By Joseph Leray
The games industry -- and the media that covers it -- is kind of predicated on the idea that the people that play videogames will just keep buying them indefinitely. It’s part of the reason store shelves are filled with sequels, spin-offs, and reboots.
During a speech at the Wedbush Transfomational Technologies Conference earlier this week, Rockstar chief operations officer Karl Slatoff explained that “Often times people ask us 'Why don't you come out with Grand Theft Auto every two years?'”
The answer, in what I can’t help but read as a dig against Activision’s “Call of Duty” franchise or even Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” series, is that a yearly model “doesn’t make sense” to Rockstar. “Grand Theft Auto, every single time it comes out, is a brand new experience. You can't possibly do that in two years,” Slatoff explains.
“And if we did that, our product would fatigue and the franchise would degrade from a value perspective.”
I’m not the biggest fan of “Grand Theft Auto” -- or, really, open-world games in general -- but it’s got to be one of the strongest brands in the industry, providing a unified and thematically interesting series consistently for over a decade. No other studio does Americana better, ironically, than Rockstar.
“Grand Theft Auto V” will be released in September for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, a healthy five years after “Grand Theft Auto IV.” It’s worth noting that the DS, PSP, and iOS devices were graced by “Chinatown Wars” in 2009, but even that was four years ago -- surely fans of the series are chomping at the bit by now.
So take your time exploring Los Santos -- it’s going to be a while before you’ll get another chance.
[Gamespot]
Tags Grand Theft Auto V, gta, rockstar games