Red Dead Redemption 2 won’t be out on PC on day one, but with or without a third platform it’s going to sell a hell of a lot of copies. Take a look at October’s release calendar, and you’ll find that other publishers are giving Rockstar’s cowboy epic a wide berth, with games as big as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed scooting far earlier than normal.
Everyone’s a little scared of coming out too close to Red Dead, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says “We're running scared too. I think a healthy degree of paranoia and insecurity about releases is probably a good thing. I'm fond of saying that arrogance is the enemy of continued success.”
Someday Red Dead Redemption 2 will be on our list of . (Probably.)
October’s follows the impressive - by some metrics now considered the most profitable entertainment product of all time - so Take-Two has plenty of reason to be excited about the game the company’s about to publish. Still, GTA5 might present some overly lofty expectations.
“It's hard to expect anything to perform as well as the most profitable entertainment product of all time,” Zelnick tells GamesIndustry.biz. “I don't think that's a realistic expectation. Our hope, and also belief, is that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be an extraordinary creative product and that it will do incredibly well. Beyond that I can't say - I don't think anyone can say. We have to release it and see what consumers think.”