GTA 6 currently feels like such a juggernaut that the entire industry is bracing for its impact, but the head of one of the world’s biggest gaming events says he’s not worried that Rockstar won’t be at his show.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Stefan Heikhaus, brand director at Gamescom, acknowledged that “games like GTA or other big releases over the last couple of years […] are extremely important. For the game industry, they are the North Stars.”
But GTA 6 won’t be at Gamescom – in fact, Rockstar is directly competing with the event in Germany, with the GTA 6 Extended Look dropping on Netflix the evening before the show kicks off in earnest.
For Tim Endres, Gamescom director, it would be nice if those two things were happening in tandem – “of course we’re always happy when everything happens at Gamescom,” he says. But both he and Heikhaus are more focused on the hundreds of games that will be at the show.
At “events like Gamescom,” Heikhaus says, “not only can you experience one game, but thousands of games, or at least hundreds. And this is the important difference. Of course, GTA will take some visibility and awareness from the digital Gamescom. But I believe that quickly, people will come back to Gamescom once they have seen the GTA content, because there are so many things, so many world premieres, so much new stuff to see, to experience. Hundreds of studios and companies.”
Crucially, he points out, “there are not many gamers who have only focused on one single game. Most of them are interested in a lot of different games.”
GTA 6 might be a tentpole release, but it can only hold players’ attention for so long before something else comes along to challenge for it instead. Gamescom’s continued growth – now at 1,600 exhibitors and counting – is evidence of that, and Heikhaus says “the indie scene has grown dramatically in the last 15 years.”
It’s not always easy to find an audience in that growing scene, especially not with massive releases like GTA 6 threatening to suck the air out of the room, but Heikhaus and Endres want Gamescom to be a platform for all kinds of games, whether or not they’re made by Rockstar.