All the games that have rushed their release dates out of November in response to Grand Theft Auto 6's November 19 launch have indirectly handed other big hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake (out November 8) and World of Warcraft: Forever (out November 4) a remarkably open month. It can seem like Rockstar's done Nintendo and Blizzard a favor here, especially when these three games don't compete on the same platforms, but there's more to this month.
Ahead of the GTA 6 launch, I spoke to analyst Mat Piscatella, games lead at Circana. He's unsurprisingly confident that GTA 6, as the leader of the holiday rush, will help drive increased spending in the industry and, hopefully, bring in more players who will attract more investment which eventually leads to more good games. In this rush, he sizes up the November fear that's seen so many studios push up or delay their launches to avoid sitting next to Rockstar.
"I'm sure it's a little different for everyone who decided to move their game out, whether it was a feeling of direct competition or just not wanting to try to grab any air and have it all be suffocated away by Grand Theft Auto," Piscatella reasons. "I don't know, that's all an individual developer or publisher decision. But if I have a cozy sim or a first-person shooter or, I don't know, a puzzle platformer walking sim, I don't know why I would necessarily move my game for Grand Theft Auto. But hey, people are probably just scared of potentially running into this game. So we'll see.
"World of Warcraft: Forever is also coming out, and that's on PC where Grand Theft Auto isn't, so I'm sure those games are going to be just fine. The Switch 2 audience that isn't invested in PlayStation or Xbox at all, of course they're going to be very interested in Zelda, and even some Grand Theft Auto players are very interested in Zelda. We have about, according to our latest tracking, 15% of people who intend to buy Grand Theft Auto also intend to buy [the Ocarina of Time remake]. We have a lot of crossover there too. The thing's been built up so big, and absolutely warranted, but everyone just kind of moved and perhaps they didn't need to."
The interesting thing is that, despite enormous differences in tone, look, gameplay, audience, platform, and just about everything else, GTA 6 and the Ocarina of Time remake do have a fair bit in common when you zoom out. Piscatella notes that they both "lean more towards the more mature portions of the market in terms of age ranges," tap into nostalgia to varying degrees, and will lean toward "affluent folks" who can stomach today's console prices. How terrifying it is for GTA 5 to be so old that it can reasonably be called nostalgic.
"All that stuff's coming together to make it a great environment for this game to launch right now. Well, great given everything happening with pricing and supply constraints and the RAM crisis and everything else," Piscatella observes.
But has Rockstar actually helped Blizzard or Nintendo indirectly? "Maybe," Piscatella says. But "with Nintendo first-party games on Nintendo platforms, it's always an open window because that's primarily what those platforms are used for by folks." A new Zelda remaking one of the best-known games of all time was always going to hit hard. It just works out nicely that GTA 6 can top PS5 and Xbox Series X, Ocarina is the big Switch 2 title for November, and WoW: Forever could hardly ask for less competition on PC.
You can understandably argue that there's never really an open window given the volume of games coming out every year, the number of free-to-play games available, and the amount of time and money being poured into the same live services. All games face competition at all times. But games will dodge each other for a reason, and looking at core platforms and premium new releases, the stars have really aligned this November.
Piscatella notes that WoW: Forever is also a nostalgia play. "There's probably going to be some crossover there," he says. "It's come on real hot with the beta – wasn't really thinking about it before that beta, but the beta was so strong in terms of reaction and participation. It's a little bit of a dark horse in terms of its overall impact, but it could be something. It also has a pretty open-ish window, even though there's no open windows on PC anymore because of everything going on.
"But these three games? Great. Everything else in the market, we'll see. We'll see what happens for everything else that's come out in September and October, and everything that's going to be coming out in January, February that got pushed out. We'll see what the blast radius really is on this thing."
