Red Dead Redemption 2 won’t be out on PC on day one, but with or without a third platform it’s going to sell a hell of a lot of copies. Take a look at October’s release calendar, and you’ll find that other publishers are giving Rockstar’s cowboy epic a wide berth, with games as big as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed scooting far earlier than normal.
Everyone’s a little scared of coming out too close to Red Dead, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says “We’re running scared too. I think a healthy degree of paranoia and insecurity about releases is probably a good thing. I’m fond of saying that arrogance is the enemy of continued success.”
Someday Red Dead Redemption 2 will be on our list of upcoming PC games. (Probably.)
October’s Red Dead Redemption 2 release date follows the impressive earnings of Grand Theft Auto V – by some metrics now considered the most profitable entertainment product of all time – so Take-Two has plenty of reason to be excited about the game the company’s about to publish. Still, GTA5 might present some overly lofty expectations.
“It’s hard to expect anything to perform as well as the most profitable entertainment product of all time,” Zelnick tells GamesIndustry.biz. “I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation. Our hope, and also belief, is that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be an extraordinary creative product and that it will do incredibly well. Beyond that I can’t say – I don’t think anyone can say. We have to release it and see what consumers think.”
You know what might aid those sales? Perhaps a PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2. GTA5 is still high on the Steam charts, and I’m sure some of those players are eager to move on – and yes, obviously both Take-Two and Rockstar know it. But they’re still going to do fine with just a console release, and an extra wait just means demand for the PC edition will be so much greater.