Ubisoft CEO explains why GTA 6 launch actually has rival company thrilled

With Rockstar’s GTA 6 shaping up to be one of the biggest launches the gaming industry has ever seen, even rival companies are eager for the new sequel. Ubisoft’s CEO explained why in the company’s latest earnings report.

A decade on from GTA 5’s meteoric launch, Rockstar finally broke its silence on the sequel late last year. While unprecedented leaks spoiled some of the surprise, the first GTA 6 trailer still went on to break records all the same, becoming one of the fastest-growing videos in the internet’s brief history.

And that’s only the beginning. As millions of gamers around the globe hold their breath for any further intel, GTA 6 is clearly shaping up to be a gaming launch unlike anything we’ve seen before. This fact is something other dev teams are acutely aware of too.

Speaking in Ubisoft’s Q3 earnings report on February 8, 2024, company CEO Yves Guillemot explained why the launch of GTA 6 actually has the rival publishing giant more excited than you may expect.

When questioned on the subject of GTA 6’s planned 2025 arrival, Guillemot explained how Rockstar’s next blockbuster is actually beneficial for Ubisoft and the broader gaming industry.

“What we’ve seen in the past is that each time there’s a big release like GTA, there are more and more people coming back to the industry,” he said. Thus, with GTA 6, Ubisoft’s CEO is expecting a launch of this caliber to “help other games sell as well.”

In fact, while the prevailing wisdom may have been to try and steer clear of GTA 6 on the calendar, Ubisoft is doing the opposite and instead “organizing things around the launch of that game.

“What we’ve seen is that generally, it’s actually positive for the market, and we did a good launch with the launch of GTA 5 and GTA 5 Online, each time we were able to generate really good revenue and profit on the games we launched.”

Ubisoft launched Assassin’s Creed Black Flag just one month after GTA 5 and it quickly skyrocketed, selling over 11 million copies in just a matter of months.

If history, and Guillemot’s comments, are anything to go by, it seems we can expect another marquee Ubisoft title to arrive in close proximity to GTA 6 as well. Though exactly when that may fall in 2025 is still anyone’s guess for the time being.