14 DAY TRIAL // Without a doubt one of the biggest reveals in gaming this year was yesterday's release of the first trailer of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar's newest iteration in its extremely popular open world franchise, and, as you can imagine, it caused quite a lot of interesting reactions from various games industry analysts.
The first trailer for GTA V was eagerly awaited by millions of gamers from all over the world, especially after the extremely successful Grand Theft Auto IV and its subsequent expansions, The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony.
Now, after the release of its first trailer, which showcased that it's making a return to the game's San Andreas state, specifically Los Santos, the virtual analogs for California and Los Angeles, plenty of analysts have begun speculating when we might actually see GTA V be released.
According to Mike Hickey, from the National Alliance Capital Markets, Rockstar wants to capitalize on the huge interest in games these days, what with the release of Uncharted 3, Modern Warfare 3, or Skyrim, and revealed this trailer just to remind gamers what a big game GTA V will be.
"We believe Rockstar Games is modeling a 4 to 6 month marketing window for their upcoming GTA V release, suggesting a Summer '12 launch period," he told IndustryGamers.
Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter also points to a summer release date, probably before the start of E3 2012, right at the start of summer.
"Would guess it does pretty well when it launches in June. They want to steal everyone's attention, and will do so with a launch in front of E3," he remarked.
Pachter then went on to praise the game's trailer, saying that it has all the elements to attract a wide range of gamers when the full game will actually be released.
"I think the LA setting is interesting, and the scope was large (ocean, desert, mountains, vineyards, city), so they revealed a pretty huge game. The graphics looked like a movie, so they won't disappoint there. I thought the story reveal (older family man being dragged back into the gang) was also interesting, suggesting the 'one last heist' story line and adding the element of family to make the story more compelling."
Rockstar already has one big release planned for next year, in the form of Max Payne 3, which is out in March. A summer release for GTA V might give that game enough time to sell, but it's still likely that Rockstar will target a fall 2012 release.