Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has effectively said that the company is going for broke to market Grand Theft Auto 6 and get it in front of as many eyes as possible - not that the company is ever going to go bankrupt as soon as the next Grand Theft Auto game hits the storeshelves, but that's what all of this serves in the end anyway.
A few days after confirming that GTA 6 marketing starts this summer, the ever-supportive CEO sat down with CNBC's Jim Cramer to explain how the company plans to market the biggest entertainment release of all time. His answer? Very carefully, and with a lot of money. "The marketing has to be delicate," Zelnick told Cramer. "It has to feel like this is real. We're not selling hamburgers. We're selling this unique art form."
Zelnick is essentially saying that, given the anticipation for GTA 6, Take-Two needs to exercise caution. They can't just slap ads on buses and call it a day, though we're pretty sure that'll happen, too. Why? Because this isn't a fast food product competing for your lunch money. It's a cultural phenomenon that people have been waiting for over a decade.
During Take-Two's Q3 FY2026 earnings call, an investor asked how much marketing GTA 6 actually needs, given that it's already the most anticipated game in history, one that he himself described as a game that will set a new "creative benchmark" for the entertainment industry.
Zelnick's response was characteristically verbose but boiled down to this: "We are very fortunate that the consumer anticipation for GTA 6 is huge. And one does have to be judicious with how one markets such an extraordinary product. Rest assured, I think you'll be pretty astonished by the creativity that Rockstar's marketing team brings to consumers in the coming months."
Zelnick also dropped this gem during the earnings call: "We are in the business of eating red meat for breakfast. I think we'll be having a lot more red meat in the coming months." Which is either a bizarre metaphor for aggressive business practices or proof that Take-Two's CEO has been spending too much time around Wall Street types who talk like cartoon villains.
Translation: we're going to spend an absurd amount of money on marketing, and it's going to be everywhere you look starting this summer. Either way, the message is clear: Take-Two isn't satisfied with just a guaranteed payday. They want a cultural heist in the form of GTA 6 dominating the conversation in a way that even Grand Theft Auto V and its record-breaking launch will pale in comparison to.
The reason Zelnick is so confident about all this marketing is that they've already spent the money. During his CNBC interview, Zelnick pointed out that Take-Two doesn't commit marketing dollars unless they're certain about a release date. "We have marketing beats coming this summer, and we don't spend money on marketing until we're pretty close to release," he said. "We obviously track the progress daily of everything we do."
If Take-Two is already coordinating with agencies, planning media buys and preparing creative assets, that suggests they're confident enough to risk millions of dollars on the assumption that November 19 actually happens. That's the strongest signal yet that Take-Two believes the date is real. Zelnick's "not selling hamburgers" comment is particularly telling. Take-Two wants GTA 6 to feel like an event. They want it to be the kind of thing people plan their schedules around, take time off work for, and talk about for months afterward.
Which, to be fair, is exactly what happened with GTA V in 2013. That game made $1 billion in its first three days and went on to sell over 225 million copies. Analysts are predicting GTA 6 could sell 20 million copies in its first 24 hours and generate $7.6 billion within 60 days. Those are numbers that dwarf most blockbuster movie releases, which is probably why Zelnick keeps calling it an "art form" instead of just a video game.
For now, all we can do is wait for the summer and see if Zelnick's promises about "astonishing" marketing actually deliver. If the past two years have taught us anything, it's that Take-Two is very good at talking about GTA 6 and considerably less good at actually showing it. With November 19 less than ten months away and millions of dollars already committed to marketing, the time for talk is running out.
Either Rockstar delivers, or Zelnick is going to have to explain to investors why they spent all that money on nothingburgers, after all.
