A phrase that gets thrown around a lot in the gaming industry right now is ‘survive until 2025’.
The hope, or even the expectation, is that next year the gaming business will rebound after two years of fluctuating sales and mass layoffs.
There are several reasons for this expectation. First, there is the belief that we will see continued economic recovery and falling inflation, which should lead to an increase in consumer spending and investment. Second, the release of a new Nintendo console should generate increased interest and sales of new games.
And third… Grand Theft Auto 6.
Make no mistake, the next GTA will be a major milestone for video games. If all goes well, it should turn out to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time. It will shine a spotlight on the industry (for better or worse), boost retail sales, increase traffic for gaming media, and help change hardware as well.
Of course, it won’t work for everyone. For publishers and game developers not named Rockstar, GTA 6 won’t exactly help them. In fact, any game that dares to launch within Grand Theft Auto’s six-week blast radius does so at its own peril. Meanwhile, games with a live service should be prepared for a sharp drop in average play time.
Still, one thing some in the industry are hoping for with GTA 6 is that it will help overcome the “PS4 problem.”
We’ve talked a lot about the game console business being in decline, pointing to the somewhat slower sales pace of this generation of consoles compared to the previous one. Still, things are rosier, especially for the PlayStation, when we start looking at other metrics.
“[We expect] Rockstar will continue to work with GTA Online for the foreseeable future, but the user base [will be] broke up after the release of GTA 6. Rockstar has never faced this kind of transition challenge”
Piers Harding-Rawls, Ampere’s Analysis
For example, revenue is significantly increased for the PS5 compared to the PS4. But more than that, in terms of total engaged users, the numbers look healthy… it’s just that many of those engaged users are still playing on PS4.
Whether this is a problem or not is subjective. Back in May, Sony revealed that 50% of their audience still plays on their older machine, even as we approach the PS5’s fourth anniversary. It’s not uncommon for older-generation machines to continue for years after their replacements arrive, but things are more significant this time around, in part due to the popularity of live service titles.
Newzoo’s latest play time rankings show that the most played PlayStation games in the last two months are Fortnite, Call of Duty, EA Sports FC 24, GTA 5, Roblox, Minecraft, Rocket League, XDefiant, Rainbow Six: Siege and NBA 2K24.
Only one of those games, Ubisoft’s XDefiant (which was released in May), isn’t on PS4. Minecraft is about to get a native PS5 version (PS5 players have only been able to download the PS4 version until now). Meanwhile, market analysts Ampere say that of GTA Online’s 20 million+ active users, the most active platform for the game “by some margin” is PS4.
In other words, almost all of PlayStation’s biggest games currently run on PS4 (and run well), and this reduces the need for users to upgrade their hardware, especially during times of economic instability and high live-costs.
Obviously, this is also a possibility. PlayStation remains optimistic that the PS5 will be a bigger platform than the PS4 because it knows that at some point a large portion of that PS4 base will want to upgrade, especially when their hardware starts to age, slow down, or fail. Of course, Sony will have to be careful to keep those gamers on PlayStation, especially with Xbox improving its launch slate, Nintendo debuting new hardware, PC gaming continuing to perform strongly, and even mobile and tablets showing off their gaming potential of high class. But at the end of the day, they’re PlayStation customers right now, so Sony’s fanbase stands to lose.
This is where I think Grand Theft Auto can play an important role for all game companies. Currently, developers are caught between pushing forward with the latest hardware and maintaining support for the old. And really, that’s something Rockstar will have to contend with.
“Until the time [GTA 6] launches, more GTA Online gamers will have switched to the latest consoles,” says Ampere’s lead games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls. “However, there is still likely to be a notable proportion of players on older devices and on PC. As such, Ampere expects Rockstar to continue working with GTA Online for the foreseeable future, but that will mean maintaining multiple communities as the user base has been divided since the release of GTA 6.
“Rockstar has never faced this kind of transition challenge before, although parent company Take-Two more broadly has deep experience with its live sports franchises, which regularly rewire audiences for new annual releases.” The continued commercial importance of the GTA franchise leaves very little room for error in the transition and the support of its loyal audience at the launch of the new game.”
But if there’s a game that can make players upgrade, it’s Grand Theft Auto. And if Sony and Microsoft have plans to release upgraded and portable versions of their latest machines, as the reports suggest, then 2025 could prove to be a very important year for the future of the gaming console, even before we factor in Nintendo.
Of course, the situation begs a broader question… what might the PlayStation 6 look like? In many ways, the Xbox Series S and X were sequels to the Xbox One. Faster, more powerful, but with the same interface, same controllers, and all of its first-party games were cross-generational. In contrast, Sony exclaimed that it “believes in generations” and introduced the PS5 with a new user interface, a new controller, new accessories and (at least some) PS5-only games.
With gamers taking five years (or more) to transition from one generation to the next, and with AAA games taking four or five years to build, does the seven-year generational cycle still work today? Unless Sony’s engineering and hardware teams can create a product that offers a significant change in the way games look and play, I’m not convinced it is.
That’s tomorrow’s problem to solve. For now, the opportunity for PlayStation is to get the rest of the fans to put down their DualShocks and pick up the DualSense instead. It’s going to take something special to do that, and all eyes are on Grand Theft Auto 6.
