---
title: "what gta 6 will and won't be"
url: "https://merterbil.com/posts/what-gta-6-will-and-wont-be/"
author: "Mert Erbil"
date: "2026-09-30"
video: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_p6jVgGBi8"
video_title: "gta 6'da ne olacak ve ne olmayacak?"
video_language: "Turkish (English auto-dub available)"
topics: "games"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
---

# what gta 6 will and won't be

By Mert Erbil · 2026-09-30 · based on the merbil.fm video "gta 6'da ne olacak ve ne olmayacak?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_p6jVgGBi8, in Turkish, with an English auto-dubbed audio track on YouTube)

In a few weeks, on November 19, maybe the most expensive entertainment product in history comes out. GTA 6 launches on PlayStation and Xbox, and its trailer premiered on Netflix six hours before YouTube. Expectations are sky high, and I think a good part of them won't be met.

GTA 6 is probably the only entertainment product I've been this excited about in years, because San Andreas is the game of my life. I spent entire summers on it, finishing the story over and over, and I still remember the songs on K-DST and Radio X.

Vice City was great too, and it even had its own internet café culture in Turkey. Then GTA IV had a rough PC launch and felt less fun. GTA V came when I was already an adult, and although it was fine, the story was weak and switching between three characters kept me at a distance.

Rockstar has been at this for about ten years, with Red Dead Redemption 2 in between, a PS4 game that still beats most current games in detail. GTA 6's budget is said to be 1 to 2 billion dollars, so basically a few Avengers: Endgames.

And the expected first-year return is around 8 billion dollars, roughly the total budget of all 38 Marvel movies. That's even without online, while GTA Online is still printing money.

The Netflix trailer is actually the part I find most interesting. Netflix pays for content based on how many subscribers it brings in, so they did the math and were okay with lowering their brand a bit to become a showcase for someone else's product. I don't think we'll see this again soon, because nothing else has this much hype.

On the other side, AAA studios like Ubisoft and EA are watching closely. Most of their games try to get the maximum return with the minimum effort, which is why they've become kind of a caricature.

If GTA 6 fails, I think AAA goes through a serious collapse with more layoffs, and indie and AA games like Clair Obscur or Hollow Knight grow again. If it succeeds, I hope its polish gives the others some courage to make more thoughtful games, like Red Dead Redemption 2 did back then.

However, I don't expect anything radically new. GTA has its own formula, so we'll get a Bonnie and Clyde kind of story, heists, betrayals, crazy NPCs and planes falling on our heads. I wouldn't expect AI-generated dialogues either, because Rockstar's strength was never new tech, it's squeezing the most out of the existing tech.

What worries me is that too much realism might make it boring, and that today's cancel culture might soften the satire (in GTA V we shot a guy who was obviously Mark Zuckerberg). Then there's the price. At 80 dollars, every AAA game will follow, so will the same terrible Assassin's Creed every year be worth 80 euros too?

Eventually, whatever happens, GTA 6 will shape the games industry for the next five or six years. I don't expect it to show me something new, I expect it to show me something old, done really well. That's why I'm still this excited for November.