It appears that even the same people running, or who used to run, the video game industry can't get through their own backlog. Case in point, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, who, according to a teaser from interviewer Reece "Kiwi Talkz" Reilly, is fully planning to buy Grand Theft Auto VI and fully not planning to play it, on the grounds that his copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 is reportedly still, in his own words, "in its shrink wrap."
This is a man who used to run PlayStation, who has seen more games than almost anyone alive, and who still owns a sealed copy of one of the most acclaimed titles of the last decade. His plan for the biggest game of this decade is to buy it and shelve it right next to the one he never opened.
If you own more unplayed games than you will ever finish, congratulations, you are in exceptionally good company.
Unfortunately, this is where his joke turns into a real pain point. Layden recently warned that GTA 6 is not going to fix what actually ails the games business, and his shrink-wrapped copy is, accidentally, the entire argument in a nutshell. Modern blockbusters have grown so much as a time sink that finishing one is a real time commitment, and there is always a bigger one on the way. Grand Theft Auto V alone still takes most people dozens of hours just to properly wrap up, and GTA 6 is going to make that number look cute.
How Long These Games Really Take
Game | Rough time to see it properly |
|---|---|
Red Dead Redemption 2 | 50-plus hours for the story, well over 100 to fully complete |
Grand Theft Auto V | Dozens of hours for the story, far more for everything else |
Grand Theft Auto VI | Expected to dwarf both |
Buying one of these takes a minute. Actually finishing it takes a chunk of your year.
The next Grand Theft Auto has already pre-sold millions of copies, and a huge chunk of those buyers are probably like Layden, people who purchase it because they have the money to spare and it is the cultural event of the year. Perhaps this would explain the reason why Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was confident enough to say that every adult will buy a copy of the game earlier this year. Even though he isn't much of a gamer himself, he's for sure aware of this behaviour.
Ultimately, Rockstar Games and its peers benefit enormously from a world where the purchase is the product, where the hype does most of the selling and your intention to someday play it handles the rest. A backlog stuffed with unfinished epics is a sign it is working exactly as designed.
Layden's previous larger warning is that a single colossal hit does not solve any of this. If anything, a game as huge as GTA 6 raises the bar so high that everything smaller looks disposable beside it, and trains players to only really show up for the next giant event. His sealed copy is the evidence sitting on his own shelf.
None of which means a visit to Vice City shouldn't excite you. It just means you might want to be honest with yourself about which pile GTA 6 is going to land in when it arrives on November 19. For what it is worth, the former head of PlayStation already knows exactly where his copy is headed, and he is buying it anyway. So are the rest of us, probably, most likely if not already.