Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The long-awaited release of the latest Grand Theft Auto game is set to be the biggest entertainment launch of 2025, generating a projected $3bn in its first year, making it a bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre video game market. Grand Theft Auto VI, which publisher Take-Two Interactive is set to release in the autumn on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, is likely to exceed $1bn in pre-orders before it even becomes available, according to analysts at DFC Intelligence, a video games research group. Total revenues from GTA VI\u2019s first 12 months after release are expected to reach $3.2bn, DFC predicts, double its 2013 predecessor. Such a success would far outstrip 2024\u2019s biggest films Inside Out 2, which grossed $1.7bn globally according to Box Office Mojo, and Deadpool & Wolverine, which has taken $1.3bn. \u201cI never claim victory before it occurs,\u201d Take-Two\u2019s chief executive Strauss Zelnick told the Financial Times. \u201cThat said, I think [GTA\u2019s developer] Rockstar Games will once again deliver something absolutely phenomenal\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Certainly the anticipation is high.\u201d Gamers have been waiting more than a decade for the latest in the cinematic action game series, which will feature a Bonnie and Clyde-style criminal couple rampaging around Vice City. The first GTA VI trailer, released in December 2023, has been viewed more than 225mn times on YouTube. \u201cWe think it\u2019s going to be one of the biggest entertainment launches in history, not just in games but for all of media,\u201d said Yoshio\u00a0Osaki, chief executive of games-focused IDG Consulting. \u201cThe pent-up demand is greater than anything we\u2019ve seen before.\u201d However, GTA VI will be an outlier in a games industry that is still struggling to recover from a protracted slump, leading to lay-offs at Sony and Microsoft\u2019s gaming units, as well as top publishers including Take-Two, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. More than 33,000 people have lost their jobs since 2022, according to tracking site Games Industry Layoffs, including almost 15,000 in 2024 alone. Zelnick conceded he was \u201ca bit surprised by the reduction in demand\u201d from players that started in 2022, as post-pandemic consumers turned off their screens and returned to live, in-person events. \u201cAll of us in the industry had to do some restructuring,\u201d he said. \u201cWe too got a little bit ahead of ourselves in terms of growth expectations.\u201d Now, the Take-Two chief believes growth is starting to accelerate again. \u201cIt\u2019s way too early to believe that this [console] generation is maturing or has reached its apex,\u201d Zelnick said. \u201cYou\u2019re seeing more consumer demand broadly. And the [games] industry, frankly led by us, has an amazing release schedule coming in 2025 and beyond\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009A hit coming from one company tends to benefit the entire industry.\u201d Not everyone is so optimistic. Ampere Analysis, a consultancy, forecasts that consumer spending on games content and services will increase just 2.2 per cent in 2025 to $195bn. That year-on-year growth rate is slightly higher than Ampere\u2019s estimate of 1.4 per cent in 2024 and better than the 4.8 per cent drop between 2021\u2019s pandemic peak and 2022\u2019s lockdown easing. Nonetheless, it pales in comparison with the industry\u2019s huge expansion in the previous decade: games content spending doubled from $95bn in 2015 to $191bn in 2021, according to Ampere. \u201cWe\u2019ve grown so well in the last 25 years that it feels like none of us knows how to work in a non-growing industry,\u201d said Nicholas Lovell, a games designer and consultant. \u201cWe are now a mature business\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009There is no funding and the market is oversaturated [with new games].\u201d Even an outsized hit such as GTA or the anticipated debut of Nintendo\u2019s new console will not be enough to return the games industry\u2019s growth rate to its former pace, according to Matthew Ball, a tech investor and author of The Metaverse. \u201cThe largest structural problem faced by the industry is a reduction in time played per player and the number of players,\u201d Ball said. That is especially true in the US, where video apps like TikTok have been attracting smartphone users away from games, he said. At the same time, he added, \u201cthe global market for mobile gamers is no longer growing\u201d. The slowdown in the smartphone market has deprived the industry of one of several huge growth drivers over the past decade, alongside the rise of social games such as Roblox and Among Us, and new business models such as Fortnite\u2019s \u201cbattle pass\u201d subscription that unlocks more virtual goods as players progress. \u201cThree years [after the pandemic], the biggest games are as big as they were, there are no bigger games and most of the others have shrunk,\u201d said Ball. \u201cNearly all of the major studios are contending with the fact that they believed there would be many millions of players more and that audiences would be trying new games.\u201d While the most popular games and franchises \u2014 such as Fortnite, football simulator EA Sports FC and Microsoft\u2019s Call of Duty \u2014 continue to be extremely lucrative for their creators, they are not growing at the pace they were a few years ago. At the same time, it is getting ever harder for new releases to lure players away from their tried-and-tested favourites, especially as new content is now regularly added to the biggest games all year round. \u201cPublishers are banking on the fact that as these games become more evergreen, it\u2019s better to bet bigger on a tried-and-tested [intellectual property] and have more longevity, with live services and content updates,\u201d said Osaki. One of those enduring hits is GTA V, which has sold more than 205mn copies to date, with an online multiplayer version that continues to attract millions of players each month. That gives Take-Two a strong base on which to launch the new game. The launch of GTA Online was \u201cpretty bumpy\u201d, Zelnick recalled, initially crashing under high player demand. \u201cOne of the things Rockstar has done in the last eight years is vastly improve the technical underpinnings of everything we do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t tend to have those kinds of challenges any more.\u201d Unlike annual franchises such as Call of Duty or EA Sports FC, the long gap between GTA\u2019s releases makes them an extraordinary event for gamers. \u201cNobody has managed to do what GTA does as well as GTA does,\u201d said Lovell. But that comes at a huge cost, with estimates for its development costs running from the high hundreds of millions to as much as $2bn, including post-launch content updates. \u201cIt might be the last hurrah of that way of doing business,\u201d Lovell said. \u201cVery few people will be able to make that kind of bet on that kind of property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The long-awaited release of the latest Grand Theft Auto game is set to be the biggest entertainment launch of 2025, generating a projected $3bn in its first year, making it a bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre video game market. Grand Theft Auto VI,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-152290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}