GTA 6 Pre-Orders Coming Soon, Product Placement Never Happening

Variety published the key takeaways from its interview with Strauss Zelnick at iicon, adding a bit more context to what had already been covered about GTA 6 a few days earlier.

Soon — Price Reveal or Marketing?

By saying “soon”, the Take-Two CEO was responding to a question about when the public would learn the price of Grand Theft Auto VI. Most likely, he was referring to the start of pre-orders. That is when we will finally find out how much a copy of the game will cost. However, this does not rule out the possibility that “soon” also answers the question of when the marketing campaign will begin. The campaign and pre-orders will almost certainly launch at the same time.

Advertising Real Brands

Another interesting topic concerned the possibility of featuring product placement inside GTA VI as a way to generate significant advertising revenue from real-world brands. But the company executive was categorical.

We need to be true to the underlying intellectual property and we need to be true to our consumers. It’s a fictional world and everything in it is fictional. So we’re not even at risk of doing brand partnerships because all the brands are made up. And I think that keeps us pure.

Brands naturally exist within NBA. And as long as we present them in a natural way, in a way that’s consistent with what you’d experience at a basketball game, it’s great. It’s additive to the experience.

The world of Grand Theft Auto is known for its detailed design and countless parodies of real-world brands. However, there have been a few rare exceptions, such as when GTA Online added items from designer fashion collections.