on the importance of the 27-minute GTA 6 Extended Look on Netflix as a tutorial for interested players, with the following statement:
“With interactive entertainment, you have to engage with the title in order to enjoy the title.” And so, part of our marketing is to show people, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ And in certain cases, actually, we have to give something that’s actually called a tutorial to say to people, ‘This is how you play it before people are going to be willing to spend their money to try it.”
The Grand Theft Auto 6 marketing with the Netflix Extended Look seems to be paying off, as reports suggest GTA 6 pre-orders surged 436% after Rockstar showcased the official gameplay. Speaking of the marketing itself, Rockstar is preparing to market GTA 6 on Miami Beach starting October 15.
Meanwhile, Spotify is promoting GTA 6 artists with massive billboards in locations like Los Angeles and New York. Rockstar is entering GTA 6’s final marketing phase ahead of its November 19, 2026 launch, but we still don’t know whether a GTA 6 Trailer 3 is in the promotional cards.
