This November has been a terrific month for the number six, with GTA 6 approaching and The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel finally out in the open. Once GTA 6 is in our hands at last, we'll have to reckon with a strange new world where we're no longer constantly waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto – the kind of alien sensation that Hollow Knight: Silksong players, who practically grieved yearning after so much buildup, are intimately familiar with.
Will The Elder Scrolls 6 step up to the plate as the next [clears throat] Massive Sequel Over a Decade in the Making That Also Has the Number Six in It? Is it going to fill Rockstar's enormous shoes as gaming's white whale?
"No, I don't think it is," says Circana games analyst Mat Piscatella when I mention this idea in passing. "It's a huge game, obviously, but things like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, NBA 2K, these are games that are huge, mass-market appeal titles."
This reflects part of what makes GTA 6 so interesting, not as a game to be played but as an outlier to be observed. Similar to Nintendo, Rockstar can basically do whatever it wants because its loyal audience is big enough. More uniquely, Grand Theft Auto is the type of game that appeals to a huge range of players, from the enthusiasts playing dozens of the best games of 2026 to casual fans who mostly stick to the sports and shooter series that Piscatella mentions.
"They're their own thing," he says. "It's a different set of rules, a different set of expectations. They're gonna do their thing, and they've earned every bit of that, just based on what they've done. Nintendo is its own thing, too. They are unique, and I know people hate that and go, 'They're competing just like everyone else.' They are, but with the IP and their history and how they've developed how they go to market, it is a unique proposition. That's why they can do things other companies can't, and they have a relationship with their players that other platforms don't. These are companies or developers that are doing their own thing, blazing their own trail, and a lot of other people try to follow."
As AAA game development faces cost crises, Rockstar is making the biggest bet of all, and with the most favorable odds imaginable. Nobody else could make a game like GTA 6. For anyone but Rockstar, it would be too big to succeed. "If you want to talk about a big bet, they don't come any bigger than this, and the appetite for big bets like this doesn't exist in many places," says Piscatella.
Even The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, follow-up to one of the most-played RPGs of all time, and handily the most-modded, is in a different weight class. (The Witcher 3 and Skyrim have both sold 65 million copies.)
"Whether you're talking about an Elder Scrolls, a Witcher, a God of War, those are big games but they're nowhere near the scale of an NBA 2K, Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto," adds Piscatella. "No shade to them. They're all great games and perform very well. But we're talking about a secondary tier to those real mass-market hit drivers."
It certainly doesn't help that The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced eight years ago, and re-announced this week with a subtitle, yet we still don't even have a screenshot. The game is reportedly looking at a 2029 launch, which would put it 18 years post-Skyrim, so I'm going to need Bethesda to wake me up for the third time when, and only when, it's got some heat.
