Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto VI stands alone as a “AAAAA” game, according to Devolver Digital co-founder Nigel Lowrie. He said in an interview that nothing can touch the GTA series when it comes to the “scope and scale” of the popular open-world crime series.
“I mean, there are AAA games and then there’s AAAA games and I’d argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game; it’s just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands,” Lowrie told IGN.
Before this, Ubisoft referred to Skull & Bones as a “AAAA” game, a comment that led to many memes and jokes.
Lowrie commented on GTA 6 against the backdrop of Devolver considering whether or not it would delay some of its games to get out of the way of GTA 6 when it was planned for a 2025 release. He said GTA 6 was “blinding” when it came to the calendar. It remains to be seen if Devolver will delay any games due to GTA 6.
In a cheeky social media post, the company said it would, in fact, launch a game on the same day as GTA 6. Devolver recently delayed Baby Steps due to Silksong, and while some have questioned that decision, Lowrie said he didn’t want to gamble with people’s livelihoods.
“You can’t AB test reality,” he said. “Maybe Baby Steps would’ve just been fine September 8, it could have been. But am I willing to risk this team’s livelihood and the future of the game they’ve worked on for five years to see if they both work out? I’m not. And I also want to listen to what they want, and what they want is to have their own spotlight and I couldn’t agree more.”
Going back to GTA 6, Adam Lieb, the CEO of marketing platform Gamesight, told IGN that GTA 6 has had an outsized effect on calendars and planning for video game companies.
“I would say that GTA for the last year and a half has been a part of almost every conversation around launch dates I have heard,” Lieb said.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that when GTA 6 was delayed to 2026, some studios with games set for Fall 2025–the previous launch window for GTA 6–embraced the news, with others scrambling to make decisions for their own 2026 games.
GTA 6 is expected to perform exceptionally upon release, with one firm predicting it will sell 40 million copies and drive $3 billion in revenue in the first year alone. The game has gigantic shoes to fill, as GTA 5 has sold more than 215 million copies.
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