Earlier today, Rockstar Games announced that the next big Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal will happen on August 27. Oddly, it will be streamed exclusively on Netflix for a few hours before it arrives later on YouTube. So, what should you expect from this next big reveal? Well, I dug into Rockstar’s history and past data to figure out what fans can likely expect to see later this month, and it’s mostly good news.
First off, to be clear, Rockstar Games has not actually confirmed the nature or substance of what we will see on August 27 on Netflix and YouTube. All the company has said officially is that this will be an “extended look” at GTA 6. The Netflix page for the reveal only adds that GTA 6 is “the next evolution in the groundbreaking ‘Grand Theft Auto‘ series.” So we don’t know for sure if this extended look is going to feature raw gameplay footage, but based on how Rockstar has operated in the past, I’d bet my bottom dollar this is a gameplay reveal video.
Ever since Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar has followed a pattern for hyping up its big games. First, you get a couple of cinematic trailers built out of in-game or in-engine footage. Then, Rockstar releases a gameplay trailer featuring narration that adds more details and context. At first, as with RDR‘s narrated gameplay trailer, Rockstar put out these videos pretty far ahead of the game’s launch. In the case of RDR1, its gameplay trailer arrived 154 days before it launched in May 2010. In fact, the game was delayed after its gameplay trailer. LA Noire was a bit better, with its gameplay trailer arriving just 97 days before launch. But then Max Payne 3 came along in 2012 and showed off its first gameplay trailer, part of a larger series of tech and design videos, 180 days before the shooter launched, and with a delay tossed in.
Since then, though, Rockstar Games has followed a pretty predictable pattern. Grand Theft Auto V‘s first narrated gameplay trailer arrived 80 days before launch. Red Dead Redemption 2‘s arrived 78 days before launch. And now, what we expect to be GTA 6‘s big gameplay trailer will arrive 70 days before launch. So this lines up pretty nicely with Rockstar’s established history. And it should be noted that Rockstar hasn’t delayed a big game this close to launch before, so I doubt the video will end with the bad news of a new, later release date.
The other question, then, is how long this Netflix reveal will be? An extended look does sound like it might be very lengthy, but all of Rockstar’s narrated gameplay trailers since Red Dead Redemption have run between 4ish-to-6ish minutes. Doing some quick math, the average length is about 4 and a half minutes. I expect that with a big Netflix reveal, this new gameplay trailer could be longer than that, but I’m not expecting 30 minutes of gameplay or some elaborate Nintendo Direct-style deep dive. Instead, I think five to seven minutes is probably where the runtime lands.
Of course, perhaps Rockstar Games is going to throw a curveball, and on August 27 we’ll just get the game’s third trailer and a big ol’ delay announcement. But looking at the company’s track record and history, I think that’s very unlikely. We’ll find out later this month when GTA 6‘s extended look premieres on Netflix and then arrives hours later on YouTube.
